Since my previous post about Rousham and the threat to its historic garden, I have been finding out more about the plans for a new town on the old Upper Heyford aerodrome just north of Rousham.

It is currently a small-scale rural development of less than 2,000 homes, which has been marketed as ‘A modern take on the traditional countryside village’. The developer, Dorchester Living, currently has permission to add a further 1,135, houses.

Then, the government identified the site as a potential new town which would mean not a small village development, but a town currently planned to be 9,000 houses, to be enlarged in due course to 13,000. This means that the development will expand beyond the aerodrome into the surrounding agricultural land to its south-west, which has been bought for purposes of commercial development by New College, Oxford (they were left the local village, Upper Heyford, by their founder, William of Wykeham).

In other words, a relatively manageable small-scale development is being expanded into a new town without adequate advance planning about the infrastructure which will be required, including a new railway station, and, so far as I can tell, much thought about the differences in style and character between the design of a new rural village and a new town.

Most new housing development is in the vicinity of an existing city, but Upper Heyford is currently in the middle of unspoilt countryside.

The current proposals risk damaging the ecology of Rousham Park, which has remained essentially unchanged since William Kent landscaped the gardens at the end of the 1730s. However much the architects might like people to walk to the station, many will want to drive. There will have to be a big new car park. The gardens of Rousham look out over a medieval bridge which will have to be widened. The fields in the distance will sprout 6-storey new housing developments and wind turbines.

Without major changes, what is currently planned will destroy the character of Rousham.

Here is a picture of Rousham as now:-

And here is a picture of the new town:-