Adderbury

Coordinates: 52°00′58″N 1°18′47″W / 52.016°N 1.313°W / 52.016; -1.313
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Adderbury
Shire county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post townBanbury
Postcode districtOX17
Dialling code01295
PoliceThames Valley
FireOxfordshire
AmbulanceSouth Central
UK Parliament
WebsiteAdderbury.org Adderbury Parish Council
List of places
UK
England
Oxfordshire
52°00′58″N 1°18′47″W / 52.016°N 1.313°W / 52.016; -1.313

Adderbury is a winding

civil parish about 3 miles (5 km) south of Banbury in northern Oxfordshire, England. The settlement has five sections: the new Milton Road housing Development & West Adderbury towards the southwest; East Adderbury to the centre, both with a village green and a manor house; and the new housing Development on the Aynho Road; and the northeast, which is known as Twyford, named after a small outlying settlement by a forked section of the River Cherwell
.

East and West Adderbury are divided by the south- then east-flowing Sor Brook, a tributary of the Cherwell. Sor Brook rises at

Cherwell Valley Lines
.

Toponym

The village toponym has had several changes of spelling. The earliest known record of it is in a document from the middle of the 10th century.[2] The Domesday Book of 1086 records it as Edburgberie, meaning "Eadburg's town".

History

New College tithe barn: 14th or early 15th century
Adderbury West Manor House

Adderbury is an ancient village, with reference to

Athelstan granting land here to the Bishop of Winchester in 1014.[3]

Adderbury is noted for the many honey-coloured limestone cottages and houses in the older parts of the village. East Adderbury's manor house is 16th century and features diamond-patterned brick chimney-stacks. The Grange, also in East Adderbury, was built by John Bloxham of Banbury for Sir Thomas Cobb, first Baronet, of Banbury, in 1684.[4]

Near St Mary's Parish Church is a

tithe barn that was built for New College, Oxford. In the 1970s Jennifer Sherwood dated it mainly to the 14th century[4] but English Heritage dates the earliest parts of the building to 1422. The walls are of ashlar marlstone and the roof is of Stonesfield slate. In the 17th century the barn was reduced to its present length of five bays and partly rebuilt. In about 1877 it was altered for Lawrence Palk, 1st Baron Haldon. The barn has similarities with tithe barns at Swalcliffe and Upper Heyford, both of which were also built for New College early in the 15th century. Because of its post-Medieval alterations it is only a Grade II listed building.[5]

Major Larnach of Adderbury House's horse Jeddah won the Derby at odds of 100–1 and also won at Ascot, the Major paid for the building of the Village Institute. This opened in 1898 and has been the setting of countless village events, ranging from early instruction and sewing meetings to the present-day activities.

Places of worship

Church of England
Gothic piscina (left) and sedilia (right) in the chancel of St Mary's parish church

The

Saint Mary the Virgin is in East Adderbury. St Mary's is one of the largest parish churches in Oxfordshire and architecturally one of the most important.[6] It is nicknamed the Cathedral of the Feldon.[citation needed] St Mary's building retains evidence of its 13th-century origins but was enlarged in the 14th century and again in the Perpendicular style in the early 15th century.[7] By 1611, St Mary's had a clock, for which there are records of repairs in 1617, 1621, 1626 and 1631.[8] In 1684 it was replaced with a new clock, which with periodic repairs served the parish until late in the 19th century.[9] It has since been replaced with a new clock built by John Smith and Sons of Derby, and little has been preserved of the 1684 clock except one shaft from the motion and the remains of one hand.[10]
In the 18th century, St Mary's fell into disrepair.

In the 19th century restoration was carried out in phases: sensitively by the architect J.C. Buckler between 1831 and 1834 and by the architect Sir George Gilbert Scott between 1866 and 1870, and less sensitively by Sir George's son John Oldrid Scott in 1886.[6] St Mary's had a ring of six bells until 1789, when John Briant of Hertford took them down and re-cast them into a ring of eight.[10] The third bell was recast again in 1863, this time by George Mears and Company of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry.[11] The sixth bell was recast again in 1927, this time by John Taylor & Co of Loughborough.[11] St Mary's also has a Sanctus bell that was cast by Matthew I Bagley of Chacombe, Northamptonshire in 1681.[11] St Mary's is a Grade I listed building.[12] The spire reaches a height of 148 feet (45 metres).[13]

Methodist

The

Methodist Circuit.[15]

Roman Catholic

The

Roman Catholic Saint George
's chapel in Round Close Road in West Adderbury was built in 1956.

No longer in religious use

Society of Friends
Former Friends' meeting house

The former West Adderbury

Act of Toleration 1689 legalised Quaker worship in England, so Doyley was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment for having had it built.[citation needed] Quaker meetings ceased in the early 20th century and the meeting house was leased to the Parish Council, who maintain the building but had the adjoining women's meeting house demolished in about 1955.[citation needed] Today, the Meeting House is used for up to four special Friends' meetings per year, as allowed by the Parish Council's lease. The meeting house is also used as a waiting room for the Parish Council's adjoining cemetery. The meeting house retains 18th century benches, elders' stand and gallery, and is a Grade II* listed building.[17] Next to it are the walls of the Quaker burial ground, which are also probably 17th-century.[18]

Independent (former)
Former Independent chapel in Cross Hill Road

A former Independent chapel, self-governing and owing no allegiance to outside denominations was built in 1820 in Cross Hill Road in West Adderbury. The main door was widened when the chapel was converted to industrial use (right).[14]

Adderbury House

Adderbury House is a

Sir William Chambers for Henry Scott, 3rd Duke of Buccleuch. In 1739, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, hosted fellow poet Alexander Pope, who composed a poem on his visit.[3]

In the early 1760s, Lancelot 'Capability' Brown was asked to create a plan for the park and gardens at Adderbury for Jane, Duchess of Argyll. It is more likely that improvements to the landscape were overseen at a later date by Henry Scott, 3rd Duke of Buccleuch after he inherited the estate from her in 1767. Brown's account book shows a charge of £42 for a journey to Adderbury and the preparation of plan 'for alteration of the Park & Gardens'.[19] It is unclear how much, if any, of Brown's plans were implemented but when the estate was sold in 1774, the grounds consisted of 224 acres of flower gardens, parkland enclosed by belts of evergreens and forest trees and “a fine serpentine stream of water in full view of the house”[20] which was very much in his style.

In the mid-1850s, the owner William Hunt Chamberlin altered the lake area and turned it into pleasure grounds with ornamental buildings and planting. Most of the house was demolished in 1808.[21]

Clockmakers

Adderbury's Quaker community included a number of clockmakers. Richard Gilkes (1715–87) was a son of Thomas Gilkes of

longcase clocks and succeeded Richard Gilkes in the maintenance of the parish church clock, which he did from 1788 until 1827.[26] His son William Williams (1793–1862) assisted him and took over the business on his father's death in 1835.[26] He made longcase clocks and maintained the parish church clock from 1828 until 1839.[26]

Morris dancing

Morris dancers at the Adderbury Day of Dance 2004, outside the Red Lion

The existence of the traditional Adderbury Morris dancing side was first documented by Janet Blunt. In 1916 she began interviewing William "Binx" Walton, who was then 80 years old. Walton had been foreman of the Adderbury side for 20 years in the mid-19th century.[27] In 1919 Blunt introduced Walton to Cecil Sharp, who watched Walton's performances and published detailed descriptions in his Morris Book. Subsequent researches have determined that there were once as many as three Morris sides in the village, and the names of more than two dozen of the 19th century dancers have been documented. During Whitsun week they performed in Adderbury and neighbouring villages. Sides regularly used to dance at Banbury Fair and the well-known Banbury eccentric, William 'Old Mettle' Castle, was fool for the Adderbury team in the 19th century. During this period the village had two or possibly three sides performing although this had died out by the 1880s.

A revival side was established at the village school in the

Edwardian era and some of the boys developed into a men's Morris side, prior to the First World War. There are pictures of this side and the names of the members were established, through talking to older village residents, in 1974. One of the dancers in the photographs, Charlie Coleman, was still alive at that time. Of those in the pictures, only Coleman returned from the war and that revival of Morris dancing in Adderbury therefore died with them. However, the dances had been recorded from two of the last surviving members of the 19th century team, brothers William and John Walton, in such detail by Janet Blunt and others that they could still be performed by a newly formed revival team led by Bryan Sheppard and Tim Radford.[28]

The side split in 1975 to form two Morris dancing sides in Adderbury, the Adderbury Village Morris Men (dressed in white and green with top hats) – whose members come from the village or surrounding parishes and only dance traditional dances from Adderbury – and the Adderbury Morris Men (dressed in white, blue and red), who take dancers from anywhere and who occasionally create new dances to add to the repertoire.[29] There is also now a women's side, named "Sharp and Blunt" after Cecil Sharp and Janet Blunt.[30] The Adderbury tradition has become popular with groups of dancers from as far afield as the United States, Australia and India. Once a year both teams come together, with other guest sides, for a "Day of Dance" throughout the village.

Amenities

There is a village shop and library in the High Street. The parish room and library were given in 1893 by J. F. Stankey of

public houses
:

Adderbury village activities include tennis and squash, The

Cropredy Festival where they performed the Pheasant Pluckers Song.[citation needed
]

Games and sports

Adderbury has a

SSS 69. From the white tees
the courses extends 6,121 yards (5,597 m) and from the yellow tees up to 5,845 yards (5,345 m). The Ladies' yardage is 5,444 yards (4,978 m) with Par 70 SSS 70.

Transport

Adderbury is on the

Cherwell Valley Lines, to the north of which Kings Sutton railway station is connected to the easternmost of three watercourse bridges at Old Twyford by a direct footpath. The M40 motorway
passes through the north-east of the parish a few miles south of reaching junction 11 adjoining Banbury's town centre.

Dismantled Banbury and Cheltenham Direct railway

The former Banbury and Cheltenham Direct Railway, part of the Great Western Railway, was completed in 1881. Adderbury railway station was at East Adderbury. British Railways closed the station in 1951 and closed the railway to freight in 1964.

Notable people

  • Lawrence of Arabia
  • Anthony Burgess, novelist, lived here in the early 1950s.
  • John Craven, TV presenter
  • MP
    , lived in Adderbury until his death in 1977.
  • Carl Mason, golfer.
  • John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester, lived at Adderbury House, where he entertained Alexander Pope.[3]

References

  1. Neighbourhood Statistics. Office for National Statistics. Archived from the original
    on 17 November 2015. Retrieved 10 August 2015.
  2. ^ Ekwall 1940, p. 2.
  3. ^ a b c d "Parishes: Adderbury Pages 5-44 A History of the County of Oxford: Volume 9, Bloxham Hundred". British History Online. Victoria County History, 1969. Retrieved 17 December 2023.
  4. ^ a b Sherwood & Pevsner 1974, p. 416.
  5. ^ Historic England. "Tithe barn adjoining Tythe Barn House (Grade II) (1365854)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 11 August 2011.
  6. ^ a b Sherwood & Pevsner 1974, p. 413.
  7. ^ Sherwood & Pevsner 1974, pp. 413–414.
  8. ^ Beeson 1989, p. 162.
  9. ^ Beeson 1989, pp. 26–27.
  10. ^ a b Beeson 1989, p. 27.
  11. ^ a b c Smith, Martin (1 August 2008). "Adderbury S Mary". Dove's Guide for Church Bell Ringers. Central Council of Church Bell Ringers. Retrieved 25 March 2012.
  12. ^ Historic England. "Church of St Mary (Grade I) (1200012)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 10 August 2015.
  13. OCLC 958378015.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  14. ^ a b Sherwood & Pevsner 1974, p. 415.
  15. ^ "Adderbury Methodist Church". Banbury Methodist Circuit. Retrieved 10 August 2015.
  16. ^ Beeson 1989, pp. 16, 102.
  17. ^ Historic England. "Friends Meeting House (Grade II*) (1046356)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 10 August 2015.
  18. ^ Historic England. "Boundary walls and entrance gate to burial ground of Friends meeting house (Grade II) (1046357)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 10 August 2015.
  19. ^ "Capability Brown's account book on the RHS website".
  20. ^ "Capability Brown Festival".
  21. ^ Sherwood & Pevsner 1974, pp. 416–417.
  22. ^ a b Beeson 1989, p. 101.
  23. ^ Beeson 1989, p. 102.
  24. ^ Beeson 1989, p. 103.
  25. ^ Beeson 1989, p. 150.
  26. ^ a b c Beeson 1989, p. 151.
  27. ^ Janet Heatly Blunt's Biography in EFDSS
  28. ISBN 978-0850339949
    .
  29. ^ The modern revival in Adderbury
  30. ^ Female Influences on Morris Dance in Adderbury
  31. ^ "The Bell Inn". Retrieved 10 August 2015.
  32. ^ "Coach and Horses, Adderbury". Retrieved 11 June 2015.
  33. ^ "Pickled Ploughman, Adderbury". Retrieved 11 June 2015.
  34. Greene King Brewery. Archived from the original
    on 6 September 2015. Retrieved 10 August 2015.
  35. ^ Adderbury Bowls Club
  36. ^ Banbury Westend Tennis and Squash Club
  37. ^ Adderbury Park Football Club
  38. ^ Banbury Golf Club Archived 8 April 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  39. ^ "Service S4". Stagecoach in Oxfordshire. 31 May 2015. Retrieved 3 September 2015.[permanent dead link]

Sources and further reading

External links

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