A plan to turn old railway carriages into “glamping” accommodation in the Herefordshire countryside has been rejected owing to its likely impact on the area’s landscape and ecology.

The four converted carriages would have stood in a traditional cider apple orchard and pasture on a hillside at Woodbury Farm, Moccas, between Hereford and Hay-on-Wye, and would have required permeable hard standing for parking.

Made of “rustic” materials, the carriages would have been “typical of the 20th-century goods wagons found throughout the landscape, repurposed for storage and animal shelters”, the application said.

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Aimed at couples, the units would have featured solar lighting and composting toilets, as part of an “off-grid holiday experience”.

But these and the car park would “introduce glint, glare and colour without any mitigation, contrary to the landscape character of the area”, the refusal notice said.

The “sensitive, elevated position” proposed for the carriages would impact on the grounds of nearby Moccas Court, designed in the 18th century by Lancelot 'Capability' Brown and now on Historic England’s register of park and gardens, as well as on the wider landscape character, it said.

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The likely impact on the area’s wildlife from the plan’s “infrastructure, noise, light, waste and general activity” was also given as a reason for refusal.

As well as the conservation value of the traditional orchard itself, the neighbouring Moccas Park reserve has a high level of national protection given the many species it is home to, including the nationally rare “Moccas beetle”.

“No detailed ecology assessment has been submitted, and it is considered that the potential for adverse effects is significant,” the refusal notice said.

It added that the council was unable to establish if there is a suitable foul and surface water drainage plan for the site – a requirement given its location within the catchment of the River Wye Special Area of Conservation.

Without this, the proposal risked adding to the river’s pollution problem, the notice said.