Leafield

A Saved Pub and the Village Shop

The Fox sits on The Green. After it closed, a village petition gathered 325 signatures, close to half the population, and the pub reopened in April 2011. David Cameron, then prime minister and local MP, came for a pint. Mo and Joe run it now.

The pub serves changing real ales and welcomes dogs with treats. A flower-filled garden overlooks the Green, with a fire inside in colder weather. Food service is suspended, but drinks remain available.

On Fairspear Road, Peapell Stores, also known as Leafield Village Community Shop, has a Post Office counter and sells bread from Marks Cotswold Bakery.

Windy Highground and Community Life

Leafield stands on windy high ground between Witney and Charlbury. Honey-coloured stone cottages, mostly from the 17th to 19th centuries, line narrow lanes around the open common Greens. Until the 1850s the village occupied an isolated clearing in Wychwood Forest, where the Fieldtowners developed their own dialect, Morris tradition and version of the mummers’ play. The church spire remains visible from afar.

A volunteer-run community gym beside the village hall has a treadmill, cross-trainer, rower, bike, multi-gym and free weights, open to members from the age of fourteen. The recreation ground next door has a playground, a skate park and a playing field. On Fairspear Road the 1.3-acre Community Woodland, planted in 2000, welcomes dog walkers and has hosted moth nights, bat nights, bug hunts, dawn-chorus mornings and storytelling.

Forest Walks and a Restless Spire

Walkers have the run of the forest. Wychwood Walk No. 8 is a 5.5-mile circular that starts at the Village Green, follows Pay Lane, an old track between dry-stone walls, and passes the western end of Blindwell Wood, Akeman Street and the former Second World War airfield landscape. The 37-mile Wychwood Way runs through the village too, linking Woodstock, Stonesfield, Chadlington and a string of neighbouring places along the old royal forest. There is also a strenuous 12-mile Ramblers loop taking in Finstock and Ramsden, with hills and, in most weathers, mud.

St Michael and All Angels was built in 1859–60 to Sir George Gilbert Scott’s design. Lady Churchill laid the foundation stone on All Saints’ Day in 1858. Bad weather damaged the first spire within five years; it was rebuilt in 1865, then shortened after probable lightning damage in 1934. Inside are a Nicholson of Worcester organ still in use and faded sheet-metal scrolls painted with texts by the vicar’s wife. Eight bells were dedicated in 1874, and a clock was commissioned in 1875.

Motte, Memorial and Wireless Masts

Older marks sit around the village. North-west of the church is Leafield Barrow, a Norman motte castle whose mound is 38 metres across; the square feature on top may be the remains of a stone keep. The village cross was restored in 1873 as a memorial to the inhabitants' escape from smallpox, the old shaft having been smashed by vandals some twenty years earlier.

The height that made Leafield windy also made it useful. Marconi chose the site for wireless experiments in 1912, and thirteen 305-foot masts went on to serve the Imperial Wireless Chain, then carried Reuters, maritime and government traffic, and were used as a long-wave link during the Falklands War before satellites made the station obsolete and it closed in 1986. The same ground later became a motorsport base where Tom Walkinshaw Racing developed Arrows Formula One cars.

Arrival and the Donkey-Man’s Pottery

Leafield lies about four miles north-west of Witney on rural roads. Charlbury, about five miles away, is the practical main station, and Villager community buses link Leafield with Witney on selected weekdays.

Fred Williams, the last of the village potters, was known as the donkey-man. His family moved the pottery behind the pub on The Green by 1861. Groves later worked clay there into land drains, tiles and bricks.