Defford is a small village in the county of

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see H ...

, England, located between the towns of

Pershore Pershore is a market town in the Wychavon district in Worcestershire, England, on the banks of the River Avon. The town is part of the West Worcestershire parliamentary constituency. At the 2011 census, the population was 7,125. The town is ...

and

Upton-upon-Severn Upton-upon-Severn (or Upton on Severn, etc. and locally simply Upton) is a town and civil parish in the Malvern Hills District of Worcestershire, England. Lying on the A4104 (formerly A440), the 2011 census recorded a population of 2,881 for th ...

. It was once part of the

Royal forest A royal forest, occasionally known as a kingswood (), is an area of land with different definitions in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The term ''forest'' in the ordinary modern understanding refers to an area of wooded land; however, the ...

of Horewell. The woodlands were mostly removed around the time of the Civil War.* 'Parishes: Pershore, St Andrew with Defford and Wick', in A History of the County of Worcester: Volume 4, ed. William Page and J W Willis-Bund (London, 1924), pp. 163–177 http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/worcs/vol4/pp163-177 ccessed 30 August 2015/ref> Defford also has a

primary school A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary e ...

, Defford cum Besford First School, and three pubs. Defford is home to one of the radio telescopes that make up the

Jodrell Bank Jodrell Bank Observatory () in Cheshire, England, hosts a number of radio telescopes as part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester. The observatory was established in 1945 by Bernard Lovell, a radio astro ...

MERLIN (Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network) radio telescope array linking six observing stations that together form a powerful telescope with an effective aperture of over 217 kilometres.

Defford Village Hall

The village hall is owned and run by a charity, the Defford Village Hall Trust, and managed by a committee of trustees . In 2011 the new village hall was built on a greenfield site some 50 yards to the south west of the old hall, adjacent to the car park. The hall was designed by a Defford resident and trustee, David Bakefield, who was instrumental in bringing the project to fruition. It has become the focal point of village life, well used by local clubs and societies.

Defford airfield

In 1941 during World War II, a Royal Air Force airfield was constructed mainly for the flying experiments for radar that was being developed in nearby Malvern. For a few months the airfield was used as a satellite station by the

Wellington bomber The Vickers Wellington was a British twin-engined, long-range medium bomber. It was designed during the mid-1930s at Brooklands in Weybridge, Surrey. Led by Vickers-Armstrongs' chief designer Rex Pierson; a key feature of the aircraft is its ...

training unit located at RAF Pershore. A small grass airstrip remains on the now disused airfield that has been used as a location for telecommunications installations. The site is now owned and used by the West Mercia Constabulary, but the central part of the airfield still houses a Satellite Communications facility now operated by QinetiQ.

Village hall reconstruction

File:Defford Village Hall.jpg, Old Village Hall File:Defford's new village hall (March 7, 2011).jpg, New hall under construction File:DeffordHall07-03-11.jpg, Work in progress File:DeffordHall-May2011.jpg, Completed hall File:DeffordHall-interior.jpg, Interior

External links

Defford air field

Defford church

Photos of Defford and surrounding area from Geograph.co.uk

Merlin

New village hall site plan

New village hall elevations

References

Villages in Worcestershire Earth stations in England {{Worcestershire-geo-stub