It became the focus of a campaign by local people and Friends of the Earth in the 1980s, who opposed government plans to route the M40 motorway across Otmoor.

Joe Weston, one of the campaigners, had the idea of taking advantage of this by identifying and purchasing a plot of land on the route, as close to Otmoor as possible.

This was intended to delay the construction of the motorway significantly by allowing protesters formally to appeal the compulsory purchase of each of the 3500 individual plots.

The Land Registry charges that would be payable under the current regulations would make a similar sale of micro-plots prohibitively expensive today.

In 2009, Greenpeace began a similar campaign with 'Airplot', a small meadow in Sipson, a village which would be demolished under plans for the construction of a third runway for London Heathrow.