Bicester Historic Town Trail

The Bicester Historic Town Trail is a 1.9-mile (3km) circular walk round the old centre of Bicester, about an hour and a quarter if you stop to read the buildings. It links 25 numbered stops on the council's leaflet, from the priory's dovecote and St Edburg's church through Market Square and Sheep Street to Garth Park. It is flat, on pavements, and starts a short walk from Bicester Village station.

The leaflet is the Bicester Historic Town Guide, which Bicester Town Council credits to Cherwell District Council and Bicester Local History Society hosts. It says the trail can be started at any point, and it asks walkers to respect residents' privacy by looking from a polite distance. Nobody from this guide has walked it yet; we follow the leaflet's map and its notes.

The priory and St Edburg's

Start where the town began. The leaflet says the Saxons settled by the River Bure and that Gilbert Bassett founded an Augustinian priory here in about 1182; it was dissolved in 1536, and once drew pilgrims to St Edburg. Few signs of it remain in Old Place Yard. The Dovecote, mainly seventeenth century, probably stands on the site of the priory's own, and the Old Priory, early sixteenth century, is believed to stand on the site of its guest house and to be built from its stone. Our story of St Edburg tells who she was.

St Edburg's church dates from about the twelfth century, the leaflet says, and is Bicester's only Grade I listed building. Look for the carving of the saint over the south door, and in the churchyard for the cholera stone, a memorial to 64 victims of the epidemic of 1832. Beside the church, the Old Vicarage, about sixteenth century and listed Grade II*, is probably the oldest house in the town.

Church Street and King's End

Church Terrace is mainly seventeenth century and was a charity school, a pub, a bakery and the Swan Inn, which lodged prisoners in the early nineteenth century. In King's End, Home Farm House was one of the manor's bough houses, selling beer during sheep fairs, and Bicester House stands on the site of the medieval manor house of the nuns of Markyate; the Victoria County History says it was substantially rebuilt after a fire about 1820. Back on Church Street, number 22 is one of only two thatched buildings in Bicester, and the Old Police House of 1857 still has its window bars and cell doors inside.

Market Square and Sheep Street

The Causeway, reputedly laid by the priory's monks to reach the market, leads into Market Square, granted by a charter of Henry III in 1239. It is a typical medieval triangle, the leaflet says, which once held a town hall, a slaughterhouse and the stocks. Number 47, of 1698, is the merchant's house with oval windows under its turret and a weathervane of a running fox.

Sheep Street dates from the grant of a Friday market in 1441, probably for cattle and sheep. Along it are the Old Courthouse of 1864, whose arch is modelled on Caernarfon Castle's, the Bell Inn of about 1629, behind which, the leaflet says, the clockmaker Edward Hemins ran a bell foundry in the eighteenth century, and the Penny Black, built as the post office in 1914. Ourhistory of Bicester puts the market and the priory in order.

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Garth Park

Garth House was built as a hunting lodge: the leaflet says in 1875, the town council's own page in the 1840s. Bicester Urban District Council bought the house and its grounds in 1946, and the town council still has its offices there. The grounds are now Garth Park, the town council's park, with a café, Garth Park Kitchen (ring 01869 246947 to check its hours), a play area with more than 45 pieces of equipment for children of 2 to 14, and a skate park opened in February 2019. It is the obvious place for a break halfway round.

What walkers should know before setting out

This is a street walk, so the hazards are traffic: Market Square and London Road carry the B4100. Sheep Street is pedestrian. Garth Park has opening hours, which the town council publishes on its site. Most of the buildings are private houses, shops and pubs: look from the street. The leaflet dates from 2019, so some uses will have changed.

Getting there and parking

Bicester Village station is about 700m from the start on foot, which makes this an easy walk to add to a trip to Bicester Village; our getting to Bicester page has the trains and buses. To drive, Chapel Brook car park, on Chapel Street, is on the trail itself; ourparking guide has the charges.

Other walks nearby

The Bicester West Health Route is the council's flat 5K through Bure Park, on the north-west side of the town. For country, the Oxfordshire Way from Kirtlington is a bus ride away, and the Heyfords Circular follows the Oxford Canal from Heyford station. After dark, Bicester's ghost stories hang on several of these buildings.