A PUBLIC meeting and exhibition are being staged over plans to seek further protection for the historic Chartist settlement at Snig's End, near Staunton.

The plan to extend the existing conservation area is the brainchild of the Forest of Dean District Council.

Snig's End, just to the south of Staunton, was one of only five Chartist settlements ever completed in the 19th Century and retains much of its original layout, including distinctive cottages.

Forest of Dean conservation officer Bill Cronin said: "The Chartists were a political movement active in the early 19th Century, committed to the radical reform of the Parliamentary system.

"In order to bring reform and improve conditions for working people, Feargus O'Connor developed a Chartist Land Plan which proposed that each family would have a house and a plot of land to feed them, pay rent and make a small profit on the sale of crops."

The concept was that property would give the Chartist's a vote, which at the time the working classes did not possess.

The district council proposes that the resulting settlement at Snig's End, already a conservation area since 1976, should be further protected through various measures.

These include extending the conservation area, the reintroduction of original species of hedgerow in the allotment areas and removing modern walls where appropriate, and "controlling inappropriate changes" taking place to the Chartist cottages, which are not currently listed.

The cottages were allotted by O'Connor through a kind of lottery system. But following questions about the allotees' legal title to the land, a Winding Up Act was passed by Parliament, and the Act's official manager arrived at The Feather's Hotel in Ledbury, on September 14, 1853.

A public exhibition on the new proposals will be held at Staunton/Corse Village Hall on Wednesday (July 19), from 10am to 4pm; Thursday, from 9am to 8pm and Friday, 10am to 6pm.

A public meeting to discuss the proposals will take place in the village hall, on Friday July 21, from 7.30pm.