Plans for four traditional houses in a Herefordshire hamlet have been approved despite fears they will be out of reach of locals.

Kinsey Hern of local developer FC Jones & Co applied in July last year to build the four at the Holme, a farmstead in Holme Marsh east of Kington.

The two-storey houses were to have narrow spans, steeply pitched roofs, exposed chimney stacks, overhanging eaves, timber barge boards, oak post porches and exposed rafter ends.

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Two were to have four bedrooms, the other two, three bedrooms, and each would have a detached garage. An access road to the site has already been put in as part of a previous planning approval.

Lyonshall parish council offered no objections but pointed out a silage pit at the site “requires safe disposal to avoid contamination”.

Parish resident Suzanne Hughes said the houses would be “far out of the reach of most families”.

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“They get called ‘executive homes’ but generally retired people who have sold properties outside of Herefordshire buy them,” she wrote.

“We don’t need to artificially expand (Herefordshire’s) aging population.”

And David Oram of the village considered it “over-development an almost punitive degree”.

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But planning officer Ollie Jones concluded that with its “ad-hoc and organic” layout, the new scheme “would respect the traditional village form of the settlement” and “would not be out of scale”.

It would use a private phosphate credit scheme to offset any water pollution arising, so remaining “nutrient neutral” in its impact on the protected Lugg and Wye river systems.

With no identified problems with highways, drainage or the amenity of neighbours, the scheme was approved.