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Judges 5-31.

"So let all thine enemies perish O Lord, but let them that love him, be as the Sun when he goeth forth in his might."

London: Printed November the 4, 1642.

Banbury is taken by the King, there was 1000 Foote in it, the Captaines did run away, and the souldiers did deliver the Toune up without discharging one Musket. It was God's wonderful worke that we had the victory, we expect to march after the King. The day after the Battell all our Forces, horse and foote were marched up, and other forces from remote parts, to the number of 5000, horse and foote more than were at the Battell, now at my writing, my Lord Generall is at Warwick, upon our next marching we doe expect another Battell, we here thinke that the King cannot strengthen himself, for the souldiers did still runne daily from him, and I believe if we come to fight a great part of them will never come up to the charge. The King's guard were gentlemen of good quality, and I heard it, that there not above 40 of them which returned out of the field, this is all I shall trouble you with, what is more, you will receive it from a better hand than mine: Let us pray one for another, God I hope will open the King's eyes, and send peace to our Kingdome. I pray remember my love to all my friends; if I could write to them all I would, but for such newes I write you, impart it to them, my Leiutenant and I drinke to you all daily; all my runawayes, I stop their pay, some of them for two dayes some three dayes and some four dayes, which time they were gone from mee, and give their pay to the rest of the souldiers, two of my souldiers are runne away with their Horse and Armes: I rest, and commit you to God.

Your loving Cousin,

EDWARD KIGHTLEY.

The Rebellion in Ireland and our Battell were both the 23 of October.

The Geology of Edge Hill.

NOTES ON BANBURY AND THEREABOUT.

STATISTICAL TABLE.

Banbury, in N.E. Oxfordshire, on river Cherwell, drainage N. to S.

Altitudes: river level, 300 o.d.; the Cross, 331; high town, 424.

Average rainfall, 27.59 inches. Mean temperature, 41.5.

Population, Municipal Borough, 12,967.

Parliamentary division of Banbury, in W. Oxon., bounded E. by river Cherwell, S. by line from E. to W. through Finstock. Member of Parliament, 1890, A. Brassey, Esq., Heythrop Park, Chipping Norton.

Railway Systems: G. W. R.; L. & N. W. R.; B. & C. R.; N. & B. J. R.; G. C. R.

Canal: Oxford and Birmingham.

Table of Distances in miles from Banbury:--

Aylesbury 32 Bicester 15-1/4 Birmingham 42 Brailes 10 Buckingham 17 Byfield 9-1/4 Brackley 9 Charlbury 15-3/4 Chipping Norton 13 Cheltenham 39-1/2 Enstone 12 Edge Hill 8-1/2 Deddington 6 Daventry 17 Hook Norton 9 Harbury 14 Kineton 11-1/2 Leamington 21 London 70 Moreton-in-Marsh 21 Northampton 24 Oxford 22-1/2 Stratford-on-Avon 20 Shipston-on-Stour 13-1/2 Southam 14 Stow-on-the-Wold 20-1/4 Towcester 17-1/2 Warwick 20 Witney 23 Woodstock 16-1/2

The Cross The Town Hall The Old Bridge and Bridge-ways The Municipal School The Recreation Ground and Baths The Spittal Farm

St. Mary's Church Vicarage House Christ Church St. Paul's Church, Neithrop St. John's Church St. John's Priory Wesleyan Chapel, Marlborough Road Congregational Chapel, South Bar Baptist Chapel, Bridge St. Unitarian Chapel, Horse Fair The Corn Exchange The Mechanics' Institute The Horton Infirmary

The Borough Arms: The Sun in glory or' and on a mount vert. A lily argent in pare the letters B.A.

Manufactures: Agricultural implements and machinery, patent files, patent boxes, and cabinet goods; linen garments; cloth; cakes; ale and beer; horse girths; patent gates.

Geology: Lower town, Middle Lias clays and thin limestones; Middle town, Middle Lias seleniferous marls and thin limestones; High town, Middle Lias rock ; Crouch Hill and Constitution Hill, capped with thick Upper Lias clays and Inferior Oolite limestones and sand.

Erected about 1797, the present church stands in architecture far away from the taste of the time. It is nevertheless a bold and good design by Cockerill of domestic Doric style. Betwixt its beginning and its completion so many years intervened as to give birth to the rhyme:

"Proud Banbury, poor people, Built a church without a steeple."

The portico with its semicircle of plain columns and the circular tower, 133 feet high, with its ornamental quartrefoiling and the balconied alleis are not without massive beauty of their own. The bareness and heavy structure of the body are compensated for by the beauty of the interior decoration, which is of the best of the mural work of the kingdom. The galleries and dome are supported by twelve graceful Ionic pillars, arranged in an octagonal figure. The chancel has been re-built in unison with the original design, and the apse is worked in colour in three divisions representing the twelve apostles with trees of scripture in the background. The ceiling illustrates the enthronement of Christ On the wall, at the east of the nave, are inscribed the tables of the commandments. A band of gold encircles the dome, bearing the text, "The Lord is in His holy temple," &c. The painted windows are good examples of modern work; one in the north-west gallery is in memory of the explorer, Admiral Sir G. Back, uncle of the late vicar, and represents arctic scenes and figures. The work was carried out at the cost of and during the office of the late vicar, the Rev. H. Back, aided by Miss Wyatt and others. The decorators were Messrs. Heaton, Butler and Baines. There is also a richly inlaid marble font, and pulpit. At the time of the Victorian Jubilee the peal of eight bells was overhauled, and new chimes with shifts for three weeks added to the clock tower. Beesley gives four of the bells as having been made by the Bagleys' of Chacombe, where they had a well known 17th century bell foundry. The eighth bell bears the inscription:

"I ring to Sermon with a lusty boome That all may come and none may stay at home."

THE VICARAGE HOUSE, dated 1649, stands against the south-west corner of the churchyard, and is a handsome specimen of the domestic architecture of the period. The gabled front, window mullions and porch remain of the old work, and also the hall and front rooms. The room over the porch, used as a private chapel, seems to be of its old service. Very carefully has the interior ornamentation been carried out, of which the cornice of music staves of the front room is an instance.

OLD HOUSES.--The gabled houses on the north side of the High Street, and on the south and west sides of the Market Place, are good examples of domestic architecture of late Tudor or early Stuart times. An old sun-dial, bearing the motto "Aspice et abi," is attached to the front of the High Street houses. The barge boards and pargeting of the front and the good casemated windows of the west side remain, but the roof has been stripped of its Stonesfield slate, and the finials are badly restored. Also worth notice is the front of No. 11 Market Place, and the old jail, No. 3 , though the lower stage has been cut away. Orchard House, Neithrop, the front of which it is said was protected by woolsacks during the siege of Banbury Castle, stands on a mound away from the road side. It bears the appearance of a manor house, as it probably was, and it has a massive oak stair-way. The Woodlands, Horse Fair, has a handsome garden front; it was formerly an inn. The Woodlands, as well as the school house near by, now Banbury Academy , are typical houses of the time. A beautifully carved oak cornice remains in the north-west room of house No. 47 North Bar, Mrs. J. Bolton's.

OLD INNS.--The Reindeer, in Parson's Street, is probably older than any of the houses before mentioned; the wooden gates are dated 1570, and have inscribed on them the names Iohn Knight, Ihone Knight, David Horne. The richly moulded ceiling and the fine panelling of the principal room, known as the Globe Room, are of the style of the Italian renaissance, and above the window is an inscription of the date 1570. The Unicorn Inn, in the Market Place, and the adjoining house, at one time no doubt part of the inn, belong to a later period; the massive wooden gates are carved with the date 1648. The Old George seems to have formerly borne the name of The George and Altarstone, from a supposed Roman altar dug up on the site of the inn, and formerly exhibited in one of the rooms.

THE BARS.--The entrances to the town were formerly crossed by gates, or bars, five in number. The North Bar, from which the present street is named, stood near the tan-yard, southward of the corner of Warwick Road. The Cole Bar closed the old Adderbury and Oxford Road, which entered the town by way of New Land and Broad Street before the making of the turnpike road. St. John's Bar closed the entrance from Chipping Norton, and stood at the spot where Monument Street now enters South Bar. When the Bar was destroyed its site was marked by an obelisk, long since removed, from which Monument Street takes its name. Sugarford Bar stood in West Street, close to where it is now crossed by the Shades, and the Bridge Gate stood on the old bridge over the Cherwell. Not a vestige of any of the bars remains.

THE MECHANICS' INSTITUTE, founded 1835, received the gift of its new building in Marlborough Road in 1884. It has a general library and a reference library and news and magazine rooms well suited to the requirements of the day. There is an excellent replica of Herkomer's portrait of the donor in the news room.

THE MUNICIPAL SCHOOL buildings adjoin the Institute, and are also in part a gift to the town by the Right Hon. Sir Bernhard Samuelson . It is also a School of Science and Art, with well equipped rooms for art study, and with good laboratories and class rooms. The School of Science and Art was a continuation of science and art classes which were among the earliest started in the kingdom . It shows a good record of work. The buildings are well proportioned, and the doorways of the local stone are bold, and have good mouldings.

THE TOWN HALL.--The old Hall stood on the open space in the Market Place in front of the Exchange Hall. It was a plain brick building, standing on arcading, forming a Market Hall on the ground floor, and it has been re-erected in Cherwell Street as a warehouse. The first Hall was built in Queen Mary's reign, 1556. The Hall of to-day, built in 1853, was enlarged in 1892. Portraits of Mr. Tancred, the late High Steward , and Aldermen Draper and Barford are hung in the Court Room. Formerly a good painting by Hayn had a place there.

The Horton Infirmary, presented to the town by the late Miss Horton, of Middleton Cheney, and her nephew, J. H. Horton, Esq., is on the Oxford Road. Two Corn Exchanges existed in the Corn Hill and Market Place; one has become an Inn with covered court yard, the other is used as a Theatre but is also used for corn sales on Thursdays; Christ Church, St. John's Priory and Church, the Wesleyan Chapels, and the various other denominational places of worship, do not admit of full description.

The two paper mills on the borders of the Broughton estate, the Woad Mill and the Fulling Mill, together with the settlements of the plush and other weavers near by, point to surroundings of industry connected, it must be believed, with the old house.

BROUGHTON CHURCH is a beautiful church of good Early English work with a broach spire. The nave is on the north side of the church; the south aisle appears to end as a chapelry. As a place of sepulture of so many of the Fiennes' family, it is enriched by their tombs and those of others of the house. The tomb of John de Broughton is in a richly decorated and canopied niche in the south wall. The high corner tomb is that of Edward Fiennes and that near by with the effigy of the Knight is believed to be of the father, Richard Fiennes . In the chancel are the rich alabaster effigies of Sir Thomas Wykham and wife , and also plain tombs of Wm. Viscount Saye and Sele and wife . The stone chancel screen with incised diaper ornament, and the exceedingly well proportioned windows, place the good work of the church amongst the typical gothic of the country side: especially to be noticed are the geometrical tracery of the east window of the south aisle; the south window with later perpendicular shafting; the south chancel window and the square-headed early English windows of the south wall. There is a finely crocketed ogee west door and plain south porch.

ALL SAINTS' CHURCH, WROXTON, is of plain Gothic style. The chief points of interest are a good decorated font, two sedilia, and a tomb with effigies of Sir W. and Lady Pope, erected about the middle of the 17th century.

ADDERBURY.--Altitudes: high town 342, low town 300; population, 1132; 3-1/4 miles south of Banbury. It retains its old mansions and homesteads and the wide margin of its ways to a fuller degree than other villages in the north of the shire. The old rectory house, the manor house, formerly Lord Rochester's home, and others on the south side of the green, are good buildings. Nothing remains of the Cross once standing on the green, and of Sir Thos. Cobb's famous house there remain but the gateways and kitchen. The village during the time of the Great Rebellion was held as a Royalist outpost in the Banbury area. Mr. Wilmot, afterwards Lord Rochester, with his local troops of horse fought on the left wing of the Royalists' Army at Edge Hill. A cavalry fight took place during the war near Bodicot, on the Banbury road, when Fiennes had some success.

HANWELL.--Altitudes: 476-416; population, 176; 3 miles north-west of Banbury. The village winds in one long street down-hill. It rests on the ferruginous red rock of the Middle Lias. Midway in the village an old oak tree covered the village stocks and the outflow of an aquaduct, probably the Saint Ann's Well of past time. Pleasant footways follow the hill side on the north to Shotteswell and on the south to Banbury. When King Charles took the Castle after the battle of Edge Hill it would seem that it was not without a fight. An old rhyme runs:

Hornton in the hollow, Long Horley on the hill, Frowsty little Drayton, Bloody Hanwell hill.

BLOXHAM.--Altitudes: high town 400, low town 310; population, 1340; 3 miles south-west of Banbury. The village stands on the red rock of the middle Lias which bears a capping of clay on the high lands: the lower levels are of the usual marls. Field ways from Banbury run from the end of West Bar, and by a less direct but pretty route across the farm field on the Oxford Road. The buildings of All Saint's School, founded about half a century since, are at the entrance of the village. The school has earned good place by the excellence of its tuition. The brook cutting through the town from west to east and the many side streets and jetways add a pleasant appearance to the many good homesteads and gardens.

BLOXHAM CHURCH is one of the most perfect specimens of Gothic architecture in the county of Oxford. Part of the materials of the chancel, the mouldings, walls, and buttresses are Norman, though the church is mainly of the 14th century, about which time it was re-built. The west doorway is surmounted by figures of the apostles, with a canopied representation of the Saviour at the apex; on the left and right are sculptured representations also of the rising of the dead and the punishment of the lost. The spire, which is 195 feet high, presents a particularly graceful outline. The square tower is crowned by an octagon middle stage, rising above which is a balcony, projected on corbels from the face of the tower. Within the balcony the spire springs, and from the four angles of the square tower stage slender turrets, terminating in spirets, are carried up through the middle stage to above the springing of the spire. The geometric tracery of the windows of the west front, and the grotesque cornice carvings on the north side, are exceedingly good work. The decorated oak chancel screen is again a noticeable feature, and its restoration has brought to light the remains of paintings on its lower panels. There are also remains of a mural painting of St. Christopher on the north wall, and of others on the wall above the rood loft. There are large perpendicular windows in the Milcombe chapelry, on the south side of the church, and in its north aisle is a beautiful decorated column, having an enriched capital, with sculptures of mailed figures and heads of saints. A good Gothic font, the carved work of the hoods of the north and south doorways, and a handsome modern reredos and other portions of the chancel can here be mentioned only.

"King's Sutton is a pretty town, And lies all in a valley: There is a pretty ring of bells, Besides a bowling-alley: Wine and liquor in good store, Pretty maidens plenty: Can a man desire more? There aint such a town in twenty."

KING'S SUTTON CHURCH is dedicated to St. Peter. The chancel is principally Norman work, and has along each side a continuous stone bench under an arcade, exhibiting the characteristic zigzag moulding. The piers and arches on the south side of the nave are also Norman; those on the north side are early English. The rood loft turret and staircase remain in the south abutment of the chancel arch. The appearance of the tower from the north and south-west is very beautiful. Crocketed pinnacles, connected by flying buttresses with the face of the spire, are arranged around the junction of the spire and tower, and the spire itself is boldly crocketed from base to apex. It is of the early perpendicular period. The deeply recessed doorway of the western entrance may be of somewhat later date, and contains the original west door. Separating the chancel from the nave is a beautiful oak screen, which was designed by Sir Gilbert Scott.

A well-known local rhyme, referring to the spires of the three famous churches of the neighbourhood, says:--

Bloxham for length, Adderbury for strength, And King's Sutton for beauty.

A hill side coppice bearing the name of Rosamunds Bower and the Moate House are within easy walking distance. The pathway near the bog spring is the shorter and pleasanter route to Banbury, leading near to the calcining furnaces and ironstone quarries of the Astrop Ironstone Company.

HORLEY.--Altitudes, 500-400; population, 247; is 4 miles north-west of Banbury, and may be reached by a pleasant footpath passing over Ruscot Hill and through Drayton fields. The village stands at the neck dividing two of the high vales of North Oxon, the Lias ironstone covering all the high lands thereabouts. St. Ethelreda's Church, plain, square towered and full of good old Early English work, is in mid village; the two pointed arches between chancel and nave, the old glass of the north aisle and the great mural painting of Saint Christopher, the Christ bearer, with the legend:

"What are thou; and art so yying Bar I never so heavy a thinge."

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