We will fight them on the allotments!

Locals go into battle with Duke at Churchill estate

The Battle of Blenheim is being re - fought, with the Duke of Marlborough leading the charge. But, unlike his illustrious ancestor 216 years ago, the Duke doesn’t have tens of thousands of French in his sights but a rather smaller force — the allotment holders of the Oxfordshire village of Cassington.

This motley army has been infuriated by a plan by the Duke’s Blenheim estate — birthplace of Winston Churchill — to eradicate Cassington’s allotment site and replace it with 45 new houses.

in a petition initiated by vegan schoolteacher Jaime Johnson, a mother-of-two, the save Cassington Allotments campaign accuses the estate of being motivated solely by profit and proposing a ‘gross over-development’.

Livid that the increased flood risk to current homes ‘is not mentioned’ in the estate’s proposal, Johnson and her supporters allege that the allotments site is ‘effectively a flood plain’, and add that ‘lack of research or acknowledgement’ by the estate of this fact is ‘terrifying’.

The Blenheim plan will also, claim Johnson and her allies, imperil the habitat of rare and protected species — from owls and slowworms to lizards and rare invertebrates, ‘ such as the rugged Oil Beetle’ — and fails to take into account Cassington’s ‘ inadequate, old and failing sewage system’.

‘We have no post office, shop or bus service,’ adds Johnson, who also points out that Cassington’s primary school is already oversubscribed and alleges that ‘traffic is becoming dangerous in the high street which is a rat-run for commuters’.

The Blenheim estate tells me that the consultation process, which began a year ago, is still under way and says that Cassington offers ‘an exceptional opportunity’ for ‘ truly affordable homes in an area desperately in need of properties that both local people and key workers can afford to live in’.

‘no allotments will be lost as a result of the development,’ adds the spokesman, ‘ although the size of individual plots will be reduced.’

no question of carving up the lawns at Blenheim, i trust.