‘It’s traumatic’: new travellers’ Dorset home challenged by Martin Clunes

A couple’s identity as Travellers, and thus their right to live on a plot near his farm, has been questioned by the actor’s lawyers

The spot is idyllic – a wooded West Country hillside with tumbling streams and banks of bluebells rising above a picture postcard Dorset town built of honey-coloured stone.

But a planning dispute involving a showbiz star and a ‘new traveller’ family who have lived peacefully on their plot of land among the trees for more than two decades is disturbing the sylvan tranquility.