Why a French theme park near Chipping Norton is just what Britain needs

Owners of France’s second most visited theme park – Puy du Fou – could be opening a new £300 million venue in the UK

Just what Britain needs, eh? Another theme park. Well, yes, absolutely – when that park is coming from the people who run the Puy du Fou in the Vendée department of south-west France. Led by the de Villiers family, the Puy du Fou is incontestably the world’s greatest historical theme park. There’s a truckload of international awards as evidence, plus my own experience. I spent nine hours there and would have gone back the next day, and the next, if anyone had asked. These good people are now rumoured to be planning an offshoot in Britain, due to be with us by 2028.
Proposals focus on a 300-400 acre site just off the M40’s junction 10 near the village of Bucknell, two miles from Bicester, 12 from Oxford, and 14 from Chipping Norton. There will be £300 million going in initially (to double in a decade), with predictions of 700 jobs on site and 2,000 spin-offs. The project is also likely to out-green the greens, going beyond net zero and doing all the right things with water and the land. “We are planting the first forest in Oxfordshire for 500 years,” said a Puy du Fou UK spokesman. This could, in short, be the biggest thing to happen in Bucknell since the Trigger Pond pub opened in 1637. Conceivably, even bigger
But let us be clear: the Puy du Fou park formula involves no roller coasters, rides, flashing lights or associated cartoon figures. It doesn’t on its 500-acre site in France and it won’t in Oxfordshire. Instead, deep in the Vendéen bocage, the French park delivers 18 historical shows of staggering scope and invention. I’ll wager you’ve never seen anything like them. All rooted in various eras of the French past, they soar into realms of romance and imagination driven by a cast of thousands (literally), extraordinary immersive story-telling, cutting-edge technology and outstanding skill. Some of the horsemanship stretches the bounds of credibility.
And if all this sounds dithyrambic, it’s because I’ve rarely been so impressed by entertainment. (Sadly, I’m not being paid, either by the Puy du Fou or the French tourist board, though I remain, of course, open to offers.)
The (mainly) 30-40-minute shows, or spectacles, range from Ben-Hur chariot racing and gladiators in a full-sized replica of a Roman arena to a walk-through evocation of Verdun in the Great War – trenches, terror, love lives blighted and yet more besides. Along the way, or round the park, we bump into the Knights of the Round Table, a Viking raid with a drakkar (longboat) emerging from the water, and an epic Hundred Years war tableau featuring more horses than I could count, Joan of Arc, siege machines, a burning castle and stirring tales of love and violence.
The newest spectacle, Le Mime et l’Étoile – introduced in 2023 – has 120 actors acting as actors (and technicians and the rest) in a grand, hi-tech tale set in the early days of silent cinema. It won the 2024 award for the world’s best theme park show.
Punctuating the park are four historical villages, so you might wander into the surroundings of the year 1000, the Middle Ages, the 18th-century or the Belle Époque. Eat and drink there, too, and watch artisans doing whatever artisans did back then. Pretty much everything needed, really. If you can’t manage it all in a day (it’s a challenge), there are six history-themed hotels on site.
And by night – some summer nights only – the Cinéscénie extravaganza spreads a vast historical fresco across a 57-acre stage. What may be the hugest, maybe even the greatest, show on earth has some 2,400 volunteer actors tracing the history of France from medieval times to the Second World War on a pharaonic scale. There’s a lake and a real castle involved, 28,000 costumes, 120 horsemen and animals agogo. Last time I was there, a bear – a real bear – appeared on stage which, such is the sweep of activity, I only noticed after three or four minutes.
The tech is right-out-there: 3D video-mapping, drones, state of the art music and lighting, pyrotechnics. First time I attended, years ago, I sat next to a lady visiting from the Las Vegas tourist board. As the 90-minute spectacle closed with a night-shattering crescendo, so she sprang to her feet and yelled to the surrounding thousands of showgoers: “That, ladies and gentlemen, is what I call entertainment!” And Cinéscénie has evolved considerably since.
Though a wide-ranging French epic, the show focuses in part on the past as experienced particularly in the Vendée region. Unsurprisingly, it depicts as heroic the 1793-96 Vendéen uprising against French revolutionary forces, effectively a civil war in which some 200,000 insurgents from the region were killed. Equally unsurprisingly, this really annoys left-leaning historians. There is criticism. These intellectuals dispute whether the bloody counter-revolution was quite as valiant as represented. They also get annoyed with the park overall. They claim that its shows, spectacles and general approach encapsulate a view of history slanted towards the Catholic, right-wing views of 75-year-old Philippe de Villiers. He founded the park in 1978 and remains its figurehead. (He’s also an ex-presidential candidate, friend of Solzhenitsyn, writer and polemicist. His son, 45-year-old Nicolas, is present boss.)
This is a very French squabble. It also assumes that a left-wing view of history is unbiased. Ah well. I’d say that, in so far as the Puy du Fou makes any historical points, these are not wholly true or wholly false but simply part of the conversation. And, frankly, the grandeur and romance of the spectacles overwhelm concerns about historical correctness. It’s showbiz with depth done splendidly.
There is, in fact, a taste of all this in Bishop Auckland, a market town in County Durham where a Puy du Fou team was involved at the 2014 outset of the hugely successful Kynren show. Over 14 summer evenings, Kynren mobilises 1,000 volunteers to give us the drama of British history and legend across an eight-acre stage. Clearly, there’s a great appetite for such epic entertainment. Said Kynren CEO, Anna Warnecke: “Year after year, Kynren continues to build on its success and awareness both in the UK and internationally. For 2024, we offered a new pre-show entertainment experience, Return of the Vikings, to provide our new and returning visitors with even more to enjoy during their time at Kynren.”
When it comes to pass, the English Puy du Fou park – the second outside France, after a Spanish version established in Toledo in 2021 – will, obviously, also be inspired by British history, and less controversial than the French one, not least because we are British and less excitable. “We’re already working with British historians on the project,” said the spokesman. Some shows will echo those in France. The extraordinary, walk-through First World War experience is transferable, with suitable changes. Others will be uniquely British. Early indications from Bucknell residents suggest, anyway, that if there is controversy, it will be the traffic.
The Puy du Fou folk aim to be reassuring. “We are hoping that 50 per cent of visitors will come by public transport. The infrastructure in Oxfordshire is already very good,” said the UK spokesman. As mentioned, they’re Greta-scale green, promising minimal impact, vast amounts of parkland, thousands of trees and plants but also vocational training across an enormous range of specialities for future recruits. They reckon that their arrival will herald boomtime in Oxon – more specifically that, for every £1 spent at the park, there’ll be £3.20 spent in the surrounding area. I’ve no idea how they arrived at this figure, but it sounds good.
If true, it should inject decent amounts of cash into the surroundings. The Puy du Fou in France attracted 2.5 million visits in 2023. That’s way behind Disneyland Paris (10.4 million) but ahead of British leading parks: Legoland (2.42 million) and Alton Towers (2.35 million), according to Statista. Two years after it opened, the Spanish version registered 1.1 million visitors. That’s the early target for the Oxfordshire branch. 
There will be further consultations early next year and the full planning application, including one or maybe two on-site hotels, should be submitted next summer. Then it’s up to Cherwell district council. Should all go according to plan, and should the good Lord spare me that long, I absolutely intend to be among the first visitors.