Banbury is a circa 1,500-year-old market town and civil parish on the River Cherwell in the Cherwell District of Oxfordshire, England. It is northwest of London, southeast of Birmingham, south of Coventry and north northwest of the county town of Oxford.
General history Origin of the toponym The toponym "Banbury" derives from "Banna", a Saxon chieftain said to have built a stockade there in the 6th century, and "burgh" meaning settlement. One Saxon spelling was Banesbyrig. The name appears as Banesberie in the Domesday Book of 1086. Another known Medieval spelling was 'Banesebury'
The derivation of the name of the Grimsbury, now part of Banbury, is of early Saxon type, and is the corruption of word for a defended enclosure (burh) belonging to a personage called 'Grim', thought to be a reference to a masked persona of the god Woden.
Roman and Anglo-Saxon history
Banbury stands at the junction of two ancient roads: Salt Way (used as a bridle path to the west and south of the town), its primary use being the local transportation of salt; and Banbury Lane, which began near Northampton and is closely followed by the modern road. It continued through what is now Banbury High Street and onwards to the Fosse Way at Stow-on-the-Wold. The earliest settlement at Banbury was in the British Iron Age. The remains of a settlement with circular buildings dating back to 200 BC were found in 2002 during excavations for the foundations of a building in Hennef Way. The site contained around 150 pieces of pottery and stone.
Later there was a Roman villa at nearby Wykham Park.
The area was settled by the Saxons around the late 5th century AD. Banbury developed in the Anglo-Saxon era under Danish influence, which started in the late 8th century AD. It was assessed at 50 hides in the Domesday Book of 1086, and was then held by the Bishop of Lincoln.
The Saxons built Banbury on the west bank of the River Cherwell. On the opposite bank they built Grimsbury, which was part of Northamptonshire but was incorporated into Banbury in 1889. Neithrop was one of the oldest areas in Banbury, having first been recorded as a hamlet in the 13th century. It was formally incorporated into the borough of Banbury in 1889.
Middle Ages Banbury's medieval prosperity was based on wool.
The manors of Banbury and Cropredy existed by 1086 and probably included all those places known to be in the hundred in 1279: Banbury, Cropredy, Hardwick, Great Bourton, Little Bourton, Neithrop, Calthorpe, Coton, Wardington, Williamscot, Prescote, Claydon, Shutford, Wickham, Swalcliffe, Swalcliffe Lea, Charlbury, Cote, Finstock, Fawler, and Tapwell. Although the extra-parochial district of Clattercote was first included among the vills of Banbury hundred in 1665 and it had formed part of the Bishop of Lincoln's estates and seems to have been included as part of Claydon in 1279. The Bishop was reportedly also interested in several parts of land around Kineton and Bicester in the latter part of the 1270s as well.
The Domesday Book records that in 1086 Drayton had a water mill, probably set on the Sor Brook, on the western boundary of the parish just below the village. There is then a gap of five centuries in which no mill is recorded: but records resume with a mill operating in the parish from 1589 until 1851.
Banbury Castle was built in 1135 by Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, and survived into the English Civil War, when it was destroyed.
Medieval Banbury was badly hit by the Black Death of 1348–49 as it probably killed half the population of the town, but it quickly grew and had a population of about 1,600 for the next 300 years.
For centuries, trade in wool, ale, cakes and cheese created wealth for the town. Wool was first referred to in 1268, and cheese was manufactured from the 15th to the 18th centuries. By the late 14th century Epwell village, formerly part of Dorchester hundred, began to be included in Banbury hundred. The Abbots of Eynsham early acquired many of the land rights in Charlbury formerly belonging to the Bishops of Lincoln, including by the year 1363 a 3 weeks' court and a portmoot. The payment of 3s, 4d. were payable to the town's hundred bailiff recorded in both 1372 and 1373, which was perhaps made in connexion with the view of a frankpledge, at which the constable of Banbury had to be present as well as the abbot's steward for the hundred.
In 1247 the hundred of Banbury was valued at £5 (100 shillings) a year and in 1441 certainty money due from the northern part of the hundred was 89s. 8d It was made up of payments from Shutford, Claydon, Swalcliffe, Great Bouton and Little Bourton, Prescote, Hardwick, Calthorpe and Neithrop, Wickham, Wardington, Williamscot, Swalcliffe Lea, and the former prebend of Banbury, and 69s. 4d. in 1652, when the total profits of court were valued at 103s. 4d. a year in certainty money. In 1875 payments were made only by Williamscot, Swalcliffe, Prescote, Great and Little Bourton, Neithrop, Claydon, and Shutford since the rest had been freed from their rent obligations.
The Bishop of Lincoln's extensive Banbury estate, excepting Neithrop and Calthorpe, was sold to the Duke of Somerset in 1547, but by 1550 he granted it, excepting Hardwick to John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, then to the Duke of Northumberland shortly afterwards, who in turn granted it to the Crown in 1551 in exchange for other lands.
Long before enclosure, the tenants of Neithrop had become freeholders, as recorded in the land deeds of 1583 to 1608 and 1614, with the permission of both Sir Anthony Cope and his son Sir William Cope.
In about 1629 Sir William Cope, 2nd Baronet. sold a large area of land at Drayton to William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele of Broughton Castle. By 1790 this property belonged to Francis North, 1st Earl of Guilford of Wroxton Abbey. In 1935 and 1942 the Norths then sold their lands at Drayton to Trinity College, Oxford.
English Civil War
Banbury was partially destroyed by a fire in 1628. It played an important part in the English Civil War as an operational base for Oliver Cromwell, who is reputed to have planned the Battle of Edge Hill in the back room of an inn, then The Reindeer and now Ye Olde Reine Deer Inn. The town was pro-Parliamentarian, but the castle was manned by a Royalist garrison. In 1645 Parliamentary troops were billeted in nearby Hanwell village for nine weeks and villagers petitioned the Warwickshire Committee of Accounts to pay for feeding them.
The Civil War helped develop Banbury's industry. Kings Sutton was a local centre for saltpetre digging, and the Royalist garrison was at work early in 1645 quarrying it there and making it into gunpowder in a specially built house near Banbury. Just over 10 years previously a government saltpetreman had operated at Banbury for a year, having moved there from the then small market town of Coventry, before moving on to Hook Norton a short while afterwards.
The Civil War and the short two sieges noticeably damaged town's prosperity. Two members of the Vivers family and two fellow Banburians petitioned Parliament for an official redress compensation in 1646 and 1647. They claimed the principal looter was a captain in the King's garrison at Banbury Castle. Another self-proclaimed sufferer was the mercer Edward Russell, who after nearly being executed for trying to suborn the Royalist officers to turn Parliamentarian was jailed for three months in 1644. He also claimed his shop and house were looted and destroyed by the castle's Royalist garrison The garrison was soon defeated and the castle partly demolished using gunpowder. The Parliamentarian forces appeared to have also used the River Cherwell for access to Banbury at one point and briefly set up camp in the location of the present day Canalside trading estate, next to the public gallows. In 1649 dissaffected soldiers of the New Model Army mutinied. Being a mutiny and in Banbury, it became known as the Banbury mutiny. The mutineers did not achieve all of their aims and some of the leaders were executed on 17 May 1649.
1660–1834
Quaker missionaries had been active in the Banbury area in the Commonwealth period of the 1650s, and after the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy one Edward Vivers bought land in Banbury in 1664 to build a Friends' Meeting House. This was replaced with a Georgian building in Horsefair in 1751, to which a Tuscan porch was added in about 1820. Several Quaker communities in and around Banbury were recorded in the Visitation Returns of Thomas Secker, Bishop of Oxford in 1738.
Villagers farmed the parish on a two-field open field system until 1768, when Sir Charles Cope, 2nd Baronet bought out the rights of copyholders, life- and leaseholders and enclosed the common lands.
The opening of the Oxford Canal from Hawkesbury Junction to Banbury on 30 March 1778 gave the town a cheap and reliable supply of Warwickshire coal. In 1787 the Oxford Canal was extended southwards, finally opening to Oxford on 1 January 1790. The canal's main boat yard was the original outlay of today's Tooley's Boatyard.
Before the arrival of the Oxford Canal in 1779, the Canalside area was undeveloped, low-lying water meadows. The canal was then extended to Oxford by Banbury's engineer, John Barnes in 1790. Both Parker's Wharf and Bridge Wharf were serviced by fly-boats to many distant cross country destinations and by market boats to Oxford and Coventry. The canal brought much growth and prosperity to Banbury over the years and is still popular with boat users today. The canal's main boat yard is now the listed site today's Tooley's Boatyard.
The Cobb family may have obtained The hundred of Banbury when they bought the land site of Banbury castle in 1792 and in 1853 Edward Cobb was lord of the hundreds of Banbury and Bloxham.
The council objected to the planting of trees in Horse Fair Road, and in 1826 John Walford was then accused of injuring trees planted by the town's commissioners which he considered, like the trees they were planting, to be a waste of money. The commissioners were heckled as a rioting mob destroyed all the trees and fences.
In the nineteenth century John Golby Rusher was a successful publisher based in Banbury, particularly known for his books of nursery rhymes which were distributed nationally. His father William Rusher was a bookseller and stationer and his uncle Philip Rusher, the manager of the town's Old Bank, had promoted Rusher's Patent Types, a redesign of the alphabet to save money in printing.
1835–1912
The Banbury Poor Law Union formed 3 April 1835 and a workhouse was built in Neithrop.
In 1836 by the town council took over the running of Banbury and the right to erect gas-works was relinquished in 1833 to the Banbury Gas Light and Coke Company.
In 1838, the Catholic St John the Evangelist Church was built in Banbury. In 1839, the presbytery and chancel was added to it. They were designed by Augustus Pugin. In 1847, the Sisters of Saint Paul of Chartres were invited to create a community in Banbury, St John's Priory. They later moved to St Paul's Convent in Selly Park.Historic England, Banbury - St John the Evangelist, Taking Stock: Catholic Churches of England and Wales, retrieved 9 June 2022
After the (6 Geo. 4. c. cxxx) created the Banbury Paving Commissioners one of their first acts of was to appoint a committee to report on the condition of the town's streets. In 1826 the streets were reportedly paved with officially-approved Yorkshire flagging stones at a cost of over £3,000, but by 1840 it was noted that, as 'poor quality' stone had been used, the kerb was considered worthless. Between 1852 and 1888 the Banbury Local Board of Health continued the official supervision of streets, laid out several new roads, and started numbering the houses for identification and postal purposes.