NARROW roads around the small village of Snowshill, near Broadway, could be compromised if suggestions from the National Trust are carried out.

Last month a public meeting was held in the village with members of the parish meeting when the Trust put forward their plans to increase opening times of Snowshill Manor.

The suggestions are also understood to include the increase in the permitted number of visiting coaches each week during the stately home's opening season.

Parish meeting chairman Terry King-Smith said the principle changes are that the Trust currently opens for five days a week and wants to increase this to seven days.

They also want to increase coach visits from three coaches a week to two per day.

"The manor is a huge attraction and receives around 80,000 visitors a year. The collection there is magnificent, but I and several other people do not think the narrow roads could cope with additional traffic.

"You only need a coach to meet a tractor on those roads and it is immediately blocked. We would not want that to get any worse," he said.

Snowshill Manor was the property of Winchcombe Abbey until 1539 when the abbey was confiscated by King Henry VIII during the dissolution of the monasteries.

Since the 1500s it has changed hands many times and in 1919 was purchased by the architect, craftsman, collector and poet Charles Paget Wade. After restoring the property he lived in a cottage in the garden and stored his extensive collection in the main house. The collection consisted of hundreds of objects including many suits of Japanese samurai armour, toys, bicycles, instruments, fine clocks and much more.

Wade also had the gardens landscaped to reflect the Arts and Crafts movement at the time.

In 1951 he gave the house and its contents to the National Trust.

The house was closed for repair and electrical and security updating in 2003 and reopened in 2005.

A spokesman for the planning department at Tewkesbury Borough Council said no application for operational changes had yet been received from the Trust.

The Journal tried to contact the National Trust for a comment but they declined to return our calls.