Great Tew: From dereliction to the Beckhams' illuminations

A derelict cottage in Great Tew, 1980. Photo by Kim Traynor

The Beckhams' plans to light the pond at their Cotswold home have upset their neighbours, reports BBC News:

One neighbour, James Worthington, said in a comment on the Beckhams' planning application the plans were "more akin to Miami or Florida not Great Tew".

Great Tew, it seems, is a honeypot for celebrity residents from Princess Beatrice up to Taylor Swift.

When I saw Great Tew in 1982 it was very different. So different, in fact, that the village lay largely derelict. I can remember seeing trees growing through the remains of thatched cottage roofs

Next to no photographic evidence of those days is to be found online, but fortunately Wikipedia proves I did not imagine this visit:

After M.E. Boulton's death in 1914 Great Tew estate was held in public trusteeship for nearly 50 years, during which time many of its historic cottages and houses were unoccupied and allowed to become derelict. In 1962 Major Eustace Robb, only son of Major-General Sir Frederick Spencer Robb, inherited the estate and declared he would restore its prosperity and buildings.

However, a decade later many cottages were continuing to decay and Jennifer Sherwood and Sir Nikolaus Pevsner condemned this as "one of the most depressing sights in the whole county. Terraces of cottages lie derelict (1972) and will soon be beyond hope of restoration. A scheme of gradual rehabilitation is said to be in progress, but nothing has been done meanwhile to prevent the decay of unused cottages, some of which are completely ruinous and will need to be entirely rebuilt."

In 1978 another authority described Major Robb's treatment of Great Tew as a "notorious example" that "demonstrated that a single-minded or neglectful owner can still cause both the community and the village fabric to die." Also in 1978, Great Tew village was declared a conservation area. 

In 1985 Major Robb died, leaving Great Tew estate to the Johnston family, who have worked on restoration. In 2000 they reopened Great Tew's quarry to supply ironstone for building.

Wikipedia records that the village has 87 Grade II Listed buildings and also provides the photo above.

Lib Dems call for a Rail Passengers’ Charter to improve journeys across the UK

The Liberal Democrats introduce a Rail Passengers’ Charter Bill in Parliament last week to improve customer experience and enshrine value for money into law.

The proposed charter would guarantee standards such as wifi, clean toilets and automatic compensation by law.

It would also require adequate seating on journeys longer than 30 minutes and on-board refreshments for trips exceeding two hours.

The party's transport spokesperson Olly Glover told the Oxford Mail:

"After years of passengers putting up with above-inflation fare increases for poor rail services, it’s time to bring the passenger experience into the 21st century.

"Customers deserve so much better than the sub-par service at great expense but both the Conservatives and Labour in government have failed to put passengers first.

"That’s why the Liberal Democrats are introducing the Rail Passengers’ Charter to enshrine in law improvements to customer experience and value for money so that our railways are something we can be proud of."

Olly Glover is the Lib Dem MP for Didcot and Wantage.

The photo above is also from Oxfordshire. I took it on Banbury station many years ago while waiting for a direct train to Shrewsbury. We should bring those back under our charter.

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Martin Barrow reports that, following the intervention of Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner for England, it is hard to find anyone prepared to defend the current arrangements, outside the actual 'business' of children’s homes and foster care.

"Despite the numerous inquiries that have been carried out, the lessons identified often fail to translate into meaningful, lasting change. As a result, organisations find themselves repeating the same mistakes, leading to avoidable disasters. Those impacted wait years for answers, and political impetus for reform can wane." Rebecca McKee and Jack Pannell make the case for reform of public inquiries.

The 'one chatbot per child' model for AI in classrooms conflicts with research that shows learning is a social process, argues Niral Shah.

Jo Lonsdale and Jane Downs tell the story of Mary Ann Macham, who fled slavery in Virginia and found safety in the North East of England: "Mary Ann was born in Middlesex County, Virginia, in 1802, her father 'a gentleman's son', her enslaved mother raped by him. Aged 12, Mary Ann was sold at a public auction at Richmond, a 'poor puny little thing', as she later said, fetching $450."

Emma Slattery Williams on Christmas in the Victorian era: "Roast turkey remains the customary fare for Christmas lunch and we can thank the Victorians for this, too. In the early 19th century, turkeys would have been too expensive for the majority of households to afford. But the development of the railway made them more accessible and affordable, and soon they had become the star attraction at Christmas dinner tables."

"Despite their initial rejection by the Ministry of Transport, the signs were actually rather well designed. Seen side-by-side against the regulation sign that was supposed to be used ... they compare very favourably." Oxfordshire Signs looks back to the days when the county had its own unique designs for road signs.

Keir Starmer didn't speak to the junior ministers he sacked

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My impression that Keir Starmer possesses vanishingly few of the qualities required of a good prime minister is reinforced by a story from this afternoon's Politico Cheat Sheet:

Scoop Scoop – not helping matters:

Playbook PM has picked up anger among the ex-junior ministers sacked in the reshuffle that Starmer did not wield the knife himself. Tony Blair, David Cameron and Boris Johnson are all said to have sacked ministers themselves, in person wherever possible or on the phone if needed. But Starmer left the task to his new Chief Whip Jonathan Reynolds and his new minister for making-shit-happen Darren Jones. One of those dumped said it showed “poor people management” from Starmer.

Not all gossip is true, of course – I have it on good authority that the PopBitch story the other week about the staff of a Cotswold pub refusing to serve JD Vance was hooey – but Politico is highly rated as a source.

Thanks to Tom King for flagging this up.

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"Opportunities to object are limited. Roadblocks and checkpoints have been established at either end of the only lane in and out of the village. Cars are searched with sniffer dogs and ID demanded. All footpaths have been closed off, and unless you live here you stand no chance of getting in. Secret Service agents keep a watchful eye on the hordes of police who are doing their bidding. In short, we’ve been completely sealed off from the outside world." An anonymous contributor to The Oxford Clarion describes life in the Cotswold village of Dean during JD Vance's visit.

Shaun Thompson was wrongly identified as a criminal by new police cameras. He explains why, if this technology is rolled out across the country, or is used at this year’s Notting Hill Carnival, as planned, such injustices will disproportionately affect Black people.

"Climate action does not just need good policy, it also needs good psychology. Understanding and addressing how people perceive climate measures is essential to avoid backlash and build lasting public consent." Wouter Poortinga looks at the psychology of winning public support for climate policies.

"The conference circuit, once lively with questioning and dialogue, now contends with a new problem: the 'ghost academic'. These are scholars whose names appear in conference programmes and proceedings, whose abstracts are listed, yet who never turn up to deliver their presentations. They accrue the CV line, but never share the substance." Anne Tierney and Doug Specht say the obsession with metrics in academia is imperilling the tradition open intellectual exchange that was the hallmark of scholarly life.

JacquiWine on Rose Macaulay's The World My Wilderness. Here is Macaulay's description of a London bombsite: "They climbed out through the window, and made their way about the ruined, jungled waste, walking along broken lines of wall, diving into the cellars and caves of the underground city, where opulent merchants had once stored their wine, where gaily tiled rooms opened into one another and burrowed under great eaves of overhanging earth, where fosses and ditches ran, bright with marigolds and choked with thistles, through one-time halls of commerce, and yellow ragwort waved its gaudy banners over the ruins of defeated businessmen."

Patrick Glen looks back to the Isle of Wight Festival of 1970: "The lineup included the Who, Miles Davis, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, the Moody Blues, Jethro Tull, Sly and the Family Stone and Gilberto Gil; Jimi Hendrix played one of his last performances before his death."

Lord Bonkers' Diary: A memo to Oxfordshire Liberal Democrats

I think Lord B. must have been watching this episode of Time Team. And I certainly remember him observing that we should only worry about Paul Tyler turning into the Beast of Bodmin every full moon [Lawyers advice: Add ‘allegedly’ somewhere here] if Liberal Democrat voters were disappearing at a greater rate than members of the electorate as a whole. 

Saturday

I spend the morning drafting a memorandum to some of the leading Liberal Democrats in Oxfordshire. You have probably heard that rewilding is all the rage, and it happened that I caught an old television programme about an archaeological dig in the county. 

The bones they found! Elephants. Mammoths. Bison. Lions. Imagine the tourists they would attract if they reintroduced these charismatic species to the Cherwell Valley. 

To soothe modern sensibilities, I add a section on health and safety. In it, I point out that we need only worry about residents being eaten if the rate of devourment is higher among Liberal Democrat voters than the population as a whole.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.

Earlier this week

• "Death to the Duke of Rutland’s Militia"
• The intelligence services like to recruit orphans
• "It’s only a few thousand quid each"
• "Ah, but we’re serious about being serious"
• The Stilton Path? I don't believe a word of it

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“The government is about to publish a White Paper on Election Regulation, in preparation for the Elections Bill it will bring forward in the next parliamentary session.  Both have major implications for British democracy; both take us away from a Liberal approach." William Wallace on Liberal localism and Labour centralism.”

Phoebe Weston reports from the biodiversity desert that is Dartmoor today: “We have become so used to these landscapes,” says author and campaigner Guy Shrubsole, who advocates for Right to Roam on Dartmoor. “Good geology hides a lot of problems. We’re admiring rocks and not what should be a living ecosystem.”

“Nigel Farage spent a decade thundering about the virtues of British parliamentary democracy – the sanctity of ‘taking back control’, of laws made by “our” elected representatives in ‘our’ sovereign chamber. But now that he’s finally secured a seat in the House of Commons, he’s treating it with contempt.” Sam Bright says Farage’s disappearing act is a portent of things to come.

“Levellers had been briefly consulted on a new constitution, but the discussions were quietly forgotten once the business of deposing and killing the king was done. Their last significant challenge to the new regime was a sadly quixotic mutiny, defeated by the army leadership at Burford, making the honey-coloured Cotswold town an unlikely site of pilgrimage for later radicals.” Jonathan Healey reviews two books on England under the Commonwealth.

Off the Records listens to Hot Chocolate's UFO-themed hit No Doubt About It, which made number 2 in the UK singles chart in 1980, and explains why its subject matter was so topical.

A London Inheritance takes us to Highgate Archway, where a collapsed tunnel was replaced by a bridge.

Lib Dems hold cottage where Traffic got it together in the country

The Liberal Democrats held the Cholsey ward of South Oxfordshire DC last night, polling 949 votes to the second-placed Conservative's 362. You can see the result expressed in percentages at the bottom of this post.

I take particular pleasure in this victory because Cholsey ward takes in Aston Tirrold - and near that village is the cottage where Traffic famously "got it together in the country" in 1967.

Until 1974, Aston Tirrold and the cottage were in Berkshire, which explains the title of this Traffic song from their first album, Mr Fantasy. If the backing singers sound familiar, they're Steve Marriott and the rest of the Small Faces.

And as everyone is talking about The Box of Delights at the moment, I had better mention that John Masefield also lived at Aston Tirrold for a while.

Cholsey (South Oxfordshire) Council By-Election Result: 🔶 LDM: 62.2% (+16.1) 🌳 CON: 23.7% (+0.9) 🔴 SDP: 7.6% (+2.3) 🌹 LAB: 4.7% (New) 🙋 IND: 1.8% (New) No IND (-25.7) as previous. Liberal Democrat HOLD. Chnages w/ 2023.

— Election Maps UK (@electionmaps.uk) December 6, 2024 at 12:11 AM

It's Freddie van Mierlo vs Russell Brand

The Guardian reports from Pishill on Oxfordshire

It is an idyllic, quintessentially English scene, but rake the surface and the embers of a fierce local row soon spark into life. On one side, people determined not to lose an 800-year-old pub; on the other, a magic amulet-toting, born-again Christian broadcasting "alt-right" views to the world from its environs.

Yes, it's Russell Brand.

The author of My Booky Wook and Booky Wook 2, Newsnight interviewee, former guest editor of the New Statesman and Guardian sports columnist, and recent adherent of whichever branch of Christianity requires you to prance about in your underpants with Bear Grylls, wants to take over the pub at Pishill:

Brand, who lives in a nearby village but often broadcasts from Pishill to his 6.83 million YouTube subscribers, saw an initial plan to convert the pub into a recording studio and a community space refused in February after more than 50 local objections. Residents argue the most recent iteration, which seeks a “mixed use of pub, ancillary accommodation, function room, media studio, offices”, would still leave them with nowhere to have a pint.

“No one believes he’s going to open the pub,” said Josh Robinson-Ward, who got married in the Crown’s function barn. “He’s said from the beginning he had plans to open the pub but never has and it’s unclear that he’ll have to open it if this goes through. From the off I think he thought that if he had enough money he could just do what he wants.”

But the forces of light have a champion:

Freddie van Mierlo, the local Liberal Democrat MP for Henley and Thame, said the Lib Dems were pushing the council to support pubs becoming assets of community value with tax relief.

He said the Crown should be opened solely as a pub. “Pubs are not the playthings of the wealthy; they are the heart of rural communities like Pishill and Stonor, and should be protected and cherished,” he said.

Peter Jay's Guardian obituary is a comic gem

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Peter Jay is one of those people of whom, if I had any younger readers, my younger readers would not have heard.

His Guardian obituary by Stephen Bates is a comic gem. That's not how most of us would wish to be remembered, but there you go:

If ever a man was damned by being described as “the cleverest young man in England” it was the economic journalist Peter Jay. When Time magazine decided on the epithet and chose him as one of its 150 world leaders of the future in 1974, Jay was already 37, so rather old to be a young hopeful.

However, he needed next to no encouragement to believe it, having already garnered a reputation at the Times, where he was then economics editor, for arrogance. It was scarcely the magazine’s fault that his highest elected office ended up being mayor of the Oxfordshire town of Woodstock, but as his career went into a slow decline following his brief period as British ambassador to Washington in the late 1970s – having been appointed to the post by his father-in-law the Labour prime minister James Callaghan – each mishap was accompanied by the sound of chortling schadenfreude in the British press.

Lib Dem MP Calum Miller backs campaign against the reopening of Campsfield House immigration detention centre

Calum Miller, the Liberal Democrat MP for Bicester and Woodstock, took part in an Oxford demonstration yesterday against the Labour government's decision to reopen Campsfield House, the controversial immigration centre near Kidlington.

The centre was closed in 2018 after years of problems, including riots, escapes and complaints about conditions.

Calum told BBC News:

"I have to say I'm both shocked and angry to hear this news.

"There are many different pathways to addressing the problems in the system short of announcing in the middle of the summer that they are planning to increase detention."

He as also written to the home secretary Yvette Cooper, and you can see his statement on the subject above.

Lib Dem MP received eviction notice the day after he was elected

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The last Conservative government, as it's increasingly being called, promised to get rid of no-fault evictions of private tenants, but never got round to doing so.

Which was a shame for Olly Glover, who received an eviction notice the day after he was elected as the Liberal Democrat MP for Didcot and Wantage.

BBC News has reported his experience:

Mr Glover, who has been renting his current home in Milton for four years, said "no fault evictions" create a "huge pressure" for renters.

He said he believed there was a cultural problem in the UK where housing is seen primarily as an asset and secondarily as an affordable necessity.

Mr Glover said he supported government plans to strengthen tenant rights.

"It was completely unexpected," he said, reflecting on the morning that he received the letter.

The MP said he had no issue with his landlords, but would like to see a process whereby homeowners have a discussion with renters, to work out a timescale, before they issue a no-fault eviction notice.

I'm sure Olly will be all right, but these evictions do contribute to homelessness. A Lib Dem press release from February of this year set out the figures:

The party has warned that thousands more families risk being left without a home if the government continues to delay its plans to ban no-fault evictions after 6,580 households were threatened with homelessness due to a no fault eviction notice, a 3.1 per cent increase on the previous year. 

Ed Davey: Tomorrow's election is a once-in-a-generation chance to put an end to years of Conservative chaos

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In an article posted on the Guardian's website this afternoon, Ed Davey describes tomorrow's election as "a once-in-a-generation chance to put an end to years of Conservative chaos":

It is tempting to look at the opinion polls and the shambles of a Conservative party election campaign and think that history is assured. But absolutely nothing has been decided yet. 

There are seats in former Conservative heartlands across the country – such as Bicester and Woodstock, Frome and East Somerset, and Mid Sussex – where seats are on a knife-edge between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. A handful of votes could be the difference between beating the Conservatives and them clinging on.

This historic chance for change is dependent on some people voting tactically for the party best placed to beat the Conservatives in their area. In many areas of the country, among them parts of the home counties and the West Country, Labour cannot and will not win. 

Only the Liberal Democrats are capable of bringing change. In many constituencies – such as Didcot and Wantage, St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire, and Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe – the only way to beat the Conservatives tomorrow is to vote for the Liberal Democrats.

Ed says he is grateful to Labour voters who are voting Liberal Democrat this time. He adds that he's encouraged by how many are doing so "not just tactically but enthusiastically, because of our progressive plans for the country".

Guardian quotes Lib Dem sources: Tory support is "collapsing" in the South

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I don't want to spread false optimism, but a remarkable story went up on the Guardian website this afternoon:

The Liberal Democrats are increasingly confident they can beat the Conservatives in large parts of southern England, including the two Oxfordshire seats formerly held by David Cameron and Boris Johnson.

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, spent Sunday campaigning in Bicester, where the party believes it can defeat the Conservative candidate, Rupert Harrison, a highly regarded economist and one-time adviser to the former chancellor George Osborne.

Davey’s visit was part of a strategy that has seen the party roam further into safe Tory territory as the campaign has gone one, buoyed up by polls that show it picking up support across large parts of the south and south-east.

A party source said: “We’re really encouraged by what we’re seeing in the final stretch of the campaign. Tory support seems to be collapsing in southern England and we’ve continued to pick up support.”

The report goes on to say the Lib Dems will spend the last days of the campaign targeting Labour voters in seats where their party finished third in 2019.

Mr Asquith can sleep soundly in Sutton Courtenay churchyard

Yesterday the Liberal Democrats held two council seats in Oxfordshire. 

Because of ill health, Richard Webber had been forced to resign both the seats he held. They were the Sutton Courtenay ward of Vale of White Horse District Council and the Sutton Courtenay and Marcham ward of Oxfordshire County Council.

And both seats were held for the party in the resultant by-elections yesterday by Peter Stevens.

Andrew Teale will tell you all about the surprisingly industrial geography of the seats, but the village of Sutton Courtenay itself is on the Thames.

And in its churchyard you will find the tomb of a Liberal prime minister: H.H. Asquith. He chose to be buried at Sutton Courtenay rather than in Westminster Abbey.

He's not the only famous person buried there: you will also find the grave of a celebrated 20th-century writer.