page_title: Lyford, Oxfordshire
section_title: Air crash
hierarchical_section_title: Lyford, Oxfordshire / Air crash
caption_attribution_description: English: St Mary's parish church, Lyford, Oxfordshire (formerly Berkshire): plaque in memory of the crew of an RAF Lancaster that crashed on 8 April 1945
context_page_description: Lyford is a village and civil parish on the River Ock about 4 miles north of Wantage. Historically it was part of the ecclesiastical parish of Hanney. Lyford was part of Berkshire until the 1974 boundary changes transferred the Vale of White Horse to Oxfordshire. The 2001 Census recorded the parish's population as 44.
  Lyford's toponym refers to a former ford the Ock, now replaced with a bridge on the road to Charney Bassett. "Ly" is derived from the Old English lin, meaning "flax". In 1034 it was recorded as Linford.
context_section_description: On 8 April 1945 an Avro Lancaster B.I Special bomber aircraft, HK788 of No. 9 Squadron RAF based at Bardney in Lincolnshire, had taken part in a raid on a benzole factory in mainland Europe. On its return flight the plane caught fire and crashed in a field barely 400 yards (370 m) south of the parish church and Manor Farm.
  All seven aircrew were killed. Six were members of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. The seventh was a warrant officer from the Royal Canadian Air Force. All are buried in the Commonwealth War Graves section of Botley Cemetery on the outskirts of Oxford.
  In October 2008 the widow of one of the crew provided a plaque commemorating the seven dead. It was installed in St Mary the Virgin parish church, where the actor Richard Briers attended the ceremony and read Noël Coward's poem Lie in the Dark and Listen.
caption: Monument in St Mary's parish church to the crew of RAF Lancaster HK788
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