Villagers insist ‘Cotswolds already full’ amid theme park plans and Jay-Z arrival

Cotswold villagers are raging against theme park moguls over plans to build two giant attractions on their rural doorstep.

This stunning region of south-west England has long been dubbed ‘Britain’s Beverly Hills’ thanks to a myriad of star residents, including Ellen DeGeneres and the Beckhams.

Last week, it was reported that Jay Z and Beyonce were in the final stages of buying 58 acres of land on the outskirts of Wiggington, a tiny Oxfordshire village.

But local residents insist that the Cotswolds are ‘full’ and that the two planned theme parks ‘do nothing’ for locals.

The Great Wolf Lodge waterpark is an American-backed attraction proposed for a site near Bicester and has already been opposed by no fewer than 30 parish councils.

The £200 million investment, similar to a Center Parcs resort, would be the company’s first outside North America.

Caroline Chipperfield-Twiddy, 49, led an unsuccessful campaign to halt the water park as chair of the ‘Stop the Wolf’ group.

‘All of the surrounding villages stood up and said this was inappropriate,’ she told the Daily Mail.

‘The biggest challenge with Wolf was that it didn’t offer anything to locals—they don’t sell day tickets, you have to stay there, and it’s quite expensive.’

There are also plans for Puy du Fou at Bucknell, near Bicester—a £600 million historical theme park featuring bloody re-enactments of Roman, Medieval, and Viking warfare.

The company has a reputation for putting on sensational shows, including ‘Le Signe du Triomphe’, which sees centurions fighting barbarians in a full-sized replica Gallo-Roman stadium.

The group has run history-themed parks in Les Epesses, France, since 1978, and in Toledo, Spain, since 2021.

Rival local petitions have been set up—one opposing and one supporting a UK edition. The park, featuring four period villages, could be built by 2029.

Puy du Fou says it would bring 2,000 direct jobs and 6,000 indirect jobs, plus a £600 million boost to the local economy over ten years.

But the ‘No to Puy du Fou’ campaign group said it ‘oppose[s] the plans for bringing millions of annual visitors to the area, where the infrastructure just won’t cope—despite the wild claims made by the developer to the contrary’.

Local campaigners hope the Great Wolf Lodge water park will not go ahead, despite the park receiving planning permission after a 2021 planning inquiry.

The company is reportedly yet to kickstart construction, except for water infrastructure, so some hope the plans are being scrapped.

‘We don’t really know where we are,’ Chipperfield-Twiddy told the Mail. ‘They are not being transparent with us.’

The proposed theme parks could worsen what locals claim is already a torrent of tourists.

Jeremy Clarkson’s ventures in the area—the Diddly Squat Farm and the Farmer’s Dog pub—reportedly create massive queues.

Further west, in the tiny village of Bourton-on-the-Water, locals are sick of selfie-snapping TikTok influencers blocking the scenic bridges across the River Windrush.

A spokesperson for Puy du Fou said: ‘Whenever significant development is proposed, local residents will quite properly have concerns and questions.

‘That is why we have been engaged in such a comprehensive programme of consultation over the last year, with six separate exhibition days and over 250 individual meetings with local, regional, and national groups.

‘Transport is always the number one issue for locals. We have submitted a full Transport Assessment with our application, which covers this issue in great detail.’

A Great Wolf Lodge spokesperson told The Independent that the project had been ‘paused’.

The company added it was considering sites for theme parks in Derbyshire and Hampshire.

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