WHEN Sally Timberlake bought her house in Marcham, in the Vale of the White Horse in Oxfordshire, the village was festooned with posters saying “Bypass Now”.

That was in 1979. Since then the traffic on the A415 through the village has doubled but the only progress on the bypass has been a small change in the proposed route.

“We knew we were buying a house on a busy road but we didn’t think we would still be waiting after 27 years for a bypass,” Mrs Timberlake said.

She lives on a bend so narrow that lorries frequently become wedged together. The corner of her neighbour’s Victorian cottage has fresh stonework from a recent collision. The pavement, where it exists at all, is only a foot wide. Pedestrians must either cling to the wall or walk in the road and risk being run over by impatient drivers.

Mrs Timberlake was struck from behind in February by a driver blinded by the low sun. Three months before that, her neighbour, Jackie King, had been hit as she carried her baby daughter to her car.

Marjorie Evans, a Marcham parish councillor, has been campaigning for a bypass for three decades. She said it had first been proposed in 1936 but was delayed by the Second World War. Arguments over the route and the cost had bedevilled the project ever since.

The two-mile bypass would run across ancient water meadows south of the village but is opposed by local landowners, including the singer Sandy Shaw.

Oxfordshire County Council’s latest bid for funding was rejected this year when the £13 million bypass failed to come high enough on a list of schemes drawn up by the southeast regional transport board. The budget for the entire region for 2005-6 is £135 million.

Mrs Timberlake, who has given up hope of ever seeing the bypass, is campaigning for a 20mph speed limit, a continuous pavement and traffic lights to force vehicles to take turns to round the bends.

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