Alan Crossley – författare

This volume contains the history of the four large parishes in north Oxfordshire that formed the hundred of Banbury: Banbury, Charlbury, Cropredy, and Swal-cliffe. The four parishes do not constitute a single, compact area, and are linked together because they belonged in the early Middle Ages to the bishops of Lincoln and probably represent ancient estates exempted from royal dues for the benefit of the bishops' predecessors in the see of Dorchester. Banbury itself contains an early castle and represents the successful estab-lishment of a 'new town' in the 12th century. From 1554 to 1832 it was a parliamentary borough; it was widely known for its Puritanism, and won a place in literature not only for the Banbury Cross of the nursery rhyme but also for its cakes, cheese, and ale. Its character as a market town was changed by industrial growth in the 19th century, the traditional textile industries yieldingto the manufacture of agricultural implements, which was in turn over-shadowed in the 20th century by food-manufacture, light engineering, and alu-minium. By contrast, Charlbury, lying 14 miles south-west of Banbury, is a small and relatively little-known market town which was a centre of the gloving industry. Both Charlbury and the rural parishes of Cropredy and Swalcliffe are unusually well documented because they contained exten-sive estates of abbeys and colleges. Each of the four parishes contains several separate villages, and, in all, the volume covers an area of over 20,000 acres and more than 20 settlements.

This volume contains the histories of 19 parishes in the northern part of Wootton hundred, stretching from Stonesfield, Wootton, and Tackley in the south to Deddington, Barford St. Michael, and South Newington in the north; the other parishes are Glympton, Heythrop, Rousham, Sandford St. Martin, the Astons, the Bartons, the Wortons, and the three Tews. The area, bounded on the east by the river Cherwell and on part of the west by the river Glyme, containsthe small, well documented, market town of Deddington, two outstanding country houses at Heythrop and Rousham, and many other notable secular and ecclesiastical buildings. Probably the best known village is Great Tew, whose development is here reinterpreted in the light of new evidence. The many deserted village sites in the area are treated in detail, and special attention has been given to the arrangement of open fields, of which a local feature was thedevelopment within a single vill of two separate sets of fields, known as ends or sides, as at Deddington, Duns Tew, and South Newington. The complex arrangements for the periodical division of common meadows are well documented in some parishes, particularly North Aston. A feature of religious life in the area was the establishment at Nether and Over Worton in the early 19th century of a strong, locally influential, tradition of evangelical Anglicanism. The volume is illustrated with 20 pages of plates, two church plans, and numerous parish and village maps.

Unique multi-disciplinary study of the histories of nineteen parishes in the northern part of Wootton hundredBased on intensive new research and exploring landscape, settlement, farming, and social and religious life, this volume contains the histories of nineteen parishes, including Glympton, Heythrop, Rousham, Sandford St. Martin, the Astons, the Bartons, the Wortons, and the three Tews.

This volume contains the histories of five ancient parishes in the west of Oxfordshire near the river Thames, comprising the small town of Bampton and some 13 villages and hamlets. Though chiefly looking to markets at Witney and Oxford the area was long dominated by Bampton, the centre of a large Anglo-Saxon estate, site of a late Anglo-Saxon minster, and formerly a market town. A detailed account is given of the town's topography, buildings, and economicdevelopments and the organization of the local landscape from an early date is explored. Most villages were nucleated, and despite some controversial early inclosures, notably at Northmoor, open-field farming prevailed until the 19th century. A few scattered hamlets and farmsteads resulted probably from woodland clearance or late colonization, and several settlements were shrunk or deserted in the late Middle Ages. Standlake had a medieval market and fair,and until the late 17th century there was textile and leather working notably at Standlake and Bampton. Important buildings include the former Bampton castle, the 15th-century timber-framed manor house at Yelford, and CokethorpeHouse. Bampton church is of unusual size and quality, and carvings in Ducklington church may be associated with a late medieval cult of the Virgin. Cote was an important centre of religious noncon-formity from the 17th century.

Edition of records of Oxford apprentices provides valuable evidence for historians.Oxford greatly expanded and flourished under the Tudors, as the reviving University provided a growing body of consumers and trade for shopkeepers and craftsmen. They needed apprentices - and in huge numbers, as the material inthis volume demonstrates. It calendars the enrolments of over two thousand apprenticeship contracts made during this period; they are a familiar source for social and economic history and genealogy, but the Oxford material, in both quantity and detail, is quite exceptional. Moreover, sixteenth-century enrolments are much fuller than their more familiar seventeenth-century successors, containing miscellaneous information of great interest, notably lists ofworking tools, details of journeymen's wages, and stipulations about apprentices' behaviour.The data is discussed in an Introduction which re-examines the apprenticeship system on the basis of the unusually plentiful statistics, throwing new light on such matters as length of service, payment of premiums, and the rates of career failure and success. Oxford recruited apprentices from an astonishingly wide area; their places of origin are identified and mapped, and an analysis of their social and geographical origins breaks new ground in the field of migration studies. More prosaically the calendar provides the genealogist and local historian with the names, parentage, and places of origin of thousands of young men from all over England and Wales - crucial raw material for much-needed further research.on the later movements of qualified apprentices. Alan Crossley is a member of the modern history faculty, University of Oxford.