Local voices, Strange Things and the guides, written by people who live here.
58 stories
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 · Strange Things · 6 minute read
The odd corners of the country round Banbury: a ghost battle in the sky over Edgehill, a witch who turned a king to stone at Rollright, a lost red horse, a three-day saint, a priest said to have died of fright, and ruins built to look ruined. Each one told with what is on record.
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 · Guides · 10 minute read
The best pubs near Banbury: Great Tew's Falkland Arms, the Hook Norton Brewery pubs, the Duke of Cumberland's Head at Clifton and the Reine Deer in the town, with which have rooms, which take dogs and which close on Mondays.
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.
Story · Strange Things · 6 minute read
In January 1643 a London pamphlet said the Battle of Edgehill was being fought again in the night sky, and that officers sent by the King had seen it. The pamphlet is real. We cannot trace the claim that a royal commission's report survives as a state record.
Story · History · 8 minute read
The Fiennes family has held Broughton Castle, near Banbury, since a marriage in 1448. In that time one lord was killed by Cade's rebels, one at Barnet, one plotted against Charles I in the house, and later ones sold the contents and sold the swans. The family still lives there.
Story · History · 7 minute read
For half a century the hills west of Banbury were dug for iron ore and carried away by rail: a busy private line from Wroxton, a narrow gauge tramway at Hook Norton and a light railway on Edge Hill that barely ran. What they were, why they closed and what you can still trace.
Story · History · 6 minute read
Banbury cakes are spiced currant cakes known by 1610. The oldest printed recipe we have found, in Gervase Markham's household book, was a yeasted dough. This is what the records show, what they do not, and a recipe worked from his method, with the later puff pastry version.
Story · Guides · 9 minute read
The Oxford Canal near Banbury: Tooley's Boatyard and the free museum in town, the towpath north to Cropredy, Aynho Wharf and its odd lock to the south, boat trips and day boats, canalside pubs, and what low water has done to the summers.
Story · Strange Things · 5 minute read
A great horse was cut into the red hillside above Tysoe, under Edge Hill, and scoured each year in the eighteenth century. It gave the Vale of the Red Horse its name, then was lost around 1800. Who said they saw it, the legend of the Earl of Warwick, and what the diggers found.
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