Westcott

The Roman road of Akeman Street that links London to Cirencester runs through the parish of Westcott. The A41 now follows its line for most of the way. Several ditches containing Roman pottery were excavated near Lower Farm along the line of the Aylesbury-Steppingley Pipeline.

Westcott is recorded in Domesday and was part of Bernwood Forest from before that time. Bernwood had been a hunting forest from the time of Edward the Confessor. It grew to its largest extent under Henry II. The whole area was not covered by woods; in the medieval period a forest was a place where deer roamed for hunting and so included open land, villages and fields. All those who lived in the forest were not allowed to hunt or even gather wood without a special licence from the king. Bernwood Forest was finally disafforested in the reign of James I in 1635, although it had been shrinking in size since the time of King John (1199-1216).

North-east of Westcott village is a field called Great Bury and there are the remains of a moat and fishponds, which may suggest the site of a fortified building or manor house in the medieval period. A house platform has also been identified in field survey north-east of the White Swan pub and was recently excavated, though the results have yet to be published. South of the church and between the houses and the airfield there are the earthworks of another medieval moat and what appear to be fishponds and house platforms, suggesting the medieval village was larger than the modern one. Historical maps show houses south of the church up until the 19^th century. A field called Church Ground to the east of the village suggests the site of a medieval chapel, which is also recorded on an 1825 map, but has since disappeared. Another medieval building was identified in ditch-digging north of the A41 near Hall Farm.

Westcott is on the edge of the Waddesdon Estate and during the Rothschild’s development of the gardens and park, a farmstead was demolished around 1880. The site can still be seen in aerial photographs. Trackways for dragging trees to the manor were also built and can still be seen. The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos opened a private tramway from Quainton to Wotton Underwood which passed through Westcott in 1870. It was closed in 1932 but parts can still be seen. As the medieval chapel had been demolished or crumbled by the 19^th century, a new church was built to the north of the village and dedicated to St Mary. A school was also built next door. There are several other listed buildings in the parish, including Ford and Rose Cottages, which are 16^th to 17^th century houses and Westcott Farm, which is late 18^th century.

Westcott airfield was one of the first to have aeroplane simulator training. Before high-tech computer generated simulators, the “Dummy Fuselage Scheme” was put together to train airmen. The fuselage of a Wellington plane was installed in Westcott in September 1942. The pilot sat at the controls and the bomb aimer below him would give instructions for bombing a target projected onto a screen below.

There were also training exercises in the air but these were almost as dangerous as real missions and many died. A whole crew and plane were lost on 15th March 1943 when the pilot realised he was too high to land and tried to overshoot the runway and pull up, but the engine stalled and he crashed. It had been returning from a training mission called Bullseye where the airmen got to fire live rounds. There were also training missions against Hurricane planes that used cine-guns, fake guns that could record a hit or miss.

Johnny Smythe joined the RAF when he knew the British were going to war with Hitler. He was from Sierra Leone and was incensed by Hitler’s treatment of black people. He was trained at Westcott airfield and flew raids into Germany. On one he was shot down and spent the rest of the war in a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany. Later in life he came back to England with his wife and children and settled in Thame.