Burford

Burford Priory

Burford Priory is a country house that stands on the site of a 13th-century Augustinian priory hospital. In the 1580s an Elizabethan house was built incorporating remnants of the building.[3] It was remodelled in Jacobean style, probably after 1637, by which time the estate had been bought by William Lenthall, Speaker of the House of Commons in the Long Parliament. After 1912 the house and later the chapel were restored for the philanthropist Emslie John Horniman, MP, by the architect Walter Godfrey.[4]

From 1949 Burford Priory housed the Society of the Salutation of Mary the Virgin, a community of Church of England nuns. In 1987, due to declining numbers, it became a mixed community including Church of England Benedictine monks. In 2008 the community relocated and sold the property which is now a private dwelling.[5]

A Time Team excavation of the Priory in 2010 found pottery sherds from the 12th or 13th century.[6]

The town began in the middle Saxon period with the founding of a village near the site of the modern priory building. This settlement continued in use until just after the Norman conquest of England when the new town of Burford was built. On the site of the old village a hospital was founded which remained open until the Dissolution of the Monasteries by King Henry VIII. The modern priory building was constructed some 40 years later, in around 1580.[7]

The town centre's most notable building is the Church of St John the Baptist, a Church of England parish church,[8] which is a Grade I listed building.[9] Described by David Verey as "a complicated building which has developed in a curious way from the Norman",[10] it is known for its merchants' guild chapel, memorial to Henry VIII's barber-surgeon, Edmund Harman, featuring South American Indians and Kempe stained glass. In 1649 the church was used as a prison during the Civil War,[11] when the New Model Army Banbury mutineers were held there. Some of the 340 prisoners left carvings and graffiti, which still survive in the church.

The town centre also has some 15th-century houses and the baroque style townhouse that is now Burford Methodist Church. Between the 14th and 17th centuries Burford was important for its wool trade. The Tolsey, midway along Burford's High Street, which was once the focal point for trade, is now a museum.[12]

The authors of Burford: Buildings and People in a Cotswold Town (2008) argue that Burford should be seen as less a medieval town than an Arts and Crafts town.[13]

A 2020 article in Country Life magazine summarized the community's recent history:[14]

Burford, similarly, had bustled during the coaching era, but coaching inns such as Ramping Cat and the Bull were diminished or closed when the railways came. Agriculture remained old-fashioned, if not Biblical, and was badly affected by the long agricultural depression that started in the 1870s. The local dialect was so thick that, in the 1890s, Gibbs had to publish a glossary to explain George Ridler’s Oven, one of the folk songs he collected. In the late 19th century, the Cotswolds assumed a Sleeping Beauty charm, akin to that of Burne-Jones’s Legend of the Briar Rose at Buscot Park in the Thames Valley.

Belfry of St John the Baptist parish church in 1825

For many years before the 7th century there had been strife between the Celtic Church and the Early Church over the question of when Easter Day should be celebrated. The Britons adhered to the rule laid at the Council of Arles in AD 314, that Easter Day should be the 14th day of the Paschal moon, even if the moon were on a Sunday. The Roman Church had decided that when the 14th day of the Paschal moon was a Sunday, Easter Day should be the Sunday after.

Various Synods were held in different parts of the kingdom with the object of settling this controversy, and one was held for this object at Burford in AD 685.[20] Monk deduces from the fact of the Synod being held at Burford, that the Britons in some numbers had settled in the town and neighbourhood. This Synod was attended by Æthelred, King of Mercia, and his nephew Berthwald (who had been granted the southern part of his uncle's kingdom); Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury; Bosel, Bishop of Worcester; Seaxwulf, Bishop of Lichfield; Aldhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury; and many others.

Aldhelm was ordered at this conference to write a book against the error of the Britons in the observance of Easter. At this Synod Berthwald gave 40 cassates of land (a cassate is enough land to support a family) to Aldhelm who afterwards became Bishop of Shereborne. According to Spelman, the notes of the Synod were published in AD 705.

Malmesbury and other chroniclers record a battle between the West Saxons and Mercians at Burford in AD 752.[21] In the end Æthelhum, the Mercian standard-bearer who carried the flag with a golden dragon on it, was killed by the lance of his Saxon rival.[22] The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records "A.D 752. This year Cuthred, king of the West Saxons, in the 12th year of his reign, fought at Burford, against Æthelbald king of the Mercians, and put him to flight."[22] The historian William Camden (1551–1623) wrote

"... in Saxon Beorgford [i.e. Burford], where Cuthred, king of the West Saxons, then tributary to the Mercians, not being able to endure any longer the cruelty and base exactions of King Æthelbald, met him in the open field with an army and beat him, taking his standard, which was a portraiture of a golden dragon."[22]

The origin of the golden dragon standard is attributed to that of Uther Pendragon, the father of King Arthur of whom Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote:

[Uther Pendragon] "... ordered two dragons to be fashioned in gold, in the likeness of the one which he had seen in the ray which shone from that star. As soon as the Dragons had been completed this with the most marvellous craftsmanship – he made a present of one of them to the congregation of the cathedral church of the see of Winchester. The second one he kept for himself, so that he could carry it around to his wars."[23]

In the late 16th or early 17th century the people of Burford still celebrated the anniversary of the battle. Camden wrote: "There has been a custom in the town of making a great dragon yearly, and carrying it up and down the streets in great jollity on St John's Eve".[24] The field traditionally claimed to be that of the battle is still called Battle Edge.[22]

According to Reverend Francis Knollis' description of the discovery, "On 21 November 1814 a large freestone sarcophagus was discovered near Battle Edge 3 feet (0.91 m) below ground, weighing 16 long hundredweight (1,800 lb; 810 kg) with the feet pointing almost due south. The interior is 6 feet (1.8 m) long and 2 feet 2 inches (0.66 m) wide. It was found to contain the remains of a human body, with portions of a leather cuirass studded with metal nails. The skeleton was found in near perfect state due to the exclusion of air from the sarcophagus."[25] The coffin is now preserved in Burford churchyard, near the west gate.

"Whose fame is in that dark green tomb? Four stones with their heads of moss stand there. They mark the narrow house of death. Some chief of fame is here! Raise the songs of old! Awake their memory in the tomb." – Ossian

Burford County Primary School is the town's primary school. Burford School, a mixed comprehensive school, is the town's secondary school. The primary school fête, held every summer, includes a procession (including a dragon) down High Street to the school, where there are stalls and games.

The Blue Cross National Animal Welfare Charity is based at Burford.[26]

High Street, Burford

In September 2001 Burford was twinned with Potenza Picena, a small town in the Marche, on the Adriatic coast of Italy.[27]

In April 2009 Burford was ranked sixth in Forbes magazine's list of "Europe's Most Idyllic Places To Live".[28]

Local legend tells of a fiery coach containing the judge and local landowner Sir Lawrence Tanfield of Burford Priory and his wife flying around the town that brings a curse upon all who see it.[29] Ross Andrews speculates that the apparition may have been caused by a local tradition of burning effigies of the unpopular couple that began after their deaths.[30] In real life Tanfield and his second wife Elizabeth Evans are known to have been notoriously harsh to their tenants. The visitations were reportedly ended when local clergymen trapped Lady Tanfield's ghost in a corked glass bottle during an exorcism and cast it into the River Windrush.[31] During droughts locals would fill the river from buckets to ensure that the bottle did not rise above the surface and free the spirit.[32]

Burford is the main setting for The Wool-Pack, a historical novel for children by Cynthia Harnett.[33]

• Oxford Blue – a cheese made in Burford

• Gardner, Robert (1852). "Burford Town and Parish". Directory of Oxfordshire. p. not cited. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016.
• Monk, William John (1891). The History of Burford. Burford & London: C.W. Swatman; Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co. Ltd.
• Geoffrey of Monmouth (1966) [circa 1136]. The History of the Kings of Britain. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. p. 202. translated by Lewis Thorpe.
• Sherwood, Jennifer; Pevsner, Nikolaus (1974). Oxfordshire. The Buildings of England. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. pp. 501–522. ISBN 0-14-071045-0.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Burford, Oxfordshire.

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Burford.

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Burford.

• Burford – Gateway to the Cotswolds (Town Council website)
• Burford at Curlie
• www.geograph.co.uk : photos of Burford and surrounding area