A Jacobean farmhouse surrounded by fields may seem an unlikely site for a 21st century ‘knowledge park’ where scientists manipulate molecules to create tricksy new materials, from solar panels to sunscreen.

But Begbroke Science Park is poised for ‘modest’ expansion, despite the recession.

The site’s academic director, Professor Peter Dobson, told guests at the fifth anniversary celebration of its business incubator building, the Centre for Innovation and Enterprise, that despite the economic downturn, it has fulfilled the founders’ aims of forging links between academia and industry.

“During the past few years, some companies have gone to the wall, but I’m pleased to say this site has stayed pretty fully occupied,” he said.

Given Oxfordshire’s tough planning laws, the site of an early 17th century farmhouse is an unusual place for industry, but it has been used as laboratories since 1960, when the Government bought the farm as a weed research centre.

The 12,000 acres was sold in the 1980s, in an earlier era of Government cutbacks, to industrial conglomerate Cookson, which spent vast sums adapting the labs and installing expensive materials research equipment before selling it in a sudden restructuring to a grateful Oxford University chemistry department in 1998.

It is now home to 30 companies and 20 university research groups.

The university offers a ‘Materials Characterisation Service’ used by various businesses — a service which has attracted several companies to move in.

The space has also been taken by other start-ups which value the scientific environment.

Last month, Cherwell District Council gave permission for a new link road to the site, despite objections from the Campaign to Protect Rural England.

Prof Dobson said the road would be completed by the end of the year, paving the way for “some modest expansion within the boundaries of the site”.

One of the park’s earliest occupiers was a company called Oxonica. Now called Energenics, its history illustrates the bumpy ride experienced by UK technology businesses over the past few years.

Once a darling of the stockmarket, it was hailed as a bright new hope for UK manufacturing, harnessing the pioneering science of nanotechnology.

Nanomaterials are engineered on a tiny scale, using techniques that allow particles thinner than 100th the size of a human hair to be manipulated into different structures, changing the properties of the resulting material.

Oxonica had developed a sunscreen and an energy-saving fuel additive, both of which are now successful and earning royalties.

Unfortunately, it spent several million pounds of its stockmarket bonanza defending a patent dispute with a former employee, and ran out of money at just the wrong time.

The sunscreen business was sold to German company Croda, while the fuel business, Energenics, is owned by two Indian investors, and has 14 staff at Begbroke.

Energenics chief executive Mike Attfield, like many employees, is an Oxonica shareholder, but he is philosophical about his paper loss.

“We still get a small dividend and Oxonica’s diagnostics business has potential,” he said.

Energenics is working on a new wood varnish with similar ultra-violet blocking properties to the sunscreen. He believes that UK investors think on too small a time frame.

He said: “The time it takes to develop a new chemical is longer than the time investors are prepared to wait. Things are different in Germany.”

A similar view comes from another Begbroke company, CrystalMaker Software, run by husband-and-wife David and Shirley Palmer. Their software produces 3D images of molecules, used for teaching and research.

Mrs Palmer said: “Ninety per cent of our sales are exports, including a large number to Japan. Japan has invested heavily in nanoscience, throughout its long recession and even after the earthquake — unlike this country.”

Oxford Advanced Surfaces spun out of the university in 2006, when it was still possible to raise technology funding.

Now employing 20, it is looking for a larger company to license its anti-reflective coating and a technique for changing the surface of materials.

Chief executive, Mike Edwards, said: “Fortunately, we have enough funding to develop our products further, to make them more attractive to investors.”

Oxford Photovoltaics is one of the newest arrivals, having spun out of the university last December.

It is completing a funding round which will allow it to build a larger prototype of its new material, which promises to offer transparent solar panels.

The money will allow the current team of three to expand to five.

Chief executive Kevin Arthur is unworried by the Government’s decision to exclude large-scale solar installations from subsidies.

“Our product will be a lot cheaper to produce, so that is not such a big issue for us,” he said.

“We have a lot of interest from all over the world, so we already have a queue of potential customers.”

Oxford University has watched with envy the growth of Cambridge’s ‘knowledge parks’, which have swallowed up some of the surrounding fenland.

Oxford boasts that the university has helped Oxfordshire to see a higher growth rate in high-tech employment than anywhere else in the UK, and is hoping Begbroke will allow its scientists to spread their wings in a way that is impossible in the congested city centre.