A glamping site offering a “romantic escape” for couples in the back garden of a market town is facing closure after neighbours complained that they are forced to spend five months of the year listening to noisy sex, parties, drunken rows and karaoke.
One resident living next door to the Secret Garden Glamping site in Lymington, on the edge of the New Forest national park, wrote to the local authority protesting that they had been forced to listen to “deluded” renditions of Dolly Parton’s 1980s hit Islands in the Stream “over and over”.
Another said she had “awkwardly” heard people having “sex in the thin tents” pitched in the expansive back garden of a semi-detached house on a residential cul-de-sac in the town.
The glamping site consists of two five-metre-wide bell tents that have been set up in their own enclosed garden areas.
According to its website, the business has been running for four years and provides spaces for guests to “rest, relax and play in”.
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But after complaints from neighbours, council officials started to investigate.
Liz Feay, the owner of the site, sought official planning permission for the “use of part of the garden as a glamping site for five months a year”.
However, after a planning meeting this month her application was recommended for refusal and the site is now at risk of closure.
Mel Sims, 51, who lives directly behind the garden where the bell tents are pitched, bought her house in December 2022 but “had no idea” of the business operating just over the garden fence.
Sims, an ADHD coach, said: “When it’s summertime, if you are sitting here then you can hear all the conversations — you can hear sex in the tent.”
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She said that when she and her 13-year-old daughter were sitting outside they could hear “private conversations” and noise.
“We don’t need any more campsites in the New Forest,” Sims said. “We are thick with campsites — I don’t need one in my garden. There’s rows when they are all a bit drunk.”
Sims said the website advertised the glamping site as “exclusive” but said she can “hear all of their conversations”.
Feay applied to the New Forest district council last month for planning permission for the glamping business.
In a covering letter to the council, her planning agent said the application was submitted after “enforcement enquiries” were made about the business last year. After the initial application was made, residents voiced their objections to the site as part of the planning process.
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Daniel Wells, a neighbour, said: “As this is a glampsite specifically targeted at holidaying guests, socialising continues through the working week, disturbing sleep for myself, my wife and our son whose bedroom is at the back of the house.
“Most upsetting perhaps is that on several occasions we have had to close the window to block out the sound of a couple engaging in acts of a sexual nature, which the fabric walls of a tent clearly did not, and do not contain.
“There was a karaoke machine there for a time and on one notable sunny afternoon while trying to enjoy our garden with friends, we had to instead listen to a couple blaring out Islands in the Stream over and over, deluded in thinking they were Dolly and Kenny.
“This same karaoke machine was used top volume at 6am by a child yelling into the microphone.”
Stephanie Glasspool, another neighbour, said she was also forced to listen to “people having sexual intercourse” which is “far beyond what one would expect in a residential family neighbourhood”.
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Andy Doel, 58, said ash floated over into his garden from campfires on the glamping site.
“We camp. Most campsites have rules about noise, but they are people from London that have never camped,” Doel said. “To me, it’s just an unreasonable, un-neighbourly thing to do.”
Doel said he fears that if the planning approval is accepted, other houses with big gardens will also do the same.
According to the website, guests can book a stay in one of the two tents named Flora and Belle from May to September.
On Booking.com a two-night stay in one of the “luxury” tents is priced at £242 and previous guests have described it as a “little gem in the heart of Lymington” and a “beautiful, peaceful setting”.
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Members of the Lymington and Pennington town council planning committee have now voted against Feay’s application and recommended that the council reject it.
The council is expected to make a decision before March 6.
Feay, who said she was a “born and bred New Forest girl”, declined to comment.
