UFFCOTT has taken up arms in the form of spades to cover a byway in mud to protect the village from increased lorry traffic.

They fear plans to develop part of the Wroughton airfield site will mean more than 50 HGV lorries loaded with construction materials will thunder through the quite hamlet each day.

Marlborough-based company Earthline submitted expansion plans to Swindon Council five weeks ago. They include an office building, HGV parking for 50 vehicles, LGV service van parking for 7 vehicles and staff parking for 80 vehicles which villagers say could amount to 150 vehicle movements a day up and down a small village by way.

It has dozens of objections lodged against it including the use of the Red Barn entrance being ‘unsafe’ and needing to be widened potentially at tax payers expense, and concerns that flooding in Wroughton will increase with additional water flow from the proposed lorry wash down plant

Fears that any access solution could involve using the byway prompted villagers to band together at the weekend to re-mud a tarmaced byway leading to and from the site as a deterrent for lorries using it.

Wiltshire council’s highways officers have also objected to the scheme, on the grounds of potential use of the byway, which it controls. But the main planning application sits with Swindon.

Wiltshire councillor Jane Davies said: “The rights of cyclists, walkers and horse riders are equally important to protect. Anyone can use a byway - even and HGV, But this is not a main road.”

Farmer and landowner James Hussey said: “This byway should never have been tarmaced, and it certainly should not be used by lorries. This is a rural byway. Not a motorway. We are just incensed by Earthline and their bullish attitude to this application. It is difficult to do surveys of botany and ecology when the grassland has been taken up and replaced with tarmac.”

Matthew Coplestone, a director of the family run firm which started 30 years ago just outside Marlborough, hotly denied accusations that he was cynically manipulating the planning system.

“I want to be a good neighbour,” he said. “I think these people have jumped the gun. I am totally open to discussions on compromises. The planning application is in and we will await the outcome of that.”

Earthline bought the airfield site, which houses vast hangars used for storage, six years ago. It neighbours part of the site occupied by the Science Museum. The site already has storage and distribution use permissions.

Swindon council leader Cllr David Renard said: “If the company is carrying out construction work then it is doing so at it’s own risk. If planning reject the application, the council is within it’s rights to ask the company to remove any building it has no permission for.”

The next Planning Committee is expected to be held in early June.