This article is taken from the March 2026 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Get five issues for just £25.
The current government came to office determined to increase the availability of affordable housing by freeing up planning rules, constructing a series of new towns and, if necessary, allowing more building on the Green Belt.
In July 2024, shortly after its election, it set up a taskforce chaired by Sir Michael Lyons, a veteran of local government and former chairman of the BBC who chaired a Housing Review in 2013 for Ed Miliband. Over the last year, the taskforce met to examine a range of possible sites in which to establish a new generation of new towns. They produced a glossy report in September 2025.
One of the sites they recommended for development is on the old aerodrome just outside Bicester, which was used by the United States Air Force as a base during the Cold War. It is obvious why this was one of the sites chosen.
It is a brownfield site with many buildings from the time that it was an air base, which are of increasing interest to industrial archaeologists. It is on the Oxford to Cambridge Growth Corridor, regarded as an area for potential development, with plans for the old railway line between the two universities, axed by Beeching, to be re-established.
The site of the aerodrome has already been acquired by a developer, Dorchester Homes, and they have begun developing what was originally intended to be a new style of eco-village.
They recruited a firm of architects, Proctor & Matthews, who have extensive experience of new urban development. Kim Wilkie is their landscape architect, and they have already opened a hotel and school and started constructing houses on site.
One of the key criteria for the construction of a new town is the availability of land, and there is an obvious benefit that all the land is already owned by a single developer.
There is only one issue that the taskforce’s report failed to mention. There is currently no easy rail link to Oxford, the nearest large city, nor to London, apart from the tiny rural railway station at Lower Heyford, two and a half miles away from the proposed new town. It is currently served by a train every two hours.
If the new town is to be properly connected by public transport, there will need to be a vast increase in the capacity of this station, both in the number of trains and availability of parking. Lower Heyford station is less than a mile away from the gardens of Rousham House, one of the most historically important and best-surviving landscape gardens in the country.
One might think that a landscape garden is a self-contained entity that would not be affected by a new town development a couple of miles away. But Rousham is unusual because it was designed by William Kent, the great 18th century architect and designer. As Horace Walpole wrote, Kent “leaped the fence and saw that all nature was a garden”.
The quality and character of Rousham garden relies on the way that Kent constructed views out from the garden across the river valley towards the site of the new town. It is currently completely unspoilt, looking out across the River Cherwell towards the medieval river bridge which carries the single-track road across the valley to Lower Heyford railway station and the warehouse where you can hire a narrow boat.
Now, you can hear people saying — they already are saying — you should not impede the development of a new town for the sake of a historic landscape garden.
The unfortunate truth is that there are big risks. Once you have constructed a new town of 13,000 new homes as currently projected, a substantial proportion of those homeowners will be commuters. They are going to want to travel by train and to have a proper car park at the local station.
A bigger car park would almost inevitably damage the views from Rousham. They will then want to widen the road so that lorries can thunder across the landscape.
New College, Oxford has seen a wonderful development opportunity by which to enhance its endowment. It was bequeathed property in Upper Heyford by its founder, William of Wykeham, and has seized the chance to buy additional agricultural land to the south of the new town with its opportunity for future development.
Is it really going to be possible to contain the new town behind the planned ramparts at its southern edge and the belt of trees which Wilkie has proposed to shelter the site of the new town from the adjacent river valley? Or will Cherwell District Council over time allow incremental new development to invade the river valley? How can one be confident that the existing conservation area will be properly preserved?
A new town planted in the heart of rural Oxfordshire is almost inevitably going to change the ecology of the surrounding area, including the sense that there are still parts of England which have escaped new development, where it is possible to walk and fish and go on boats on the Oxford Canal or to the local pubs and enjoy nature undisturbed. Now, when you get off the train at Heyford, it is strangely peaceful.
All of this will change if the government gives permission for Upper Heyford to become one of its flagship new towns.
