Man to set up traveller site near Martin Clune's Dorset mansion
Who’s posher: Martin Clunes or his hippie neighbour? Caravan-dweller who wants to set up traveller site is actually the son of garden designer Georgia Langton and has links to 12th-Century Irish royalty
- Martin Clunes is trying to halt plans for a permanent traveller site near his home
On a bright April day, the panoramic view from Martin Clunes’s West Dorset home is pleasing indeed.
Rolling hills as far as the eye can see, luscious green fields and swathes of oak and beech trees and, dominating the skyline, the 16th century gothic tower of St Mary’s in Beaminster.
Alas, of late, this latter feature has become something of a sore point for 61-year-old Clunes.
He is currently embroiled in a bid to halt plans for a permanent traveller site among trees just 300 yards away from his 130-acre working hilltop farm in this idyllic corner of South-West England.
There, in a clearing, Theo Langton and his partner Ruth McGill have been living in a static caravan for more than 20 years, surviving without running water or electricity and using a compost toilet in the absence of a conventional sewage system.
On a bright April day, the panoramic view from Martin Clunes’s (pictured) West Dorset home is pleasing indeed
There, in a clearing, Theo Langton and his partner Ruth McGill (pictured) have been living in a static caravan for more than 20 years, surviving without running water or electricity and using a compost toilet in the absence of a conventional sewage system
The pair are artists who make elaborate masks from roadkill, scrap and junk.
The couple, who have two children, have now submitted plans for permanent planning permission for their 45ft by 16ft home — plus two touring caravans.
Worryingly for Clunes, their proposals have already been given the thumbs up by Dorset Council planning officers.
Later this month, elected committee members will meet to decide whether or not to give the artists’ plans the final go-ahead.
But Clunes is not giving up. He has hired a planning agent to oppose the proposals as ‘a wholly unsuitable location for a traveller site’ in the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Yet this sylvan saga is not your everyday David and Goliath story of one of Britain’s best loved actors using his money and influence to try to run roughshod over locals and the needs of a vulnerable community. Mr Langton actually comes from highly illustrious stock.
He bought the land from his mother, celebrated garden designer Georgia Langton, 79, whose work is beloved by the country set, including the Earl and Countess of Portsmouth who commissioned her to transform the gardens at Farleigh House in Hampshire.
Mrs Langton also once owned 13th century Stavordale Priory in Somerset before selling it to theatre impresario Cameron Mackintosh in the early 1990s — bought with proceeds from Les Misérables.
One of King Charles’s closest friends — Charles Palmer-Tomkinson, father of the late media star Tara — was best man at Georgia’s 1964 London wedding to Theo Langton’s late father David.
And her mother — Mr Langton’s maternal grandmother Olive — was a member of the Bourke family which traces its roots back to 12th century Irish royalty and has links to the Viscounts Mayo.
While Clunes is supported by some of his neighbours, a handful of whom share his concerns, as the Mail discovered this week, there are many who are very much in favour of Mr Langton’s plans.
The area where the propoesd travellers site is planned below the home of actor Martin Clunes
‘I know the family that live there. They are very nice,’ says acupuncturist Anna Hazlehurst who lives close to both parties. ‘I have no issues with what they want to do.’
Other neighbours pointed out that despite describing themselves as ‘travellers’, the couple have been living on the site just north of Beaminster since long before the Clunes moved to their farm.
‘Theo and Ruth have been here far longer than most of the rest of us,’ said one of them, ‘so who are we to kick up a fuss?’
A close friend of the couple told the Mail this week: ‘The family are not some fly-by-nights or chancers. This is their home. Theo and Ruth have been here for 25 years.
This is not some great rambling caravan park they want to create. It is merely formalising their right to live there and to have occasional visitors on land which they legitimately own.’
Ironically it was Mr Langton’s family who sold Clunes and his wife Philippa Braithwaite, 58, their idyllic farmhouse home for around £3 million in 2007.
Mr Langton, 53, bought his plot from his mother in June 2019, for £128,315. And while the land would normally be off limits to housing developers because of its AONB status, the couple’s traveller status and lifestyle puts them in a strong position with the Council, which is under pressure to provide sites for gypsies and travellers.
Despite his apparently affluent background, Mr Langton and Ms McGill are believed to have been living on the land since 2002, and they’ve been at loggerheads with local planners for decades.
Mr Langton has applied for permission to make the site permanent on several occasions.
Dorset issued an enforcement notice against him in 2006 after it was described as ‘visually intrusive and detrimental to the appearance and character of the area’, and Mr Langton was later fined.
In 2007, the council refused his bid for temporary planning permission. Mr Langton appealed but an inquiry held in September that year upheld the decision, calling the site ‘alien and cluttered’.
Speaking to the Dorset Echo soon after, Mr Langton said: ‘If they could find a better reason we might listen to them. But what is natural about an AONB, because the whole of this land is man-made and these trees were planted here by men in the 17th century?’
In 2012, amid further applications and appeals, a planning inspector criticised Dorset Council’s ‘significant policy failure in meeting the high level of need for sites’ for gypsies and travellers.
In 2015, the couple were granted a five-year licence to keep their mobile home on the site.
Since 2020 they have been there illegally but in their latest application they argue they have little alternative given that ‘no substantive progress has been made in the allocation of land for gypsies and travellers’ by Dorset Council.
That argument is backed up by a new report by council officer Bob Burden, who cites the general lack of sites for ‘gypsies, travellers and travelling showpeople’ in Dorset as a major reason why permission should be granted.
Clunes, the London-born son of actor and theatre manager Alec Clunes who shot to fame as Gary in the sitcom Men Behaving Badly, moved to Dorset in 2001 with Philippa and their daughter Emily.
Their first home was a former vicarage in Powerstock near Bridport. Six years later they moved to Beaminster where their farm is now home to horses, Shetland ponies, 50 Dexter cattle, sheep, chickens, dogs and cats.
By all accounts, the star is well-liked in the area; praised for his friendly, down-to-earth nature.
He hosts the annual Buckham Fair on his land to raise money for local charities and, during lockdown in 2021, planted six acres of sunflowers and sold them for Julia’s House hospice for which he acts as a patron. His daughter, Emily, attended a local school.
Mr Langton and Ms McGill, meanwhile, are passionate environmentalists and also key players in the local community.
Mr Langton, who has a son from a previous marriage, is a former Beaminster town councillor and an expert forager and in the past has run courses with MasterChef winner Matt Follas.
Ms McGill works with local charity Kushti Bok to raise awareness of travellers’ needs and has promoted links with a local college to encourage travellers to enter education and training.
The pair travel around festivals in the summer, selling the one-off trinkets, hats and masks they make under their ‘Masque the Rage’ label.
A friend said Mr Langton and Clunes got on ‘perfectly well’. ‘There is no war. Martin is well within his rights to object to a planning application and that is what he has done in a perfectly constructive and articulate way. It is a democratic process which both of them respect.’
A former neighbour, said: ‘Both want to carry on living where they live and they are not going to let a temporary disagreement cause a war between them. They are both civilised people.’
But another neighbour added: ‘I feel sorry for Martin. He is being made out to be a curmudgeonly old nimby and he’s not. He likes living here, too. He’s lovely.’
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