Britain’s BIGGEST prison is being built near Jamie Oliver’s £6M mansion

Britain’s biggest prison could be built just four miles from Jamie Oliver’s £6million rural pad in England’s most photographed village.

The TV chef and his family face having their lives ‘turned upside down’ by the huge construction ‘on the doorstep’ of his mansion.  

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) wants to build two ‘mega jails’ that can hold 3,430 male inmates on the site of a former RAF airbase at Wethersfield, in Essex.

Locals in the nearby idyllic village of Finchingfield, where the TV chef lives, have hit out at the plans as being ‘almost the worst place you could find a prison’.

If they come to fruition, the plans would see Category B and Category C prisons built on the 800-acre site close to an area renowned for its picture-perfect views.

The MoJ has launched a consultation on the plans, but has been met by stiff resistance from people living in the village and the nearby village of Wethersfield.

A computer generated image shows the potential layout of the proposed ‘mega jail’ on the site of former RAF Wethersfield

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver (pictured here with his wife and children) lives in a townhouse near the former RAF base

Oliver and his family moved into a £6million mansion (pictured) near the site with their five children several years ago

Finchingfield brings in tourists from a afar who come to enjoy the small settlements laid back and historic buildings, which also served as the setting for BBC’s Lovejoy series.

Houses in the village sell for an average price of £425,000, making it one of the most expensive in the entire country, with celebrity chef Oliver moving into a historic townhouse in the area with his wife Jools and their five children five years ago.

He often films himself preparing dishes for his TV shows in the garden of the Grade One listed property, and has often posted pictures with his wife at their home.

Since then has had to contend with a scheme to increase the number of beavers in the area in a bid to reduce flooding and plans to develop a new housing estate that other residents feared would blight their ‘chocolate-box’ village.

Oliver is said to have been made aware of the prison plans, but has avoided making any public comment, despite Jools apparently being friends with some of the protesters.

Some locals have speculated that he may not want to be seen as a NIMBY (not in my back yard) protester, particularly in the light of his work employing ex-prisoners at his former Fifteen restaurants in London and Cornwall.

It would be built miles from Finchingfield (pictured), which is England’s most photographed village

The airfield at Wethersfield was an RAF base for Spitfires during World War Two before becoming an American bomber base towards the end of the conflict.

It later became home to American nuclear bombers during the Cold War before being taken over as the national headquarters of the UK’s Ministry of Defence Police.

The huge 800 acre site has become surplus to MoD requirements with the MoD police moving recently to RAF Wyton near Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.

The prison plans were first revealed 17-months-ago in letters sent by the MoJ to hundreds of households.

The letters stressed that no firm proposals had been drawn up, and insisted that the plans were simply being put out for local consultation.

No planning application has yet been submitted and it has since been suggested by MoJ officials that the idea for prisons on the site is a ‘back up’ plan if needed in the future.

The MoJ is instead said to be concentrating on trying to get consent to build new prisons next to three exiting jails in Lancashire, Buckinghamshire, Leicestershire.

Campaign group Stop Wethersfield Airfield Prison (SWAP) and Wethersfield Airfield Scrutiny Committee (WASC) have both raised concerns about the impact it will have on their villages and how viable it would be to build the giant prison in such a rural area.

Alan MacKenzie who chairs SWAP said local sources suggested that Home Office officials had visited the site to assess it, and that it might be used for refugees from this summer.

He said: ‘Jamie Oliver and his wife Jools are well known in the area. This is his family home up here and he is often out and about.

‘There is no doubt that the building of two mega prisons on their doorstep will have a major effect on him.

‘It will turn life upside down for everyone, including him. I doubt that he is going to be very happy about it.

‘The roads around here are all fairly narrow and there are choke points where lorries have difficult passing.

‘It means there is going to be traffic chaos if the prisons happen, both during the construction period and when they are up and running. Jamie Oliver would certainly experience that, along with everyone else.

‘It is also possible that his home is in the line of sight of the prisons as the site is on a 300ft high plateau so he may have to put up with looking at them.

‘There will certainly be floodlights at the site so he will see the light illuminating the countryside. It will be beaming out on him.’

Mr Mackenzie said members of the SWAP group had talked to Jools Oliver about the plans.

He added: ‘Jamie Oliver will be aware as I am sure Jools will have mentioned it to him, but someone like him has got to be careful of his public profile.

Mr MacKenzie said: ‘We first heard about the plans in September 2021 and it has caused an outcry ever since.

‘People were left astonished that they would even think of doing something as big as this on the site. There was sheer disbelief about the size and scale.

‘Everyone knows that the roads around here are narrow and windy with pinch points where it is difficult for lorries to pass. We can barely cope with the traffic we have.

‘The construction traffic alone to build two mega prisons will cause a traffic nightmare. Then there will need to be constant lorry deliveries every day to run it.’

A computer generated image shows the expected size of the prison blocks if the plans go ahead

They would be built miles from the small village of Finchingfield (pictured), which is home to fewer than 1,500 people

SWAP has said the prisons would be visible from the villages of Finchingfield and Wethersfield, as well other surrounding settlements.

A computer generated image of the prison released by the group shows buildings appearing to be four storeys tall on the site of the former airbase. 

The MoJ has said there would be seven of these prison blocks, as well as parking for 1,000 cars, guard dog kennels, a gym and a workshop.

It has called the site an ‘appropriate’ location for the prison, adding that it would provide ‘long-lasting’ benefits for people living nearby with around 1,400 new jobs.

Mr MacKenzie said an earlier plan jointly put forward by the MoD in 2016 to build 4,850 houses on the airfield was quickly scrapped because the area was so rural.

He added: ‘We believe that the only reason the MoJ is looking at the site is that it is in Government hands so they do not need to buy it.

‘They want to have these mega prisons to achieve economies of scale – but they need to put them in the right place.

‘Wethersfield is clearly the wrong place because it is so far away from decent roads. It is in the middle of nowhere.

‘We are not all about stopping prisons. It is about stopping such a stupidly large development when we have not got the infrastructure to support it.

‘These plans will effectively double the population of Wethersfield and Finchingfield combined.

‘Prisons need to be near urban centres, so families and friends scan visit inmates.’

Campaigners say that studies have also revealed that soil on the airfield is also contaminated with PFAS toxic chemicals from firefighting foam which used to be sprayed around.

Mr MacKenzie said: ‘The best option would be to leave the soil largely undisturbed. Developing the site could cast tens of millions to clean it up.’

Andrew Hull, the chairman of the Wethersfield Airbase Scrutiny Committee, representing 13 parish councils in the area, said: ‘It is a monumental waste of taxpayers’ money.

‘The Government is spending hundreds of thousands if not millions of pounds on consultants trying to push this plan when it should not be happening.

‘The MoJ has 14 criteria for locating prisons, and I think this site passes just four of them due to being very flat, the right acreage and not being overlooked or prone to flooding.

Idyllic Finchingfield, with a population of fewer than 1,500 people, and just 300 houses, is the UK’s most-photographed village, where the average house price is around £425,000

‘But it fails all the other criteria because it is so far away from population centres and the roads are also poor.

‘How are they going to find the prison officers to work there? The MoJ has problems enough recruiting staff for its prisons at Highpoint which is 17 miles away.’

Supply chain director Nick Chapman, 54, of Wethersfield, said he and his wife Michelle, 44, were horrified when they received the MoJ letter outlining the plans.

He said: ‘We were completely shocked. It just didn’t make any sense. The documents they sent us looked like they had just photoshopped a picture of a prison on to the airfield.

‘There are only three roads leading towards the airfield and all of them go through tiny villages.

‘We have got two small children and one of the roads goes past the primary school in Wethersfield. How can you think of having loads of HGVs using that road to go to and from the prison? It will be a serious risk to children.

‘The nearest dual carriageway is the A120 and that is 11 miles away. The MoJ keeps on saying it is consulting the local population, but they don’t seem to be doing that.

‘They did presentations in some village halls when they first came up with the idea, but some of the representatives there admitted they had not even visited all the villages affected.

‘They are now describing the plan for Wethersfield as a back-up site, but the whole thing is just creating uncertainty.’

Mrs Chapman added: ‘The roads here are just not equipped for heavy traffic. A lot of houses don’t have parking spaces because they were built before cars were invented so people have to park on the road making village streets even narrower.

‘Some houses overhang the road and the Guildhall in Finchingfield is constantly being hit by vehicles. I know of one local farmer who has to knock on doors to get his tractor through, so how are heavy lorries going to cope.’

Moving to assuage tensions among the community, the MoJ said it works with locals whenever new prisons are built to address their concerns, and undertakes mitigation measures. 

A spokesperson for the MoJ told the Telegraph: ‘We recognise residents are seeking clarity and while no decision has been made, we will continue to consult and update them as our prison-building plans develop.’

The proposals are part of plans to increase the national capacity for prison places by 20,000 by the middle of this decade, with jails in Britain so overcrowded that prisoners have had to be held in police cells.

Jamie’s Elizabethan manor was named after Hervey de Ispania, who owned the land in 1086.

The house was only ever in the ownership of the de Ispania family, the Kempe family and the Ruggles family before Jamie moved in

It has ten bathrooms, a large games room, great hall, dining room, two drawing rooms and a wine storage area as well as its dozen bedrooms