Philip Halling, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A civil war fought in the fields, a nursery rhyme with no evidence behind it, a shell factory under the M40 and a cake that vanished from its own town. The record, and where the legend starts.
27 stories
Story · History · 7 minute read
Bicester Village opened in April 1995 on a wet field at the edge of town with 13 boutiques and a café. Thirty years on it has over 150, a record 6.7 million visitors in 2024 and its own station. How an American developer's gamble worked and what it meant for the town.
Story · History · 8 minute read
Banbury cakes once reached India in air-tight tins. The Original Cake Shop closed in May 1967 and came down in 1968, but a Brown still made the cakes in 2025. The company was struck off in April 2026, and we know of no local seller now.
Story · History · 7 minute read
The Oxford Canal was planned in a Banbury inn in 1768, and the first coal boats reached the town on 30 March 1778. Then the money ran out, and Banbury was the end of the line for almost 12 years. How it happened, who paid, and what is left to see.
Story · History · 6 minute read
Kings Sutton has a spire of about 60m that Pevsner called the finest in a county of spires, a legend of an infant saint who spoke at birth and died at three days old, and the ruins of a spa the gentry rode to in the seventeenth century. What is record, and what is tradition.
Story · History · 7 minute read
Lark Rise to Candleford began as a hamlet of about 30 cottages at Juniper Hill, between Bicester and Brackley, where Flora Thompson was born in 1876. The real places behind the books, Juniper Hill, Cottisford and Fringford, what the record says of them, and what you can see.
Story · History · 19 minute read
Motorsport Valley is the cluster of racing firms around Silverstone and Banbury. It grew from a wartime airfield, post-war engineers and people leaving one team to start another. This is the history of Formula One in the region, who is where in 2026, and how to see it.
Story · History · 6 minute read
RAF Bicester opened in 1918, was rebuilt as a bomber station from 1925, trained bomber crews through the Second World War and ended as stores, gliders and an American hospital. Its hangars and bomb stores are now protected, and the site is Bicester Motion.
Story · History · 7 minute read
RAF Upper Heyford began as a First World War airfield, trained bomber crews in the Second, and from 1951 housed American nuclear bombers. Its F-111s left in December 1993. Its shelters and bomb stores are now a scheduled monument, with tours from a heritage centre.
Story · History · 5 minute read
Bicester's parish church and its lost priory were both dedicated to St Edburg, an Anglo-Saxon saint nobody can quite identify. Her marble shrine was carried off at the Dissolution and still stands in a church west of Oxford. What is known, what is guessed, and where to see it.
Story · History · 8 minute read
Sulgrave Manor is George Washington's ancestral home, built by his ancestor Lawrence Washington. But George never lived there, and the claim about its arms and the American flag is a legend. How it was built, lost, bought back for peace in 1914 and run today.
Story · History · 4 minute read
In 1941 the army began a vast ordnance depot south east of Bicester, served by its own railway: nearly 50 miles of track by 1943, and nearly 300,000 wagons in the year of D-Day. How it worked, what it did after the war, and what became of it.
Story · History · 7 minute read
Banburyshire saw the Civil War's first great battle at Edgehill in 1642, a Royalist win at Cropredy Bridge in 1644 and two sieges of Banbury Castle. By 1648 the castle had been pulled down. Banbury lost hundreds of its people, and this is how it happened.
Banburyshire's history is odder than a market town has any right to. It is also poorly served by the usual stories, so these pieces say what is on record and where the legend starts.
The biggest story here is the Civil War. The Civil War in Banburyshire runs from the first great battle at Edgehill in 1642, through a Royalist win at Cropredy Bridge in 1644, to two sieges of Banbury Castle, which Parliament ordered demolished in 1648. You can stand at the Edgehill memorial and on Cropredy Bridge, but Banbury Castle itself has gone. The day by car links them.
The Fine Lady and her cross is the one to read before you see the Cross. The cross of the rhyme is gone: Banbury's own aldermen had the High Cross pulled down in 1600, and today's dates from 1859 and may not stand where the old one did. Nobody has shown who the fine lady was.
The Banbury cake takes two pieces. The original Banbury cake goes back to a first printed recipe of 1615, which was a yeasted dough, and gives a recipe worked from it. How it disappeared follows it from air-tight tins bound for India to the closing of the Original Cake Shop in 1967, and on to today, when we could find no one in Banbury still making them.
The Michaelmas Fair carries on a long line of fairs. Records show a Whitsun fair from 1154 and a hiring fair called the Mop by 1677, and it still fills the streets each October.
National Filling Factory No 9 filled shells east of the town from 1916 and employed about 2,000 people at its height. The M40 now cuts through it, and its earthworks are a scheduled monument in grazing land with no public access we could find, so you will read about it and not visit.
Hornton stone explains why everything here is brown: a thin band of Jurassic rock, carved by Henry Moore and eaten by steelworks until 1967. Motorsport Valley tells how a wartime airfield and some restless engineers put Formula One around Silverstone and Banbury.
Sulgrave Manor and the Washingtons is careful about a place that attracts tall tales. George Washington's ancestor built the house, but George never lived there, and the claim about its arms and the American flag is a legend. See the house itself in season.
We have not yet written the canal's story as a piece of its own, or the plush cloth trade, though the museum covers both and Tooley's still works its forge. Broughton Castle's plotting is told on its listing, which is the one place to read about a room that may never have been secret.
History you can walk up to, most of it free.
Sight · Monument · Edgehill and Radway
The first pitched battle of the English Civil War was fought below Edge Hill on 23 October 1642. Most of the field is now closed Ministry of Defence land, so you see it from the ridge and from a roadside memorial stone. Registered by Historic England.
Sight · Bridge · Cropredy
The bridge over the River Cherwell at Cropredy, north of Banbury, where a royalist army beat Sir William Waller on 29 June 1644. This is a 1937 rebuild faced in old Hornton stone, with an inscription on its south side. Free to see at any time.
Sight · Monument · Banbury
The cross of the nursery rhyme stands at the top of Banbury High Street, but it is a Victorian monument of 1858 to 1859, put up about 250 years after the town's medieval crosses were pulled down. Grade II*, free and seen from the street at any time.
Sight · Castle or ruin · Deddington
Grassy ramparts up to 15m high are what is left of Deddington's Norman castle, which belonged to William the Conqueror's half-brother. Now the village park and sports field, free in daylight, with English Heritage caring for the inner bailey. Earthworks only.
Sight · Historic building
A ten-bay medieval barn of ironstone, built for New College, Oxford, in about 1401, with its medieval timber roof. Grade I and a scheduled monument, six miles west of Banbury, and open free on summer Sunday afternoons.
Sight · Church · Banbury
A round-towered classical church on Horse Fair in Banbury, built after the medieval church was brought down, in part with gunpowder. Grade I, by S. P. Cockerell. Open most mornings.
A new piece of local history about once a month, with the sources named.
Yes. It was fought below Edge Hill, north-west of Banbury, on 23 October 1642, the first pitched battle of the Civil War. Most of the field is now closed Ministry of Defence land.
No. Banbury's aldermen had the High Cross pulled down in 1600. The one you can see dates from 1859 and may not stand where the old one did. Our story has the record.
Nobody has ever shown who she was. Celia Fiennes is one candidate, without any evidence. The town has a bronze of her all the same, unveiled in 2005.
No. His ancestor Lawrence Washington built it, but George never lived there. Our story covers how it was built, lost and bought back in 1914.
Because of Hornton stone, a rusty ironstone quarried at Hornton and on Edge Hill for centuries. Our piece explains the geology.
What is on, what is new and what is in season in Banburyshire, in your inbox about once a month.