A MIXTURE of grizzled rockers, fresh-faced singers and boisterous new acts will grace the stage for a new-look Oxfordshire music festival.

Cornbury Festival, which has taken place over two days each summer for the past seven years, is being relaunched as a three-day festival on a new site.

And organiser Hugh Phillimore is celebrating with his strongest ever bill – headlined by what he described as a selection of guilty pleasures.

They include three-chord rockers Status Quo, chart-topping singer-songwriter James Blunt, and vintage rock band The Faces – featuring original members Ronnie Wood and Kenney Jones, and new vocalist Mick Hucknall, of Simply Red.

They will be joined by Ray Davies, former frontman of The Kinks, 1980s pop icon Cyndi Lauper, disco diva Sophie Ellis Bextor, Californian popsters The Like, and Canadian artist Buffy Sainte Marie – a member of the Cree Indian community.

Also playing will be award-winning folk big-band Bellowhead boasting melodeon player John Spiers, from Wootton, near Abingdon; 2009 X Factor star Olly Murs; pop princess Eliza Doolittle; and Irish rockabilly performer Imelda May.

Having parted company with its former site, Cornbury Park in Charlbury, the festival will take place over the weekend July 1-3, at Great Tew, near Chipping Norton.

Mr Phillimore said: “We’re proud to present what we think is our best line-up ever.

“We have lots of guilty pleasures, as well as some legends, national treasures, and bright young things. It is very diverse, but it all hangs pretty well together. It will be our best ever.”

He also promised an “impressive” surprise act would be playing the main stage on the Sunday.

The festival is being run in conjunction with music promoters 3A Entertainments after the company set up by Mr Phillimore to run the festival was put into liquidation.

West Oxfordshire District Council has now granted a premises licence to a rival event, Wilderness Festival, which will take place on the festival’s former site at Cornbury this summer. Mr Phillimore said he was not concerned by the presence of a competing festival, and said: “It is not something that is going to get in the way.

“It’s been a particularly long road getting to our new home but we’re very excited to be here. I am trusted in the music business, have spoken to my creditors and come to terms with them. That’s all in the past.”

John Mitchinson, Great Tew parish meeting clerk, said: “We are all extremely excited about having it here. Everybody’s really looking forward to the weekend. It will be good for the village and it sounds like a fantastic line-up.”