Welcome to Barbaraville, where subjects seek a happy ending over composting plans

It is a tale of adversity that could have come straight from the pages of Barbara Cartland, the dame of romance who sold 600 million corset-heaving novels.

A group of Gypsies find that their cherished way of life is suddenly imperilled by the ambitions of a wealthy Anglo-German neighbour and enlist the help of the eldest son of the formidable patron to whom they owe their home.

If Dame Barbara, who died in 2000 at the age of 99 after writing 723 novels, had anything to do with it, the tale would end with the nomads beating the odds to live happily ever after, under the benevolent gaze of a handsome lord and lady of the manor. But the future of Barbaraville, the Gypsy site named in her honour that she founded near her Hertfordshire mansion 42 years ago is less certain.

Residents of the camp of nine mobile homes at Mill Green, near Hatfield, claim their homes will be made uninhabitable by a composting plant planned for their doorsteps. The battle by Barbaraville's 40 residents against the processing factory, to be built by a subsidiary of Thames Water, part of the Anglo-German utilities giant RWE, has been joined by Dame Barbara's eldest son, Ian McCorquodale, and their MP.

Campaigners argue that the multimillion-pound plant, which will turn 55,000 tons of kitchen and garden waste a year into an agricultural soil improver, will create odour problems that will force the Gypsies to leave their homes, just 10 metres from the edge of the compost factory.

Mr McCorquodale, 68, a former chairman of Debrett's Peerage who managed his mother's business affairs before her death and is now a trustee of the charity that runs Barbaraville, said: "I know if my mother was alive she would be doing everything to stop this plant being built.

"She is known for her romantic novels but there is another side that is less well known. At a time when the Gypsies were treated with disdain in the early 1960s, she saw that they needed permanent sites where the children could go to school and there could be medical care. Now that community, which has lived and thrived on the site for four generations, is under threat because of the same unfairness that my mother disliked so much."

Barbaraville was founded in 1964 while Dame Barbara was at the height of a brief political career as a Conservative member of Hertfordshire County Council.

She joined a campaign by representatives of the Romany and traveller communities which resulted in a law requiring local authorities to provide permanent sites with access to amenities.

In keeping with Dame Barbara's aristocratic airs, the Mill Green site, between a dual carriageway and a Thames Water sewage plant, was situated on land rented from the ancestors of the Earl of Salisbury.

Mary Davis, 62, who has lived on the site since its inception, said: "Barbara Cartland was a friend when there was still a lot of prejudice about Gypsies. She stuck with us and for years she used to come and visit. I remember her turning up in her Rolls-Royce, all dressed in pink.

"But if this plant goes ahead, I don't see how we can continue living here. The smell from tons of rubbish is going to be unbearable - how can you live somewhere with your windows and doors shut all the time?" The campaign against the composting site, which is part of a government initiative to cut the use of landfill sites, is also supported by the area's Conservative MP, Grant Shapps.

The plant, which will be supplied with organic waste by about 8,000 lorry visits a year, will ferment the compost in concrete vats before spreading it on outdoor "maturation beds" to rot.

Mr Shapps said: "It impossible to think that Thames Water would even consider a project like this if it was to be built next to a street of suburban houses. The people in Barbaraville are hard-working families who pay their taxes just like the rest of us yet they are being treated like second-class citizens."

Thames Water, whose subsidiary Terra Eco Systems won the contract to built the plant, denied that it had chosen a soft target in Barbaraville and said that the process would produce minimal odours.

A spokesman said: "It is absolutely not the case that we have sited this plant because of its proximity to any particular group. The only parts of the composting process that produce any odour will take place indoors."