Oscar-winning writer Julian Fellowes is leading the fight to prevent a tiny village immortalised by author Thomas Hardy from being ''obliterated' by a huge housing development.

The Downton Abbey creator has said the bid to almost quadruple in size the hamlet of Lower Bockhampton would devastate the very landscape that influenced the great English writer.

Kingston Maurward College intends to build 70 houses on two green field sites either side of the village, which is where Hardy went to school and which provided the inspiration for two of his greatest novels.

Lower Bockhampton, which Hardy called 'Melstock', was the setting for his famous novel 'Under the Greenwood Tree'.

It is also the place where he first encountered an 18-year-old milkmaid who he based the main character in his 1892 work 'Tess of the D'urbervilles' on.

Hardy regularly walked or cycled through the village to pick up the riverside path that took him into Dorchester - Casterbridge in Hardy's Wessex.

Now the rural idyll intrinsically linked to the Victorian author has been shattered after the plans to transform the village that has just 28 houses were unveiled.

Objectors, including Lord Fellowes, who is the president of the Hardy Society and lives in neighbouring West Stafford, say the proposals would make Hardy 'turn in his grave'.

Along with Higher Bockampton - Hardy's birthplace - and Stinsford, where his heart is buried, the three villages act as a 'pilgrammage route' for fans of the writer and are in a conservation area.

Lord Fellowes said: "I don't want to come across as being too hysterical about this but the Bockhamptons are absolutely at the heart of the Thomas Hardy story.

"He was born at Higher Bockhampton and went to school at Lower Bockhampton.

"We have a real responsibility to protect the enviornment of one of England's greatest global writers. Can you imagine plans to build almost 100 houses at Chawton (Jane Austen's home) or Haworth (Bronte sisters)?

"The residents of Lower Bockhampton are about to be hit with an atom bomb. This development will obliterate the village.

"This is a hamlet of 28 houses which will almost quadruple in size in one go, having been the same size for hundreds of years.

"Five to 10 houses could be absorbed by the village but 70 is a sledgehammer blow.

"People from around the world come to visit to see where Hardy lived and where he wrote and the places that inspired him. One cannot understate how much the local area inspired Hardy."

As a child, Hardy walked a mile to school every day from his parents' cottage at Higher Bockampton to Lower Bockhampton.

The old school house is now a private residence but the original bell that would have signalled to Hardy the start of the school day remains in the front porch.

'Under the Greenwood Tree' centres on a new school mistress, Fancy Day, who arrives in 'Melstock' and attracts a number of suiters to the school house where she lives.

In 2005 the BBC produced an adaptation of the 1872 novel, which stared Keeley Hawes as Fancy Day.

The large, detached building, that was built in 1847, has been owned by the family of Dr Christopher Vulliamy, a retired paediatrician, since 1962.

His property sits just 30 yards away from one of the two development sites.

He said: "The peaceful and rural setting of the school house, which so many Hardy fans pause to look at from the river path that Hardy used to walk, will be blighted by this.

"Seventy houses is disproportionately large for a hamlet thatb has only 30 houses. This development would overwhelm Lower Bockhampton."

English Heritage has also written to West Dorset District Council to object to the plans.

Bosses at Kingston Maurward College, which is two miles outside Dorchester and provides courses in agriculture and horticulture, say they need to develop the land to allow them to expand.

Principal Clare Davison said: "We want to provide additional state of the art agri-tech facilities and expand our Higher Education offer enabling more students to study degree programmes on their doorstep.

"The capital released from the sale of land will enable the college to embark on a programme of redevelopment and will have a positive impact on meeting local housing needs."