Calvert, Buckinghamshire

Three of the former clay pits for the brickworks have become flooded. One is called Grebe Lake, and is used for sailing,[4] boating, angling and kayaking. One is called Itter's Pit,[5] and is used for angling, mainly for carp and pike by the Calvert Angling Club, but also contains perch, roach, rudd and catfish. The other pit is a nature reserve for wildfowl.

Another of the clay pits is now a landfill site.[6] Waste is collected from Bristol, Bath and London each day and transported using rail via Aylesbury to Calvert.[7] The site has a power station capable of producing 14 MWe of electricity from landfill gas, coming from the decomposition of organic matter to convert it into renewable electricity MW.[8]

The Buckinghamshire Railway opened its east-west route between Oxford and Bletchley in 1851, passing just north of the village; a route which would later become known as the Varsity Line as it continued to Cambridge. Stations were provided nearby at Claydon and Marsh Gibbon, but not at Calvert. In 1899 the Great Central Railway built its north-south main line to London Marylebone past the village and opened Calvert railway station.[9] British Railways closed Calvert station in 1964.

The east-west Varsity Line continued in operation until 1967 before services were withdrawn and the route mothballed, thereafter seeing only occasional traffic, with the last service operating in 1993. The East West Rail project, announced in 2011, is expected to see the line reopen in 2025, with the closest station at Winslow.

The currently under construction High Speed 2 (HS2) will run along the Great Central Railway north-south corridor in this area, to the east of Calvert. The phase one Infrastructure Maintenance Depot will be located north of Calvert.[10] No passenger interchange between East West Rail and HS2 is proposed, since stopping high speed trains 'too often' reduces their high speed benefits, although in February 2017, the local MP called for the station to be built at the junction between East West Rail and the HS2 line, serving both lines.[11]

Calvert sits in the strip of land which the Government announced in 2018 as its 'preferred route' for the new Oxford-Cambridge Expressway road, which would link the A34, M40, and M1 trunk roads. It has been noted that the convergence of HS2, East-West Rail, and the Oxford-Cambridge Expressway at this location would offer opportunities for future provision of a key regional facility, such as an airport, or a New Town