Green light for Hobbit-style glamping pods to be built in the Derbyshire countryside

At a Derbyshire Dales District Council meeting, plans from Teresa Waiton for two glamping pods off Stoney Lane in Hognaston were given the go-ahead.

During the meeting and in papers supporting the plans, the applicant detailed that as an equestrian she often struggled to get away on holiday because she needed someone to look after her horse.

But the new glamping site would allow guests to bring their horse, with dogs also welcome, on holiday with them, and visiting horses would be kept in stables on the site – which has been host to horses for 40 years.

The site would have two glamping pods which would be buried into the hillside with turf roofs and with circular doorways and porthole-type windows – matching the design of the Hobbit holes made famous in J.R.R. Tolkien’s works and the more recent Hollywood films.

These would be provided by the Nottinghamshire Pods company which specialises in “high quality, eco-friendly, low impact spaces, designed to be integrated within the landscape and surroundings”.

Images of their pods show very little of the unit is visible from the outside while the interiors or the properties show a tube-shaped structure with a curved brick ceiling and wood panelling to the lower walls, along with wood flooring.

The pods Mrs Waiton has chosen would include one bedroom each, serving two people per pod as a maximum, with a kitchenette, bathroom, sofa and underfloor heating.

Mrs Waiton told the meeting that she grew up in Hognaston for the first 20 years of her life and wanted to give something back to the village, currently living in Alfreton after stints near the Knockerdown pub and in Brassington.

Adam Maxwell, a district council planning officer, said the site was deemed to be a sustainable location because it is on a bus route and because it would be a small business with just two pods.

He said that with planning conditions the site “will not have a harmful impact on the landscape” with the “earth-sheltered” pods largely obscured from view.