Drayton, Cherwell

Coordinates: 52°04′19″N 1°22′30″W / 52.072°N 1.375°W / 52.072; -1.375
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Drayton
Shire county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post townBanbury
Postcode districtOX15
Dialling code01295
PoliceThames Valley
FireOxfordshire
AmbulanceSouth Central
UK Parliament
List of places
UK
England
Oxfordshire
52°04′19″N 1°22′30″W / 52.072°N 1.375°W / 52.072; -1.375

Drayton is a village and

2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 242.[1]

Early history

Tesselated tiles and Roman coins found near the parish church indicate that there was a Roman villa in the area of what later became Drayton village.[2] Drayton village is Saxon in origin. Its toponym comes from the Old English drag meaning to carry goods.[2]

Manor

After the

Norman conquest of 1066, the conquering Normans dispossessed many Saxon landowners. However, the Domesday Book records that in 1086 Drayton still belonged to a Saxon thegn, Turchil of Arden. Two years later, in 1088, William the Conqueror created the Earldom of Warwick and thereafter gave Turchil's estates to the Norman nobleman Henry de Beaumont, 1st Earl of Warwick. The Arden family seems to have remained as tenants of the Earldom, for in 1204 a Thomas Arden held the tenancy. In 1329 Sir Robert Arden was licensed to crenellate Drayton manor house
. The male line of the Arden family ended in 1376 with the death of Sir Giles Arden, whose son had predeceased him. Sir Giles' granddaughters Margaret and Joan were minors, but on reaching their majority and marriage they inherited the Drayton estate.

Joan and her husband surrendered their share of Drayton to Margaret who had married Lewis Greville. The house remained the seat of the Greville family until 1565, when a later Lewis Greville was heavily in debt and sold the manor to one Thomas Webb. By 1588 Thomas Webb had died leaving Drayton to his brother Richard and widow Katherine. Lewis Greville lured Richard Webb to Sezincote House in Gloucestershire where Greville got Webb drunk, persuaded him to write a will in Greville's favour and then murdered him. Greville was tried for murder, and because he refused to enter a plea he was executed by pressing instead of hanging.[2]

By 1598 most of the manor of Drayton belonged to

Bruern. When Sir Charles Cope, 3rd Baronet died in 1781, Drayton passed to one of his sisters, Catherine. In 1790 Catherine's daughter Arabella was married to John Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset
and received Drayton from her mother.

In 1825 Drayton was inherited by the Duke and Duchess's younger daughter, Elizabeth Sackville-West, Countess De La Warr. When she died in 1870 her manorial rights passed to the North family of Wroxton Abbey.[2] In about 1629 Sir William Cope, 2nd Baronet sold a large acreage of land at Drayton to William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele of Broughton Castle. By 1790 the same property belonged to Francis North, 1st Earl of Guilford of Wroxton Abbey. In 1935 and 1942 the Norths sold their lands at Drayton to Trinity College, Oxford.[2]

Parish church

The

tower was added in 1808[4] and has three 17th century bells: two cast in 1634 and two more cast in 1670.[2] In 1878 the Gothic Revival architect Edwin Dolby restored the church and added a vestry.[4] St Peter's is a Grade II* listed building.[5]

Sir Anthony Cope, 1st Baronet (1550–1615) was a

missionaries in other continents.[2] St Peter's is now one of eight ecclesiastical parishes in the Ironstone Benefice.[6]

Social and economic history

Hornton Stone
house in Drayton

The Domesday Book records that in 1086 Drayton had a

rectory built on the same site by the architect Arthur Blomfield,[4] but the Victorian house retains cellars built in the 17th century.[2]

The main road between Banbury and Warwick runs north–south along a ridge in the eastern part of the parish. It was made into a

Act of Parliament to turn this road was passed in 1747; works to improve the road and establish toll houses were not undertaken until 1754.[2] Since the 1920s it has been classified the A422 road
.

Drayton's earliest recorded

public houses were licensed from 1753. By 1782 the village had two pubs, the Hare and Hounds and the Roebuck Inn. The last record of the Hare and Hounds is from 1806,[2] but the Roebuck Inn continues to trade. It is a 17th-century[2] Hornton Stone building with a thatched roof, and is controlled by the local Hook Norton Brewery.[7]

Thomas Webb had

First World War to carry ironstone from a quarry west of Horley to a junction with the Great Western Railway just north of Banbury. The ironstone
railway passed just north of Drayton. It was opened in 1917 and closed in 1967.

North Oxfordshire Academy

North Oxfordshire Academy is a county secondary school just outside the village. It was founded in 2007 to take over the premises of the former Drayton School, which had been opened in 1973.

See also

  • History of Banbury, Oxfordshire

References

  1. Neighbourhood Statistics. Office for National Statistics
    . Retrieved 10 November 2015.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Lobel & Crossley 1969, pp. 103–112
  3. ^ a b Lobel & Crossley 1969, pp. 112–123.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Sherwood & Pevsner 1974, p. 587
  5. ^ Historic England. "Church of St Peter (Grade II*) (1369591)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 10 November 2015.
  6. A Church Near You. Church of England. Archived from the original
    on 6 April 2015. Retrieved 10 November 2015.
  7. ^ "The Roebuck Inn at Drayton". Hook Norton Brewery. Retrieved 10 November 2015.

Sources

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Drayton, Cherwell.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Drayton,_Cherwell&oldid=1253425001"