Banbury

The name Banbury derives from "Banna", a Saxon chieftain said to have built a stockade there in the 6th century (or possibly a byname from Old English: bana meaning felon, murderer[2]), and burgh / burh meaning settlement.[3][4] In Anglo Saxon it was called Banesburh (dative Banesbyrig).[5][6] The name appears as Banesberie in Domesday Book.[5][6] Another known spelling was Banesebury in Medieval times.

The town hall in December 2005

People's Park in 2001

Banbury's oldest pub, the Reindeer Inn

During excavations for the construction of an office building in Hennef Way in 2002, the remains of a British Iron Age settlement with circular buildings dating back to 200 BC were found. The site contained around 150 pieces of pottery and stone. Later there was a Roman villa at nearby Wykham Park.[5][7]

The area was settled by the Saxons around the late 5th century.[5] In about 556 Banbury was the scene of a battle between the local Anglo-Saxons of Cynric and Ceawlin, and the local Romano-British. It was a local centre for Anglo-Saxon settlement by the mid-6th century.[5] Banbury developed in the Anglo-Saxon period[7] under Danish influence, starting in the late 6th century. It was assessed at 50 hides in the Domesday survey and was then held by the Bishop of Lincoln.

The Saxons built Banbury on the west bank of the River Cherwell. On the opposite bank they built Grimsbury, which was formerly part of Northamptonshire. Another district, Neithrop, is one of the oldest areas in Banbury, having first been recorded as a hamlet in the 13th century. Both Grimsbury and Neithrop were formally incorporated into the borough of Banbury in 1889.[8][9]

Banbury stands at the junction of two ancient roads: Salt Way (used as a bridle path to the west and south of the town), its primary use being transport of salt; and Banbury Lane, which began near Northampton and is closely followed by the modern 22-mile-long (35 km) road. It continued through what is now Banbury's High Street and towards the Fosse Way at Stow-on-the-Wold. Banbury's medieval prosperity was based on wool.

Banbury Castle was built from 1135 by Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, and survived into the Civil War, when it was besieged. Due to its proximity to Oxford, the King's capital, Banbury was at one stage a Royalist town, but the inhabitants were known to be strongly Puritan. The castle was demolished after the war.

Banbury played an important part in the English Civil War as a base of operations for Oliver Cromwell, who is reputed to have planned the Battle of Edge Hill in the back room (which can still be visited) of a local inn, the Reindeer Inn as it was then known (today's Ye Olde Reine Deer Inn).[10] The town was pro-Parliamentarian, but the castle was manned by a Royalist garrison who supported King Charles I. In 1645 during the Civil War, Parliamentary troops were billeted in nearby Hanwell[11] for nine weeks and villagers petitioned the Warwickshire Committee of Accounts to pay for feeding them.[11]

The modern Castle Quay Shopping Centre alongside the Oxford Canal, with Banbury Museum in the background

Banbury's Fine Lady Statue.

The opening of the Oxford Canal from Hawkesbury Junction to Banbury on 30 March 1778 gave the town a cheap and reliable supply of Warwickshire coal.[12] In 1787 the Oxford Canal was extended southwards,[13] finally opening to Oxford on 1 January 1790.[14] The canal's main boat yard was the original outlay of today's Tooley's Boatyard.[15]

People's Park was set up as a private park in 1890 and opened in 1910, along with the adjacent bowling green.

The land south of the Foscote Private Hospital in Calthorpe and Easington Farm were mostly open farmland until the early 1960s as shown by the Ordnance Survey maps of 1964, 1955 and 1947. It had only a few farmsteads, the odd house, an allotment field (now under the Sainsbury's store), the Municipal Borough of Banbury council's small reservoir just south of Easington Farm and a water spring lay to the south of it. The Ruscote estate, which now has a notable South Asian community, was expanded in the 1950s because of the growth of the town due to the London overspill and further grew in the mid-1960s.

British Railways closed Merton Street railway station and the Buckingham to Banbury line to passenger traffic at the end of 1960. Merton Street goods depot continued to handle livestock traffic for Banbury's cattle market until 1966, when this too was discontinued and the railway dismantled. In March 1962 Sir John Betjeman celebrated the line from Culworth Junction in his poem Great Central Railway, Sheffield Victoria to Banbury. British Railways closed this line too in 1966.

The main railway station, previously called Banbury General but now called simply Banbury, is now served by trains running from London Paddington via Reading and Oxford, from London Marylebone via High Wycombe and Bicester onwards to Birmingham and Kidderminster and by Cross Country Trains from Bournemouth to Birmingham and Manchester.

Banbury used to have a cattle market.[16] Situated on Merton Street in Grimsbury, for many decades, cattle and other farm animals were driven there on the hoof from as far as Scotland to be sold to feed the growing population of London and other towns. Since its closure in June 1998, a new housing development has been built on its site which includes Dashwood Primary School. The estate, which lies between Banbury and Hanwell, was built on the grounds of Hanwell Farm during 2005 and 2006.

Some old houses in Aynho, which is claimed to be in Banburyshire

Banburyshire is an informal area centred on Banbury, claimed to include parts of Northamptonshire and Warwickshire as well as north Oxfordshire. Use of the term dates from the early to mid 19th century. It was common in the 19th century for market towns in England to describe their hinterland by tacking "shire" onto the town's name.[17] "Stones Map of Banburyshire" held by the Centre of Banbury Studies was published in the 1870s or 1880s[18] and it asserted that the term originated in the 1830s[19] but no source is given for that assertion. In the 1850s magazine articles used "Banburyshire" or the hyphenated term "Banbury-shire".[20] The Banburyshire Natural History Society was formed in 1881.[21] In the 20th century a number of books used the term "Banburyshire" in their titles, dating from the early 1960s.[22][23][24][25] The county of Oxfordshire has two main commercial centres, the city of Oxford itself that serves most of the south of the county, and Banbury that serves the north (such as Adderbury, Deddington, Wroxton, Great Bourton and Bloxham) plus parts of the neighbouring counties of Northamptonshire and Warwickshire.[19][26][27][28][29]

The villages of King's Sutton and Middleton Cheney, and possibly also Aynho, Fenny Compton, Charlton and Croughton could be considered part of Banburyshire, as well as Upper and Lower Brailes. The settlements of Bicester, Hinton-in-the-Hedges, Chipping Norton and Hook Norton are on the border of Banburyshire's area.[26]

There was a plan in the late 2000s to expand the Bretch Hill estate westwards into local farmland,[30][31][32][33] but this has now been suspended due to the credit crunch and local hostility to the plan, including the southern expansion towards Bodicote.[30][31][32][33][34]

The Hanwell Fields Estate was built in the north between 2001 and 2009.[30][31][32][33][34] It was intended to provide affordable social housing to the west and south of Banbury, and more upmarket housing in the Hanwell fields area.[34]

The post of the mayor of Banbury was created in 1607.[37] The first mayor was Thomas Webb.

A number of roads are named after former mayors of the town, including Mascord Road, Mold Crescent and Fairfax Close. Another former mayor, Angela Billingham, went into national politics.

Owing to the surrounding area's notable links with world motorsport, the town is home to many well known organisations within the industry. Prodrive, one of the world's largest motorsport and automotive technology specialists, is based in the town as are a host of race teams involved in competition across many different disciplines and countries.

Within Formula One, two teams have had their base of operations in Banbury. The Simtek team which competed in the 1994 and 1995 F1 World Championships was based on the Wildmere Industrial Estate. The Marussia F1 team had its manufacturing and production facility sited on Thorpe Way Industrial Estate using the building formerly owned by Ascari Cars, a luxury sports car manufacturer. Both Simtek and Marussia F1 had been brought to Banbury by Nick Wirth who owned the Simtek team and was the former Technical Director at Marussia. After Marussia F1 went into administration in 2014, their base was purchased by the United States-based Haas F1 Team to service their cars during the European races.[45]

Until 2017, when the team went into administration and subsequently folded, Manor Racing (the successor to Marussia) was based in the town.

Arden Motorsport, a British multi-formula motorsports team (founded by Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner), is also based in the town.

Banbury has one of the UK's lowest unemployment rates, as of April 2016 it stood at 0.7%.[46] Once Poland joined the European Union in 2004, a number of Banbury-based employment agencies began advertising for staff in major Polish newspapers. In 2006 one estimate placed between 5,000 and 6,000 Poles in the town. With the influx of the largely Roman Catholic Poles, one local church was offering a Mass said partially in Polish and specialist Polish food shops had opened.[47]

The Jacobs Douwe Egberts factory in Banbury has been a major employer in the town since the mid-1960s.

Jacobs Douwe Egberts, in the Ruscote ward of Banbury, is a large food and coffee producing factory.[48] It was built in 1964 and has gone through a number of ownership changes since. It is still sometimes known by its previous names of Bird's, Kraft and General Foods or GF.

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Banbury was once home to Western Europe's largest cattle market, on Merton Street in Grimsbury. The market was a key feature of Victorian life in the town and county. It was formally closed in June 1998, after being abandoned several years earlier and was replaced with a new housing development and Dashwood Primary School.[5]

The Fine Lady and Banbury Cross. The cross was designed by John Gibbs and erected in 1859.

At one time Banbury had many crosses (the High Cross, the Bread Cross and the White Cross), but these were destroyed by Puritans in 1600.[7][50] Banbury remained without a cross for more than 250 years until the current Banbury Cross was erected in 1859 at the centre of the town to commemorate the marriage of Victoria, Princess Royal (eldest child of Queen Victoria) to Prince Frederick of Prussia. The current Banbury Cross is a stone, spire-shaped monument decorated in Gothic form. Statues of Queen Victoria, Edward VII and George V were added in 1914 to commemorate the coronation of George V. The cross is 52 feet 6 inches (16 m) high, and topped by a gilt cross.

Towns with crosses in England before the reformation were places of Christian pilgrimage.

The English nursery rhyme "Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross", in its several forms, may refer to one of the crosses destroyed by Puritans in 1600.[50] In April 2005, Princess Anne unveiled a large bronze statue depicting the Fine Lady upon a White Horse of the nursery rhyme.[51] It stands on the corner of West Bar and South Bar, just yards from the present Banbury Cross.

Banbury has a museum in the town centre near Spiceball Park, replacing the old museum near Banbury Cross.[52] It is accessible over a bridge from the Castle Quay Shopping Centre or via Spiceball Park Road. Admission to the museum is free. The town's tourist information centre is located in the museum entrance in the Castle Quay Shopping Centre.

Tooley's Boatyard was built in 1790 and is a historic site with a 200-year-old blacksmiths' shop.

Spiceball centre in 2010

Spiceball Park is the largest park in Banbury. It is east of the Oxford Canal, mainly west of the River Cherwell, north of Castle Quay and south of Hennef Way. It includes three large fields, a children's play area and a skateboard park. Across the road from the main park there is the sports centre, which includes a swimming pool, courts, café and gym facilities.

The sports centre began to be re-developed in late 2009, for a new centre and café, which was completed by mid 2010.

Neithrop is home to the People's Park which opened in 1910, and has a bird house, tennis courts, a large field and a children's play area. The park is often used in the summer to hold small festivals. The park is also one of the town's biggest in terms of the area covered and one of the few major ones not to be built on a steep hill. Easington Recreation Ground is another principal park and recreational area.

Plaque at bridge 164 on the Oxford Canal, Banbury

• Since 1999 bridge 164 on the Oxford Canal in Banbury has borne Tom Rolt's name in commemoration of his book Narrow Boat (as does the Tom Rolt Centre at the Ellesmere Port section of the National Waterways Museum). A blue plaque commemorating Rolt was unveiled at Tooley's Boatyard, Banbury on 7 August 2010 as part of the centenary celebrations of his birth.[53]
• Concorde Avenue was named in a 1995 street naming contest in honour of the 50 years' peace (1945–1995) in Europe since the Second World War.
• Claypits Close was built in about 2007 and named after the old clay pit on which it was built. There were many small, Victorian clay pits and kilns in the south west of Banbury, but they had closed by the 1920s.
• Gillett Road was named after either Joseph Ashby Gillett, who ran Banbury's branch of 18th century Britain's New Bank, or his descendant Sarah Beatrice Gillett, who was mayor in 1926.