Great Train Robbery (1963) in the capture of Roy James, Ronald Biggs, Jimmy Hussey and John Daly. The trial of the robbers began at Aylesbury Assizes, Buckinghamshire, on 20 January 1964. Because it would be necessary to accommodate a large number of lawyers and journalists, the existing court was deemed too small and so the offices of Aylesbury Rural District Council were specially converted for the event. The defendants were brought to the court each day from Aylesbury Prison in a compartmentalised van, out of view of the large crowd of spectators. Mr Justice Edmund Davies presided over the trial, which lasted 51 days
Oakley, Buckinghamshire public house, closed in about 1961. In 1963 Oakley was centre of national and international news, when Leatherslade Farm, near Oakley, was used as a hideout by the criminal gang involved in the Great Train Robbery. John Maris, a local farm worker, alerted police to the hideout at the farm. John Wooley, a local policeman from Brill, was the first officer to go to the hideout. On 16 January 1991 Malcolm Rifkind opened the section of the M40 motorway: the stretch between Waterstock and Wendlebury, passing through Oakley parish. In 1997 the Oakley Village Appraisal / ACORN report reviewed what