There is clear evidence that the nearby down lands to the northwest of our site were inhabited by the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age peoples of about 2000 BC. Two earth circles, made by a ditch and bank, called henges, are still visible- especially clearly from the air- one in Fern Slade field on Holwelldowns Farm, and a larger one just over the parish boundary near Westwell. Neither has ever been excavated, so we do not know how large or widespread was the prehistoric settlement of the area. For all we know, ancient Man could have camped on the very place where we now live!
Certainly stone axe heads and flint arrowheads have been found near to the henges, so there was definitely human activity and habitation in the region.
Similarly there is evidence of more recent British Iron Age settlements in the area. The site of Windrush camp is very probably from this period, and there
are other Iron Age sites, such as Idbury, Eynsham, Cassington , Hanborough and Abingdon scattered around this part of the Cotswolds. The region was actively farmed with a settled form of agriculture with regular boundaries, which must have been gradually established in the 1000 years preceding the arrival of the Romans at the very end of the 1st centuryBC.
There is abundant evidence of the Roman presence in West Oxfordshire. The valleys of the Windrush, Evenlode and Glyme were thick with Roman villas. (The closest villa discovered near to here is at Widford.) More significantly, our village lies very close to the Roman road known as Akeman Street. This was a major road, leading from Cirencester via Alchester to Verulamium (St Albans), and it runs along the edge of the wild life park, then cuts across the caravan park and the woodland at the entrance to our village. It then continues northeastwards over the fields
opposite. Traces of the original road can still be found in the steep valley of the Shill Brook between Signet and Shilton. It crosses the Windrush at Astall before striking across towards the small Roman town of Alchester (of which only vestigial traces remain) and on to Bicester. There is every likelihood, therefore, that Roman travellers, soldiers and merchants passed by our land, which could well have been farmed by the local Roman landowner, or used as a source of wood for the sophisticated central heating systems which were a feature of Roman villas in this unreliable climate.
Most of the Roman colonists had left Britain by about 410 AD, recalled to defend Rome from invading Nordic and Germanic tribes, but some remained, having intermarried with the local British population. There was a Romano British settlement on the gravel flats near the Thames at Kelmscott, and its outline can be seen from the air. There is every
reason to expect that there were other such settlements in the region. More woodland was cleared, to facilitate both arable and sheep farming. The names given to our rivers by the Britons are still preserved- Windrush, Evenlode, Colne, Leach and Thames all originate from their language.
The same mass migration that threatened Rome was also experienced in Britain- with invading forces arriving round our coasts from the 4th century onwards. The enemy raiders and settlers came to this region relatively late- they are known to have arrived between 570 and 580 AD. Many of the native British population fled to Wales or Cornwall, and the incoming Anglo Saxons, who divided the country into seven kingdoms, settled their land. Our site was in the very southernmost part of the kingdom of Mercia, whilst across the Thames was the Saxon kingdom of Wessex. We know that the particular Mercian tribe that settled around here were the Hwicce (the name
Wychwood means Hwicce’s Wood). Ownership of the area was disputed between the two kingdoms, and a fierce battle is known to have been fought in 752 near Beogford (Burford), when Wessex was apparently the victor. Certainly, at the time of King Alfred, in the ninth century, all of modern Oxfordshire was indeed part of Wessex. Later, the area became part of the confederation of kingdoms known as England in the 10th century, only to pass into Danish hands in 1011. Nevertheless, despite the Danish presence, the bulk of the local population were and remained Saxon peoples as is evident in two Saxon cemeteries, one at Filkins and the other at Boughton Poggs. A substantial number of Saxon coins found in and around the cemeteries attest to the fact that despite the Viking invasions, Saxon habitation continued here more or less uninterrupted.
The Christian church had been established in Britain in the sixth century,
and a system of bishoprics had been introduced soon afterwards, with this area being in the see of Dorchester until 1072, and then passing to the bishopric of Lincoln, where it remained until the Reformation. The country was already divided into shires which remained virtually unchanged until1974. Being so near to the border of 3 such shires, later called counties, we are not entirely certain in which one our area was originally located, but it is fair to assume that Bradwell has been part of Oxfordshire for more than1000 years.
When the Normans arrived in 1066, the land around the parish of Bradwell was an estate owned by Aelfgar of Mercia. When the Domesday survey was conducted in 1086, Aelfgar’s daughter, Christina, held the land. The estate, says Domesday comprised more than 3000 acres with about 90 inhabitants, two mills, some fisheries and also pasturage. It was not long before Christina’s brother, Edgar,
fell foul of the Normans, so he was banished and Christina lost her lands to Ralph de Limesi, a Norman from the Rouen area. He and his descendants broke up the estate into three manors. Additionally, some land near Filkins was donated to the prior of Hertford. Later, in1185, about a quarter of the estate was given to the Knights Templar. By this time, the Parish church had probably already been established in Bradwell and the de Limesis had also built a substantial manor house nearby.
The beautiful church seems to have been erected in the 12th century. Certainly, we can tell from surviving records that it existed by 1218, as did the chapel- of-ease at Holwell. The first vicar whose name we know for certain is John de Bradewelle who held the office between 1220 and 1241.
The names of the vicars of
Bradwell, sometimes written Brodwell (is this another explanation for the 19th century name change?) are known in an almost unbroken line until this day.
The design of the church is basically Norman, which links its origins to the Limesi family. When the last male member of the family, John de Limesi, died in 1197, the Bradwell estate passed jointly to the two husbands of his sisters, David de Lindesy, married to Eleanor, and Hugh de Oddingseles, whose wife was called Basilia. It was the de Oddingsles who added later church buildings in the Early English style, and their coat of arms can be seen in the church as can the site of their family tomb under the floor of the church. They lived in Bradwell Manor, an imposing building that was continuously inhabited until the early 18th century. You can still see the massive gateposts of the manor at the entrance
of what is now the much smaller Manor Farm. The Oddingseles dynasty remained in Bradwell until Tudor times, whereas the de Lindesey lands passed around the middle of the 13th century to the de Pinckney family. The de Pinckney lands at Bradwell were not their main estate, (they were based in Northamptonshire) and it seems they seldom came here, so it is not surprising that they ceded most of their share to the Abbey of Cirencester, and sold the rest to the de Oddingseles. In 1312, the lands previously held since 1185 by the Knights Templar (who were banished from England by King John) were passed to the other great crusading Order of Knights, the Hospitallers.
The lands to the south of the estate were largely used for arable farming. Nearer here, on Filkins Downs and Holwelldowns, sheep grazing was much more common. In an age before root crops were grown, and winter-feed was scarce, there was a great autumn slaughter of
sheep and cattle, and the winter trade in wool was extensive. Although we said earlier that links with Burford were not great, in the matter of trade at least, there must have been substantial and regular traffic. The weekly market in Burford, and the two annual fairs were well established by the Middle Ages. It is probable that wool also was taken to the market at Northleach. Trading in wool and animals flourished. The ancient highway from Burford to Filkins and Lechlade used to pass through Holwell, following the track known as Job’s Lane from Holwell on to Signet. This must have been a busy lively thoroughfare, which followed the same route until 1814 when a turnpike road from Burford (part of the A361) was constructed, leaving Holwell to its treasured peace and quiet. Much later, in the 20th century, the former turnpike road was altered to by pass Filkins, a change much welcomed by the residents.
Parish records of the
14th and early 15th centuries chronicle the lives and events surrounding the de Oddingseles, and are fascinating reading. One event of note was the gift by the Bishop of Winchester of a small property in Bradwell to help found New College in Oxford. This will not be the last time that the estate supported the University. From about 1450 onwards the country was so disturbed by the wars of the Roses (1455-1485) that many official records perished, and other than a few deeds concerning land, we know little about Bradwell at this period.
The most significant event of the early Tudor period was the effect of the Protestant reformation upon the estate. When Henry VIII adopted the protestant faith for his own marital and territorial reasons, there followed the
dissolution of the monasteries and
the sale or redistribution of their lands. This had a direct effect on the ownership of the ecclesiastical property on the Bradwell Estate. The two manors held by the priory in Hertford and the Abbey in Cirencester, along with the lands owned by the Knights Hospitaller were broken up and sold to various tenants. In 1555, some of the money raised from these sales was used to found Trinity College Oxford. Then in 1563- 1564, John de Oddingseles sold first the land near Bradwell, Filkins and Kelmscott, and then the Holwell property, and the long tenure of the manor by his family came to an end. Happily, in 1599, after being owned in smaller pieces by various landlords and tenants, virtually all the former estate except Holwell was once more reassembled under the ownership of one family, the Hampsons. Twelve Hampsons appear in the Bradwell church register between 1615 and 1662.
The Civil wars between parliament and Charles I seem to have made little change. The city of Oxford was staunchly Royalist as was Bradwell. The King had his headquarters at Oxford, and those with houseroom in the villages were expected to provide billets for Royalist troops. One of the soldiers billeted in Kelmscott in 1644 brought the plague into the parish, and in 1645 over 60 people in the area died from the epidemic.
The vicar of Bradwell in 1665 was one Thomas Thackham, and he is the man who first introduced the ‘o’ into Broadwell. , a pedantry which later vicars refused to copy. The Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 had little direct effect here except in the sense that there was increased taxation in order to finance military activity overseas. However, there were royal links with this area. Charles II is known to have enjoyed coming to Burford to follow the races, and the story has it that he was more than
once accompanied by Nell Gwynne.
From our point of view, the most important aspect of the Stuart period i.e. the 17th century is that it seems to have been the era during which a building known as Bradwell Grove House was erected. The name "Bradwell Grove" seems to have been used more generally for the quite extensive wooded area in the northwest of the estate. However, probably by 1625 and definitely by the middle of the 17th century there was some kind of gentleman’s residence on the site of the present offices of the Wild Life Park. A memorial tablet in the de Oddingsele’s chantry in Bradwell church speaks of a John Huband who died in 1668 "at Bradwell Grove". The house must have belonged to the Hampsons and we assume that Huband was their tenant. The next tenant seems to
have been a gentlewoman named Ann Walford, for the register records that she was of Bradwell Grove House and was buried in December 1682. Further evidence is to be found in a book published in 1676 and entitled "Natural History of Oxfordshire" by Robert Plot. He too mentions the Grove at Bradwell and most specifically the rooftiles, which he called "slat stones," which measured 7x5 feet. The word is still used for fences made up of single large stones, and examples of these can be seen in and around Filkins. There are no records that describe the physical appearance of the building, but it is safe to assume that the style will have been similar to that of other Stuart residences in the Cotswolds.
We do know what was the eventual fate of the original Bradwell Manor House. For in his book "Walks and Drives around Burford, "(published in 1896), WJ Monk writes of a catastrophic fire, which destroyed the main manor house in
Bradwell in about 1740. There is also another clue in this book to the age of the original house, for Monk says " Instead of rebuilding it was wisely determined to build a mansion in a more beautiful and secluded part of the estate. So here, at what began to
be called Bradwell Grove, where the Marquis of Thomand had erected a small but well designed Jacobean residence,( this must refer to James I 1603 –1625) and a portion of the house forms a part of the present stately mansion" From then onwards, Bradwell Grove House, which was actually within the boundaries of the parish of Broadwell, became the manor house of the Bradwell estates, and the most significant building for miles around.
Amongst the Bradwell Grove Deeds is a copy of the Enclosure Act of 1775. By this, landowners were allowed to fence or wall in their fields, thus depriving the poorer residents of common grazing land for their animals. A high
proportion of the dry-stone walls still surrounding fields in the area date from this period. (Interestingly, the village was called Broadwell in this one particular document, and one wonders whether this change of name began to be used orally at least to distinguish the village and church from the manor house, now separated by some distance.) Some of the enclosed land was given to Trinity College, and some to the vicar of Bradwell, to replace the income previously derived from tithes. A small amount of land near each village was left unfenced for the provision of firewood and rough grazing for the villagers, but that was all. The result was the disappearance of the independent yeoman farmers of this area. They were reduced to being tied farm labourers, and there was greatly increased poverty and a rise in food prices. By contrast, the owners of Bradwell Grove prospered, and it has to be said that farming methods improved, as did the
quality of the stock.
In 1804, the house, its farms and other parts of the estate were sold to a very wealthy merchant called William Hervey. The 1853 Directory of Oxford gives us this note. "In a deep recess in this district, until recently, was an ancient mansion which had too gloomy an appearance to be pleasing. Mr Hervey pulled it down in 1804 and erected an entire mansion in the Gothic style of architecture." This is essentially the house, which stands to this day. A contemporary print of Mr Hervey’s house calls it Bradwell Priory, but it is not known why and for how long that name was used.
We have noted that the Bradwell lands at Holwell had been sold off in Tudor times, and their history evolved separately for 275 years. Much of the history of Holwell since the 17th century can nevertheless be found in the Bradwell Grove papers, which are deposited in the Oxfordshire County
Archives. But now, the old association between Holwell and the estate was about to be renewed. From this time onwards, as we shall see, our history is linked chiefly with the mansion and Holwell village.
Hervey had bought Bradwell Grove and its 600 acres, the manor farm in Bradwell, a farm in Boughton Poggs and another in Filkins and other smaller properties. In 1827, for whatever reason, he campaigned and succeeded in separating the Parish of Holwell from the mother parish of Bradwell.( Filkins followed suit and also became a separate parish.) The old parish of Bradwell suffered severely from this loss, chiefly caused by its lord of the manor living three miles away at the Grove. The decline in size and importance of Bradwell dates from the time, and the official name change to Broadwell followed not long after. This
reduction in status of Bradwell was compounded 30 years later by the completion of the building of a new church at Filkins, which attracted people away from the church in Broadwell.
In Hervey’s time, Bradwell Grove was widely famed for its gardens. The wonderful redwoods in the grounds were probably planted in the 1850’s. It was also renowned for its cricket matches, and was a very popular meet of the Heythrop Hounds in the Victorian era for undergraduates from Oxford. It was justly famous for its exceptional pheasant and partridge shooting. Hervey was a generous benefactor to Holwell, most of which he had purchased in 1839. Thus the history of that village, its surrounding farms and property including our site becomes closely associated once more with that of the Bradwell estate. In 1856, £1100 was given to set up schools in Holwell, Broadwell and Filkins. Furthermore, Holwell chapel- of- ease was not really of the size and style
to be a proper parish church, and the village population was expanding. So, in 1842, Hervey pulled down the chapel and built a new church, St Peters, with 100 seats. For the first time, there was a graveyard, whereas before, Holwell residents were usually buried in Westwell or trundled down what is still called Dead Man’s walk to Broadwell. The first burial in the new churchyard is a poignant reminder of the high incidence of infant mortality in Victorian times. John, son of William and Martha Blunsden was buried aged 2days in 1846. This lonely little corpse acquired a companion next summer in Emily Mallard, aged 4 days. The first vicar of Holwell was Charles Astley, who was inducted in 1850. A handsome vicarage was built as well. In 1851 there were 119 people in Holwell, quite apart from those living at Bradwell Grove.
Hervey died in 1863. The estate passed to a Henry Vincent, who survived Hervey by only two years. The
land then passed to Vincent’s daughter, Susan who was married to a John Lane. According to the records, Mr Lane continued to manage the estate in the style of his predecessor, providing work for a large number of people and acting as the focus of the social life of the neighbourhood. The Lanes eventually moved away, and the property was sold in the late 1880’s to Mr William Fox.
Mr Fox bought Holwell village, Bradwell Grove, Filkins Downs, College Farm, Woodside Farm, Signet Farm as well as land and property at Eastleach, Broadwell, Kencot, Alvescot, Shilton and Oxlease Farm.
For whatever reason, this gentleman, decided to demolish the Holwell church in 1894 and build a bigger one in Victorian Gothic. The building has noble proportions, and the materials are of the best. The new church was consecrated in 1895 to St Mary the
Virgin. As soon as the church was completed, Squire Fox had a new school erected using the same builder. (The old school was not demolished, but used as a parish hall.) The new school was in use until 1958 and is now a private house. The village, which is more or less on the flat, used nearby wells, springs and a village pump for its water supply. However, water was actually pumped up to Bradwell Grove and to Signet Hill Farm until the 1970’s by a watermill beside the springs on Shill Brook. Its engine- powered successor lies now in derelict condition near Signet. The water was stored in a huge tank on stilts near Aston Copse, which is still there, although long since disused.
Fox was a typical patriarchal Victorian autocrat. A bachelor, he lived with his widowed mother who was something of an invalid, and two lady companions, the Misses Firth. There are still wide paths and gateways on the estate to give access for Mrs Fox’s carriage,
when she visited the tenants on outlying farms. The squire was very generous to his employees, especially at Christmas. His father had patented a make of umbrella, and every tenant received a Fox-framed umbrella for his or her first Christmas gift. Norman James, who was born in Holwell in 1907 and worked on the
estate all his life says that Fox " looked after you but you had to toe the line". He expected the highest standards of behaviour from his staff of whom there were more than 60 on the estate, and who had compulsorily to attend church each Sunday morning. A special gravel path was constructed from the house alongside the road to Holwell so that the worshippers did not get muddy in their Sunday best! The path is still visible in places on the right hand side of the road from Bradwell Grove to Holwell.
There was a village shop at this time, which remained in operation until 1926. This was the second shop
in the village, the first having been demolished to widen the driveway to the Vicarage!
At the beginning of the 20th century, when cars were being increasingly used as a mode of transport, Squire Fox had two splendid "London" cars with a chauffeur in the open and a compartment at the back for the passengers. Guests often came to stay for the shooting and other field sports, and Fox would send the car to collect them from either Shipton or Alvescot Station.
During World War 1 a number of the estate workers as well as Holwell residents went to the front in France and elsewhere. In common with every other village and estate in the area, many never returned. The war memorial in Holwell bears silent witness to their sacrifice and has their names inscribed on it. After the war, tractors began to take the place of horses and this reduced the number of farm and estate workers required. It was for this reason, more
than any other that the population of Holwell declined steadily through the 20th century.
Fox died in 1920 and left £1000 to establish a charity for the needy in the area. Both he and his mother are buried in Holwell graveyard. There is a memorial window to the family in the Holwell church. The estate was sold by auction to Colonel Cecil Heyworth- Savage. An inventory of the auction of the property and its furniture still exists in the public library in Oxford.
The Colonel, who was born in 1864, came from an estate in Gloucestershire and brought with him his heads of staff, such as Mr Eldridge the butler and Mr Stallard the gamekeeper. Hunting shooting and fishing continued to be popular sports on the estate. There was a famous Red Poll herd of cattle, which won many prizes at the County Show and
also at Smithfield. Colonel Savage also won at Crufts with his Labrador dogs. He was well known in the County and indeed was High Sheriff in 1925.
The Bradwell Grove cricket matches continued, with local sides such as the Heythrop Hunt team hosting guest teams from London. Famous cricketers of the day, including Jack Hobbs and Patsy Hendred are known to have graced the Bradwell Grove ground. We also had our own cricket side captained by the Steward of the Estate Office, Chris Harris. It was said that proficiency in cricket was good recommendation for a job on the estate!
There were regular house parties at the mansion, both for the shooting and for race meetings at Cheltenham and Newbury. There were excellent tennis courts for the use of family and guests adjacent to the house, and the kitchen garden supplied huge quantities of fruit and vegetables for the lavish dinner parties, which were a feature of life
at the Grove. Extensive greenhouses supplied plants for the grounds, elaborate flower arrangements and also the orchids beloved of Mrs Savage.
If the daily life at Bradwell Grove had been relatively unaffected by World War 1, the contrary was true of the Second World War. Airfields surrounded this part of Oxfordshire, some of the nearest being at Brize Norton, Kelmscott and Witney. Even closer to home, Bradwell Grove land as well as other surrounding property was compulsorily taken over to build Broadwell airfield between Shilton, Kencot and
Broadwell- you can still see a runway and several of the buildings including the control tower. A large number of trees in the lower park had to be cut down to enable the runway to be built and to provide increased visibility for the pilots. The airfield was completed in late 1943, and was a three runway bomber structure. Two squadrons of Dakotas (which were the mainstay
aircraft of Transport Command) – 512 and 575- were based on the airfield, and began to fly regular missions into enemy territory, including the dropping of leaflets as part of the propaganda war against Germany.. Later, the allies used the base in May 1944 to prepare for part of the Allied invasion of France. A tented village grew up in the surrounding farmland, and the 9th Parachute battalion and the Royal Ulster Rifles took up temporary residence. The local residents were kept well away, and a wall of secrecy surrounded the area. During the day, however, residents could see overhead the practice manoeuvres involving the paratroopers, and on 21st April 1944 a full- scale exercise codenamed Mush involved 248 men jumping from 19 Dakotas.
From this and other airfields at Down Ampney and Cricklade the Dakotas and gliders took off on the night of June 4th 1944 in preparation for D- Day on
June 6th.Many more days of action by the Cotswold squadrons were to follow, involving the evacuation, when landing strips in Normandy became available, of wounded troops. Later, in September, the planes took paratroopers to Holland, and flew back large numbers of casualties after the ill- fated battle of Arnhem. The Dakotas left Broadwell for service at other airfields in early 1945, only to return in March, where they remained continuing to drop supplies and to repatriate wounded troops until the German surrender on May 6th. Thereafter, the airfield was used by a succession of squadrons re-equipping in the summer months before taking off to fly to the Far East where the war was still in progress. Transport Command continued to use the airfield until the end of 1946, but it was not needed for peacetime use and was finally closed in March 1947.
The airfield was not the only compulsory seizure of land in the
area. Not far from the Manor, in a ploughed field belonging to Woodside Farm, a temporary army base of long huts, known as Bradwell Grove Camp was erected. This was exactly on the site where our village now stands. Once the USA came in to the war, servicemen from America came here in large numbers, and the army camp was transferred to the Americans for use as a hospital, intended primarily for wounded US airmen. It continued to function as a US hospital between 1941 and 1945, although most of its patients after Arnhem were British troops. A contemporary account says that although the exterior of the buildings was drab, the wards inside had brightly painted walls, and were very well equipped.
Many of the local Holwell people took in evacuees from London, and the old School room was once again used for education of these children. Distinguished visitors came to Holwell to inspect the troops, including King George VI
and Winston Churchill. During his visit, the King made a short tour of some of the wards in the hospital. Dumps of ammunition were stored all along the lanes around the estate, and there were bunkers and a large number of concrete roads in the Big Wood, which are still there. The Broadwell airfield was attacked on April 22nd/23rd 1944, when three bombs were dropped around the airfield perimeter all of which failed to explode. However, Bradwell Grove hospital never came under enemy attack, although the airfield at Brize Norton only 5 miles away did actually suffer a daylight German raid.
Colonel Heyworth-Savage was almost the last of his family to be called by that surname. His son, who was born in 1896 retained the complete surname until his marriage in 1922, when for personal reasons, the "Savage" was dropped. He was called simply Reginald Heyworth, and was Commander of the 1st Royal Dragoons. Sadly,
he was killed in action in 1941 during the North African campaign. Reginald had a son, born in 1925, called John Heyworth. This gentleman, who became High
Sheriff of Oxfordshire like his grandfather before him, is the present owner of the estate
At the end of the war, the Colonel agreed to lease out the now empty hospital, and for two years it became the home of the band of the Royal Marines. A newspaper article
on the subject of the band school, commenting on the relative isolation of the buildings, says "they could blow their trumpets fit to wake the dead- there isn’t a soul to hear them for miles around." The Marines were only here as a temporary post war placement, and they left in 1947 to go back to their own rebuilt quarters at Mildenhall. The Bradwell Grove Hospital buildings were
left empty for a short time. Colonel Heyworth Savage died in 1948, and the burden of death duties fell on his heirs. The hospital buildings were leased for use as an institution for "mental defectives", supervised originally by the Wiltshire Health Authority. The hospital had permission to take up to 400 patients, but for most of the time had a little over 200 patients, and a staff of 230, recruited in part from the Carterton area. Originally, the patients were largely middle-aged men, but later, women and children also lived at the hospital. In 1950, the Heyworth family moved out of the main house into another smaller property on the estate, which had formerly been occupied by the land agent. (The Estate Office is on the same site.) The vacated mansion, some outbuildings, some land off the Shilton Road and one cottage were leased (in addition to the hospital and its grounds) in 1951 and again in 1957 to the Ministry of
Health for use mainly as accommodation for hospital staff. The leasing arrangements for the hospital, mansion and other property could be reviewed every seven years, and the lease was due to expire in 1987. (By 1958 the hospital had passed under the supervision of the Oxfordshire Board.) A certain number of houses next to what is now the Caravan Park were also built for staff, some of which Mr Heyworth retrieved in 1983 and which were then sold privately. Some of the houses, however, still belong to the Estate.
The first psychologist to work at the hospital was appointed in 1975, and he was joined by a number of therapists and teachers. A schoolroom for the children was established, which was managed by the Health Authority, but financed by the Local Education Authority. Outside, the hospital looked unappealing, despite being well maintained, and an account in 1976 talks of cold draughty corridors indoors. However, the wards
themselves were warm and bright, and especially in the latter years of the hospital, the regime was very enlightened. Mr Norman James who was the head Gardener at the main house also looked after the hospital grounds. Judging by the beautiful trees still surviving on the site, and isolated vestiges of cultivated gardens, the grounds must have been very attractive and were surely extremely well maintained. There was also a sports field and a playground for the children.
Nevertheless, the place was very isolated- visitors had a long walk from the nearest bus stop, and many patients were totally cut off from their families and friends.
By 1977, the closure of the hospital was being discussed, because of the temporary nature of the buildings, the difficulty of maintenance and the remoteness of the site. Finding sufficient staff had proved a problem- a situation summed up in a wooden plaque said to hang on a wall in the
staff room, which read, "You don’t have to be mad to work here- but if you are it helps"
Other changes had taken place on the estate since the war. Because of the mechanisation of farming and the modernisation of household equipment, far fewer staff were needed on the estate and farms, and a gradual depopulation of the area set in. The Holwell village school closed in 1958, precisely because of the decline in population. Soon after the war, some properties in Holwell had already been sold, and in 1963, Mr Heyworth sold half the remaining cottages in the village. Soon afterwards, the idea was conceived to utilise the parkland as a Wildlife Reserve. The lease of the mansion, its outbuildings and park was prematurely terminated. In 1969, the necessary extensive work was done to the park and buildings. The Wildlife Park opened to the public on Good Friday 1970, and has proved to be a hugely popular venue as well as a financial
success. The Heyworth family continues to live and farm on the estate, and to manage its various properties. The bulk of the famous Red Poll herd was sold to help defray the costs of the Wild life venture, but a number of Red Poll cattle were retained and interbred with Limousins, with the result, four generations later, that the estate boasts a beautiful herd of Limousins with the distinctive red colouring and some of the features of their Red Poll ancestry.
The last vicar of Holwell was Rev.A.S.T.Fisher, and after his retirement, the church became part of the group ministry of Shilton. Certainly now the new village is in the Parish of Shilton, although there are moves to transfer it to the Burford ministry, in recognition of our postal address of Burford!
The hospital for the mentally handicapped finally closed in 1986, but the Burford Cottage Hospital then used the empty wards as temporary accommodation for a brief period
whilst refurbishment took place at the Sheep Street building. The lease ran out in 1987, and the site should have returned to being farmland. In the leasing agreement of 1957, the Ministry of Health had undertaken to " carry out all works necessary to level, restore and make good the whole of the sites…. To first class grasslands suitable for agricultural purposes." The lease did go on to say that if this was not possible, a financial package should be agreed. This is what eventually happened. The hospital site was deemed unsuitable for agriculture because of the mass of buildings, concrete pathways and the large quantity of asbestos, which had been used in the construction of the original army buildings. The hospital then lay derelict and in a terrible state. It became a complete tip, a home for rabbits and rats, often used by travellers and gypsies as a temporary site until moved on.
Since the hospital area could never be returned to use as farmland, Mr Heyworth would have liked to obtain development permission from the Local Council to build. It soon became clear however that the Council would never agree, so eventually in 1995, the land was sold to London based property developers, Wates. They did nothing on the site for over 2 years. Then permission was obtained to build a Retirement Home, a Village Hall complex and houses for retired and elderly people in a style and using materials consistent with existing Cotswold architecture.
The project commenced, but whilst the Home was finished and occupied and the exterior of the communal building was completed, the houses did not sell well. Ownership of the site passed through the hands of a middleman
and eventually to Prowtings, who applied for and obtained planning permission
to build a range of houses and cottages in Cotswold stone designed to suit all age groups. This recipe proved to be successful, and the houses sold well. The last of the 140 properties were finished in summer 2001.
The Home has passed from its original ownership to the Elizabeth Finn Trust. Its clients include several elderly former Burford residents. The accommodation is very good, and includes both private and communal rooms. There is a high quality nursing service for unwell and disabled residents, as well as lovely sitting rooms, a dining room serving excellent cuisine, and a chapel. The central village building has a variety of facilities with the potential to become the hub of village life, offering a wide range of facilities and recreational opportunities for the residents of the new Bradwell Village.
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