Jeremy Clarkson has sparked an angry backlash among his neighbours over plans to film The Grand Tour in the Cotswold countryside.
Locals fear the narrow country lanes surrounding the proposed site for the Amazon Prime show will be turned into a racetrack by hundreds of car fans.
They are already exasperated by a recent increase in traffic caused by people visiting celebrity haunt The Soho Farmhouse in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire.
Residents now claim ‘enough is enough’, with one saying: ‘Our village (Sandford St Martin) has already been deeply affected by a huge increase of traffic on account of Soho Farmhouse.
Jeremy Clarkson (pictured) has sparked an angry backlash from people in his village over plans to film The Grand Tour there
Clarkson (pictured with his Grand Tour co-hosts James May and Richard Hammond) has sparked fury among villagers
‘The number of Range Rovers, Porsches and various other speeding vehicles blindly following their SatNavs has had a massively negative impact.
‘The idea of a further (even temporary) increase of fast cars driven by petrolheads passing through on their way to/from a filming location is highly concerning.’
Plans submitted to West Oxfordshire Council state Chump Productions will want to use the fields for a maximum of 13 weeks.
Filming for the studio segment will take place over just two days – between October and December – with 350 guests invited to the event.
The production team will add a further 30 cars and vans to the narrow country lanes, near Clarkson’s farmhouse outside Chipping Norton which he blew up last year.
Locals have rubbished the economic boost the area will receive and fear someone could be killed by the increased traffic on the ‘third world’ roads.
Michael Holland said: ‘The traffic footprint and the impact on local residents added to the existing increased traffic from Soho House is a real concern.
‘The Ledwell road is already overloaded and has become a Soho racetrack. When will OCC and West Oxfordshire recognise that this cannot continue, when one of the many local riders on horseback is killed?
‘The development of the Great Tew estate has gone from a rural idyl to an outpost of metropolitan London.
‘There is no local support for this scheme and the suggestion that this will be economically beneficial for the community is fanciful.’
Gail Bradley said: ‘We’ve lived here a long time, and our infrastructure has been stretched for a long time.
‘The infrastructure just isn’t built for more and more and more traffic. Some country roads are just third world, and that is one of our overriding concerns.
‘These locals roads were not built to carry the ever-increasing volume and size of traffic that now uses them in addition to the local road users – drivers, cyclists, walkers, runners, horse riders and, of course, the large farm machinery – who have no other choice.
Locals fear the narrow country lanes will be turned into a racetrack by hundreds of car fans (pictured here, Chipping Norton in the Cotswolds)
Villagers are already exasperated by a recent increase in traffic caused by people visiting celebrity haunt The Soho Farmhouse (pictured)
‘These local roads are already unsafe and more traffic will only exacerbate the situation for local residents. There will be more accidents.
‘And it’s not just the traffic. It’s supposed to be a conservation area here, but frankly that is not worth the paper it’s written on.’
Luke Ponsonby, from Chipping Norton, said: ‘The lanes increasingly resemble a racetrack with an accident waiting to happen as they are also popular with cyclists and horse-riders.
‘A half-mile away down the road at Ledwell we can clearly hear music from the Cornbury festival so there would doubtless be adverse noise implications as well associated with this application.’
Councillor Emily Wheeler-Booth, 64, who lives in Sandford St Martin, added: ‘This was a lovely corner of England and people are very upset about the noise.
‘It would cause people extreme difficulty. It’s very hard because there is always going to be some development there.
‘People are talking about petrolheads driving through the village.’