The village that has banned trendy black doors: Cotswolds retreat made famous by Bridget Jones outlaws fashionable colours that are ruining their homes’ ‘historic character’

A chocolate-box Cotswolds village has found itself at war after a small group of ‘busy bodies’ complained about neighbours painting their front doors black.

The stunning village of Snowshill will be recognisable to some for featuring in Bridget Jones’s Diary where Renee Zellweger’s titular character met her onscreen lover Mark Darcy for the very first time.

Every summer armies of tourists from all over the world flock to the tiny village, where homes sell for more than £1.3m, to soak up its honeystone cottages and manicured green, and stroll past its charming church.

But bubbling beneath the surface are mounting tensions over new planning rules that locals have blasted as ‘crazy’.

Conflict has erupted over a change brought forward by a small number of villagers, led by the owner of the very house that features in Bridget Jones, who despise the slow creep of black front doors and uPVC windows and are desperate to preserve its traditional character.

They implored the council to clamp down on any alterations and earlier this month got their wish – with locals now needing permission to paint their home or front door a new colour, fit windows, erect a gate or fence or lay a new patio in their front garden.

One resident said: ‘I think there are enough planning laws in this village as it is. Look at it – it’s stunning.

‘You can hardly say it’s been ruined by a few windows and doors painted black.

‘Now if you want to make maintenance changes you have to apply for planning permission. It’s pretty crazy in my view. Totally unnecessary.

‘It just comes from the actions of a small group of busy-bodies with too much time on their hands.

‘It’s a case of those shouting the loudest getting heard. I’m 100 per cent anti the new laws and I believe that actually most of the villagers would agree it’s just too much.  

‘It’s already a conservation area and there’s already a very robust planning process so you can’t just do whatever you want because of the existing planning laws. 

‘But there is a group of people in the village and I don’t think that was enough for them. This small group decided controls needed to be even tighter.’

The change, which comes under an ‘Article 4 direction’ implemented by Tewkesbury Borough Council, is aimed at limiting alterations which change the ‘historic character’ of the area, including the colour of front doors.

Those in favour of the move say doors should only be painted in ‘Cotswolds Green’ or white, and oppose the appearance of black doors and white uPVC windows across the village.

While the move has been controversial, Snowshill is not the first village in the Cotswolds to be under the rules. All but four out of 14 conservation areas in the Tewkesbury Borough Council region are already subject to Article 4.

However, there are fears the move will be too restrictive and require locals to pay hefty planning permission fees for small changes.

Stuart Allen, a structural engineer who is currently renovating his house in the village, revealed the huge financial strain it is putting on locals.

He said: ‘Article 4 basically takes all of the permitted rights of planning and throws them in the bin. 

‘You can’t change the windows without planning permission.

‘So that’s £450 going straight to Tewkesbury Borough Council for planning permission to change your windows. 

‘You can’t change your front door and you can’t change the colour of your front door.

‘You can’t change your garden – we’ve changed our grass front garden into stone but we couldn’t do that without planning permission under the new rules. 

‘We can’t change the drive under the new rules without planning permission. It all started really when a house a little bit further up the road put black uPVC windows in.’

Mr Allen explained further: ‘Someone on the committee who looks after planning said “oh I don’t like those” and someone in the village who is an architect also didn’t like them so they decided to start pushing for a restriction on what you can and cannot do.

‘They wanted to try and keep the village looking the same and they didn’t want any different colours on the windows, they just wanted just white ones. 

‘It’s quite restrictive. There are lots of things we can’t do now. 

‘I complained to the council saying I didn’t think it was a very good idea mainly because of the costs.

‘The Article 4 will add costs for all of the locals. 

‘So people will have to somehow find the money or just not make improvements to their house. It’s very easy to sell houses here but very difficult to find somewhere else to live. 

‘And of course, if you stop maintaining your house, it will just slowly deteriorate. And the aim is not to have that.’

The new ruling has split the village, which consists of only 160 residents and 50 properties, around half of which are understood to now be made up of second homes and holiday lets.

Councillor Sarah Hands told the Daily Mail it is ‘actually quite rare’ for a conservation area in the local authority area to not already be under the Article 4 planning rules.

Those who pushed the move through say the charm of the stone cottages, drystone walls and traditional leaded windows are being eroded by modifications which are out-of-place.

Villagers say it was John Hooper, who owns Halls Piece, the famous Bridget Jones house, and Hedley Adkins, who was until recently committee chairman, that first kick-started the campaign for the Article 4 that locals are now bound by.

Approached by the Daily Mail, Mr Hooper answered only through a gap in a small front window.

He declined to speak, stating that he was ‘not interested’, adding that he was not too well after apparently taking a tumble and damaging his ankle in a game of village rounders earlier in the summer.

But Mr Adkins, who lives in a house built in the 80s on a hillside on the northern border of the small village, said: ‘The Article 4 is absolutely superb. We had the parish meeting and it was unanimous that we should apply for Article 4. 

‘So I think Tewkesbury Borough Council has done an excellent job.’

Hinting at the discord in the village, Mr Adkins said: ‘Unfortunately, some people have not been sympathetic towards what is needed.

‘Article 4 is all to do with the front elevation of the buildings. A good example being the black window frames over the road which were recently installed and which are totally inappropriate. Windows should be painted either Cotswold green or white.’

Mr Hedley, who has Cotswold green windows on his home, went on: ‘Painting things in the same colour is absolutely no problem but if you wanted to repaint it red you couldn’t. 

‘You’d have to apply for planning permission. If you wanted to change the front of your house significantly in any way, you now need planning permission. That includes the look of your front garden.’

‘The intention is to try to preserve, not to stop people making changes. To preserve the existing heritage because some people do not appreciate what they should and should not do. 

‘This is important because I think Snowshill is a very attractive village and I think we should try and preserve what is appropriate.’

Mr Adkins claimed that most of the village was in fact in favour of the change.

‘Despite what has been said about who is in support of this, that is a total and utter distortion of reality.

‘I’d say 95 per cent supported. There are one or two people who do object. 

‘One of the points raised was if you want to make a change you have to apply for planning and unfortunately you also have to pay for that and that’s a valid point. 

‘You didn’t used to have to but regulations were changed apparently and you do have to pay for Article 4. 

‘But everyone’s been given six months’ notice before it was implemented, which should give people enough time to change what they wanted to before it came into force.’

Councillor Hands said the borough council received only four objections during the public consultation phase, and said residents were reassured the new rules do not mean that homeowners are unable to maintain their properties.

She said those wanting to repaint their doors in the same or similar colour, or wanting to replace a broken fence, did not need to apply for planning permission. The rules, instead, only apply to ‘any material changes’.

Sheila Wilkes, 85, the church warden at St Barnabas in the village, is a lifelong village resident and says she wished the new laws had come in sooner. She said: ‘When the black windows and doors were put four doors up from my house, it became clear that people were doing just what they wanted to do. 

‘This should have happened years ago really.’

At the Snowshill Arms, the two landladies, who are sisters, seemed to have a more balanced view which was representative of the entire community.

Kim Rose and Izzy Barr have run the same pub serving the village’s 160 residents for 11 years, having taken over from their parents who ran it back in the 80s.

Izzy said: ‘Anything you want to do now to your property you have to apply for planning permission. 

‘For example, I have these signs outside the pub saying the name the Snowshill Arms.

‘They used to be white, then the previous owner replaced them with gold ones. So I thought I’d take them down and spray them white, which before the 1st of October I would’ve been able to do. Now I have to apply for planning permission to do that.

‘There is a cost associated with it. And also you now have to sit around and wait for the council to decide. 

‘It split the village in two. There are people who are very much behind it and there are people who are very much against it.

‘I would think there are probably more people for it and I would say those are more likely to be the people with money who want to keep everyone else in their place. 

‘My view is that I’m leaning towards it being a good thing and I can see where supporters are coming from. 

‘Especially in a row of houses if one person does something completely different to everyone else it kind of spoils the aesthetic a little bit. So I think they’re probably trying to stop that.’

Izzy’s sister Kim, who is also on the parish committee, said: ‘Article 4 is very divisive. 

‘The village has always been like that. It’s good because you want to keep the village as it is. 

‘Anyone who lives in the village and wants to keep it looking like a Cotswold village don’t do things like that anyway.’

She added: ‘It can feel very nannying having this extra layer of bureaucracy. It’s just something else that you’ve then got to consider whenever you want to make any changes whatsoever. 

‘And also the cost seems just to be another way of getting even more money out of us. And things cost even more going through Article 4.

‘It’s not just normal planning application costs – they are higher.

‘Some people are very much in support of the new Article 4. 

‘Hedley Adkins for example. He used to be the chairperson of the committee meetings. He was the one who really pushed to have it done in the first place. 

‘And we were thinking we have very strict controls because it’s a conservation area anyway. 

‘I think what annoyed a lot of people as well, is that when Article 4 came in at the start of October, they actually changed the boundaries of the conservation area too. 

‘They took out certain places like fields which were in a conservation area, and peoples’ back gardens have now been included in the conservation area. 

‘There are definitely mixed feelings about it locally. It’s a divisive issue. But you must remember that the majority of the houses in the village are holiday lets anyway.’

Local resident Robin Turner, 68, who has lived in the same house in the village since he was a baby, gave a wider view and said the character of the place has changed beyond recognition since he was a toddler.

The village used to be teaming with families and children, but now it seems to be filled with AirBnBs which often sit empty at this time of year, he said. 

Mr Turner lamented: ‘I have spent one night out of this house in 67 years. So I have seen it all. But don’t ask me who lives in the village now because I just don’t know. 

‘There are no younger people who can afford to live here. The school bus does come through here every day but I think just one kid gets on it. 

‘You get a lot of foreign tourists here – especially after Bridget Jones’s Diary. 

‘The Cotswolds tour bus comes round every two hours dropping people off.’

Robert Miller, a retired civil engineer who has worked in the construction industry most of his life and was ‘born and bred’ in Snowshill, made a wider point about over development in the Cotswolds.

He said: ‘It’s a fascinating question – how far do you allow things to change before you lose the essence of what it is that draws people to the Cotswolds? 

‘Tourism is the biggest industry in the UK – we are basically a theme park. 

‘The beauty of the village is what people are here for. 

‘If you allow the local tourist hotspots like Moreton In The Marsh, Stow On The Wold and Bourton on The Water to star building bigger and bigger housing estates, even if they are built out of Cotswolds stone, how far do you go before you lose the architecture, the culture, the atmosphere?’

Councillor Sarah Hands said: ‘Over the years we had a few enquiries from the parish council and residents requesting an Article 4.

‘If one house changes its windows you can’t really tell the difference, but when lots of houses start having small changes, like driveways put in over grass, all the things that would normally be fine to do as homeowners, it does change the character of the village.

‘It is just to make sure this lovely village, this incredible English quaint village, has its historical character preserved.

‘When we went to consultation, we only ended up with four objections, two from the same household, so three really. 

‘And they mainly involved people being worried they wouldn’t be able to maintain their properties, like replace their fence if their fence was broken.

‘We spoke to them and explained that you can still maintain your properties, replacing a fence is fine. It is any material changes that aren’t.

‘Many people living there, they buy those properties because of the area and they want to make sure those surroundings remain the same and are preserved.

‘The more you change little things, over time they become more noticeable and change the preservation of the area.

‘No one is saying no, you just need to apply for planning permission and work with the conservation officers to decide on the best way to do it and the materials to use.’

Asked whether there were any changes she would imagine would be immediately rejected, she laughed: ‘I imagine that changing the house to a luminous pink would probably be a no.’