A History of the County of Oxford: Volume IX: Bloxham Hundred (Victoria County History)

This volume contains the histories of eleven north Oxfordshire parishes and of Bloxham hundred, to which those parishes belonged. The hundred lies intermingled with Banbury hundred in the valleys between the Cherwell and the Cotswold crest along the modern Warwickshire border, and exhibits the chief characteristics of a wider region centred on the important market-town of Banbury. The area covered contained nineteen nucleated settlements, supported almost exclusively by mixed farming, to which the soil was particularly well suited. The prosperity that derived from agriculture is reflected in the fine parish churches, like those of Bloxham and Adderbury, in the quality of the surviving peasant building, and in the large country houses, Wroxton Abbey, Broughton Castle, and Hanwell Castle. The area was notable also for its Puritanism, and later for Quakerism, both of which gained their strength not only from the prosperous independent farmers of the area but also from the leadership of the larger land- owners, the Fienneses of Broughton, the Copes of Hanwell, and Bray Doyley of Adderbury.