In the 1920s, The 9th Earl of Abingdon sold the Wytham Estate – comprising not just the Abbey but most of the houses in the village and approximately 2,500 acres of park, farm and woodland, including Wytham Great Wood – to Colonel Raymond ffennell, who had made a fortune in South Africa and changed his name from Schumacher on arrival in England, and his wife Hope (nee Weigall). During World War II they agreed to take in six East End children as part of the evacuee programme. After the war, they gifted the entire Wytham Estate to the University of Oxford – the largest bequest to the University since the Middle Ages. The Abbey was subsequently sold by the University of Oxford in 1991 and is now in private hands.
Wytham Great Wood
Wytham Woods is an area of long-established mixed woodland noted for its high population of badgers and long-term monitoring of great tits. It is on rising ground to the west of the village and covers 1000 acres. The woods are a Site of Special Scientific Interest.[6] The University of Oxford has owned the woods since 1942 and uses them for research in zoology and climate change.[7] The University has a field station north of the village. It is claimed to be one of the most researched pieces of woodland in the world.[8] The woods are open to the public by permit which are available on application,[9] for walking but are closed to dogs, horses and bicycles.
A named path within the wood is called the Singing Way. It is aligned with Oxford and got its name because monks on pilgrimage from Cirencester to Canterbury would break into song here as they sighted the town and the end of their day's journey.[10] On 7 October 2017 an Oxfordshire Blue Plaque was unveiled at the Keeper's Hill car park in Wytham Woods, commemorating the bequest of the woods to the University of Oxford in 1942 by Raymond and Hope Ffennell.[11]
^Barkham, Patrick (3 October 2013). "Chapter 2 Meles meles". Badgerlands: The Twilight World of Britain's Most Enigmatic Animal. Granta Publications. ISBN9781847087003.
