A Responsible Response to Solar Development

As will be seen from the map, the proposed site for Old Hayes Solar Power Station lies to the north of Coleshill village, Oxfordshire. It adjoins protected National Trust land along its south, south-west and south-east margins. The River Cole forms its western boundary (and is the boundary between Oxfordshire and Wiltshire). The northern boundary is a watercourse flowing to the Cole from the east. There are two other main tributaries flowing from the east. The site borders Snowswick Lane, a lane between Coleshill and the Faringdon-Lechlade road, at its northeast edge.

The site covers 71ha (175 acres). [An earlier plan for a 52ha site was submitted in 2022.] It consists of 9 fields in the floodplain of the River Cole, mostly flat, with gentle slopes towards the river in the central area. The underlying geology is Jurassic Oxford Clay mudstone, and the soils are alluvium and stagnogley (slowly permeable, seasonally waterlogged) clay soils. A gravel aquifer is likely to be at a depth of c1.5m. All fields are currently under arable or short-term grass ley cultivation. All are well-hedged, some hedges with standard or coppiced trees, and many of the fields have grass margins with native wild plants.
The field pattern and tributary streams are all as shown on the 1888 Ordnance Survey 6" map, an interesting historic landscape survival in itself.

The site would be covered by 93,000 solar panels, raised up to c4m above the ground on mountings buried c4m into the soil. There will be a battery storage complex (20+ shipping containers in size) in the southeast part of the site, shown on the map above. Security fencing would surround the site. Metalled or hardcore access tracks would enter from Snowswick Lane. Snowswick Lane would be the route for construction and maintenance plant. It is currently a quiet country lane, well hedged, with National Trust protected land along its whole eastern side. The site would probably be ditched with a new drainage system.

The solar power station would be connected by buried cable routed to a connection point on the Grid at Stratton, near Swindon. The route has yet to be confirmed by the developers.

The site is named ‘Old Hayes’ after the site of a barn complex, dating from the mid-1880s and demolished probably in the 1960s. It is represented today by a few old bricks in a small plantation which is beyond the solar farm proposed site but within the landowner’s boundary, at its south end, marked on the map above by a small green wood.