The village of Englefield Green, Surrey, lays claim to have hosted the last fatal duel in England, when Emmanuel Barthélemy killed fellow French refugee Constant Cournet in a row over Barthélemy’s girlfriend in 1852. Some 172 years later and locals in the leafy enclave are in the middle of an altogether different battle.
Like many other villages that sit under Heathrow’s flight path, Englefield Green residents are up in arms with the airport. Campaigners successfully fought off the building of a third runway on noise pollution grounds, but passenger numbers have nearly doubled since Bob McLellan moved his family there in 1996, with low-flying planes now coming over every few minutes at peak times.
Locals meet monthly to air their grievances in the parish hall,
