Barford, Warwickshire
Barford is a village and civil parish in the Warwick district of Warwickshire, England, about three miles south of Warwick. As at the 2001 census the parish had a population of 1,171, that increased to 1,336 at the 2011 census. The Joint parish council also runs the villages of Sherbourne and Wasperton. In March 2014 ""The Sunday Times"" listed the village as one of the Top 10 places to live in The Midlands. In the village there are two pubs, a hotel with swimming pool, and a village shop owned and run by the community. The Church of  England primary school that is in the village is called ""Barford St. Peters"". The University of Warwick Boat Club trains on the River Avon at Barford. Barford is served by Stagecoach bus routes X18 and 18A which link it with Coventry, Leamington Spa, Warwick and Stratford Upon Avon. The M40 motorway is just 1.5 miles from the village, with Warwick and Warwick Parkway railway stations just over 4 miles away. History. Barford is mentioned in the Domesday Book as a fair-sized settlement situated in the hundred of Tremlowe and in Warwickshire. In Fiction. In C. P. Snow's novel  The New Men the story's main location is a fictional early British nuclear experimental establishment based in Barford where the characters try to get an early nuclear pile going and also try to harvest enough enriched uranium or plutonium to try and beat the Americans to the bomb. As Snow’s science researchers, and science civil servant, characters are, or were, portrayed as Cambridge dons in this book (and the previous book in the series - The Masters) he clearly did want to make the location of the research station the real United Kingdom nuclear Centre at Harwell with its  close association with Oxford. So instead, as this line from the novel puts it,: “For a site, they picked on a place called Barford –which I had not heard of, but found to be a village in Warwickshire, a few miles from Stratford-upon-Avon”. Several commentators claim, or suggest, that not only is the research station fictional but so is the village Barford. However clearly Snow was thinking of the real Barford which is indeed not far from Stratford-upon-Avon. If the “final” version of the research station as described in the last chapter of the book was  real its size would certainly have more than dominated the real village of Barford.