The village stocks at Weston-on-the-Green provide a convenient meeting point for the angry mob who have assembled to register their protest against a proposed eco-town in their back yard. The medieval instrument has been out of use for centuries, but there are suggestions that they may be back in action in the coming weeks.

Weston has been divided almost overnight into two groups. Surrounding the stocks on the village green are the Weston Front, an action group led by Tony Henman, a local resident who happens to be the father of Tim, until recently the country’s brightest hope for a Wimbledon champion. The opposing group is made up of a handful of farmers who are due to make an estimated £1.5 million per acre selling their land to make way for a new town of up to 15,000 houses.

Mr Henman, a taciturn man whose quiet indignation is as understated as his son’s occasional fist-clenching victory gestures on Centre Court, said that the four or five landowners are not “flavour of the month” in the village of 400 residents. “They’ll be off into the sunset with a smiling bank manager behind them,” he said. The rest of the village will be left with grid-locked roads, noise and up to 5,000 units of affordable housing, he added. “The whole character and ethos of the village will be lost.

“We’re fully in favour of affordable housing. For example in Bletchingdon they’ve got 30 units. We need that in our village.”

Tim, who grew up in the village, is expected to take part in the campaign, but probably by donating rather than waving banners. “I don’t see him raising placards. He’s very supportive of the village – he was born and bred here. He’s as horrified as we are.”

Mr Henman suspects that there may be a political motive for choosing the site, which is located in a Conservative heartland. “It must be a plus for Gordon Brown and his merry men to say, ‘We’ve selected Oxfordshire. It’s middle-class, Middle England. We’re going to rural Oxfordshire and we’re going to dump [an eco-town] there’.”

Locals at the Ben Jonson pub, which is a “cricket ball’s throw” from the edge of the proposed development site, say that everyone but the farmers who stand to profit is united against the scheme. Toby Wood, 32, the publican, said that the landowners had not shown their faces for a while. “They have been very quiet. I don’t think anyone has been put in the stocks yet, but there have been a couple of meetings at the village hall with about 200 people in attendance.”

John Deeley, who expects to be able to buy himself a “new set of golf clubs” if he can sell his land to developers, said that housing was inevitable and that people should be ready to change. “Some people think they should have put a closed sign on the village 20 years ago. It has got to go some time, hasn’t it?”

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