Residents of a quiet picture-postcard village in the Home Counties say they are about to become outnumbered by asylum seekers housed at a former RAF airfield next door.
Villagers in Wethersfield, near Braintree, Essex say they do not feel safe walking the streets and country lanes at night due to the threat of anti-social behaviour by groups of men from the UK’s biggest facility for asylum seekers roaming the area.
While the village has a population of 707 people, the Home Office plans to boost the number of migrants at MDP Wethersfield to 800, which locals complain is far too many for the local infrastructure to bear.
Those living nearest the base, which was previously the Ministry of Defence Police (MDP) HQ, and before that a WW2 RAF and US airbase, say their houses are now unsaleable.
Inhabitants of picturesque Wethersfield and its even prettier neighbour Finchingfield say their protests have been ignored by successive governments, and Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge before the election that the asylum centre ‘needs to close’ now ring hollow.
Melody and Alan Temperley, both 77, have lived next to the base for three decades, but say their spacious house – and others nearby housing their sons and grandchildren – have been rendered worthless because of the centre and its inhabitants.
‘We’re effectively trapped here, and no-one is listening to us,’ said Melody, who fondly recalls when she worked at a shop in the base when it housed US Air Force personnel.
‘In those days, and when it later became the MoD Police facility, the base was a good place to live near to, because it made us feel safe,’ she said. ‘Who is going to burgle your house when there are armed police patrolling around the place?
‘Now, I wouldn’t take my dog out on my own on the lanes nearby, because you’re likely to meet groups of bored, single young men hanging around.
‘I’m not the least bit racist, I’d have the same reservations if they were young English men, but there is also another factor, and that’s the cultural attitude towards women which prevails with some of them and that cannot be ignored.’
She said the presence her three teenage grand-daughters has meant the family have had to install CCTV cameras and ‘keep out’ signs along their private lanes, which were never necessary before.
‘It’s difficult to see this place ever closing,’ she said. ‘And it’s so frustrating because we warned of all the problems that it would bring when the idea was first floated two years ago.’
Those problems are not hard to spot, wandering around Wethersfield and talking to its inhabitants.
Independent district councillor Mark Ault said he collected three full bin liners of discarded beer cans on the lane leading up to the old airbase last weekend.
Standing in Wethersfield, which dates back to before the Domesday Book, Mr Ault said: ‘You could stand here and think you were in the middle of a lovely village but there’s an old English saying, ‘out of sight, out of mind’.
‘If you look just beyond those houses, there’s currently 500 asylum seekers stationed there.
‘So it is out of sight, but certainly not out of mind.
‘Everyone here is worried about what might happen. And we shouldn’t be living with that doubt. ‘We’ve had numerous politicians over the last two years saying that they disagree with being here, including Keir Starmer before he was elected, and so did Wes Streeting.
‘I’ve written to Mr Starmer to remind him of that fact, but had no reply. Now they are going to increase the population from 580 people to 800.’
Though the migrants are not supposed to drink on site, they are bussed into nearby towns such as Braintree and Colchester where they can spend their £8 a week allowance as they please.
Others wander a couple of miles into Wethersfield or Finchingfield, though there are no pavements and the 60mph roads are full of blind curves.
Retired decorator, William John, 72, has lived in Wethersfield for more than 40 years, and agrees the village cannot manage the influx.
‘It’s a tricky subject, because if you raise any objection, people say you are racist, but I’m really not.
‘They’re going to raise the number of people to 800 which is more than the population of the village, and we just can’t cope with it.
‘There was an incident recently where some of the young men from the centre were sitting watching the children’s playground, which made the mums feel nervous.
‘And when they left, some of the asylum seekers appeared to follow them in which made people feel even more uncomfortable.’
There have been reports of men defaecating in the lane leading up to the centre and Melody Temperley’s husband Alan said that on one occasion as he drove slowly along the lane, passing migrants, one of them threw himself onto the bonnet of his car.
‘I don’t know what was going through his head, but it was completely deliberate,’ said Alan. ‘I think some of them are so desperate to get out that even being sent to hospital will be better, but he wasn’t hurt.’
Since the base began to take asylum seekers in July 2023, house sales have all-but dried up in Wethersfield.
Retired decorator Local John LeFever, 68, said: ‘Most properties now sit on the market for at least a year or so, but you don’t know if it’s local factors, or the economy generally.’
One of the closest neighbours to the airbase, father-of-four Tony Clarke-Holland, 56, did put his house on the market recently, but didn’t receive a single viewing.
He told a newspaper: ‘It’s devastating when it’s part of your retirement plan.’
Rose Witcher, 42, lives in a rented cottage with her partner within sight of the sports hall on the base and all day long and into the night she can hear a weird banshee-like wailing which she assumes is the sounds of football matches going on.
‘You get used to it after a while,’ she told , ‘but we get people wandering up the lane all the time, even though it doesn’t lead anywhere except to a handful of private houses.
‘One neighbour had a man knocking on their door asking for food, despite the fact they get three meals a day. Another time, we saw a man who looked as if he’d been beaten up coming up here.
‘I think there are a lot of fights, and we hear ambulances and police cars going in there quite a lot.
‘I wouldn’t feel comfortable walking around here on my own anymore, but as we have dogs who make a lot of noise, I don’t think they’d come too close to our house.’
She said that she’s seen cars coming up the lane in the dark and planting rucksacks in the bushes for others in the centre to retrieve the next day, and packages being thrown over the 8ft high security fence.
‘I don’t know what’s in those packages, but I’m pretty sure they’re not delivering pizzas,’ said Ms Witcher.
In November 2023, the migrants themselves staged a noisy protest outside the centre, and a year ago the then Home Secretary – and local MP – James Cleverly – was officially warned by the Immigration Watchdog David Neal that the site was at immediate risk of descending into criminality, arson and assaults on staff.
Alan and Melody Temperley’s grown-up sons Blake and Jeff also live near them and are fed up having to weave their way around groups of migrants walking in the middle of the single-track lane when driving to or from home.
Blake, 51, who had two teenage daughters, said that despite all the tens of millions that the Home Office had ploughed into the centre, a drainage problem on the lane which caused one part of the road to be under as much as 2ft of water most of the time, had been ignored.
‘I had to get a digger out myself and create a run off,’ he said. ‘It’s not fully fixed, but after heavy rains it’s virtually impassible, and no-one’s done anything – it’s shambolic and just sums up the whole approach.’
Blake’s brother Jeff, a 54-year-old builder, has no sympathy for his new neighbours.
‘When you drive past them, you can see the way they look at you,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know why we have to be lumbered with the problem of living cheek-by-jowl with them.
‘I honestly don’t know why we’re housing them at all – just send them back where they came from would be my answer.’