Eynsham

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use British English Template:Infobox UK place Eynsham Template:IPAc-en is a village and civil parish in the West Oxfordshire district, in Oxfordshire, England, about Template:Convert north-west of Oxford and east of Witney. The 2011 Census recorded a parish population of 4,648.<ref>Template:NOMIS2011</ref> It was estimated at 5,087 in 2020.<ref>Eynsham (Parish, United Kingdom) - Population Statistics, Charts, Map and Location (citypopulation.de)</ref>

EtymologyEdit

Eynsham's name is first attested in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which took its present form in the later ninth century, as Egonesham. (The Chronicle portrays the settlement as one of four captured by a West Saxon named Cuthwulf in 571 CE following the Battle of Bedcanford. The historicity of the battle is, however, in doubt.) The name is thought to derive from the Old English personal name Ægen, in its genitive form Ægenes, combined with the word {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ("river-meadow"). Thus the name once meant "Ægen's river-meadow".<ref>The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names Based on the Collections of the English Place-Name Society, ed. by Victor Watts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), s.v. EYNSHAM; Template:ISBN.</ref>

HistoryEdit

File:Eynsham Square.JPG

Bartholomew Room in The Square

Eynsham grew up near the historically important ford of Swinford on the River Thames flood plain. Excavations have shown that the site was used in the Bronze Age (3000–300 BCE) for a rectilinear enclosure edging a gravel terrace.Template:Citation needed Evidence has been found of 6th–7th-century Saxon buildingsTemplate:Sfn at New Wintles Farm,Template:Sfn about three-quarters of a mile (1 km) from the present parish church. There is evidence that Eynsham had an early minster, probably founded in the 7th or 8th centuries.Template:Sfn In the reign of the early ninth-century Mercian king Cenwulf, Eynsham was the site of a royal manor of three-hundred hides.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite journal.</ref>Template:Rp

In 1005 Aethelmar, kinsman of Aethelred II founded a Benedictine abbey on the site of the earlier minster. The first abbot was Ælfric of Eynsham, a prolific writer in Old English.<ref>Template:Cite DNB</ref> The Domesday Book of 1086 includes a paragraph on the settlement, then known as Eglesham.<ref name="Eynsham pc">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> By 1302 Eynsham had a wharf handling cargo that included hay, straw, malt, grain and timber, beside the later Talbot Inn on Wharf Stream, a tributary of the Thames. By the medieval period Eynsham Abbey was among the largest in the area. It succumbed to the Reformation in 1538 and few remains can be seen today. After the dissolution, its estates were granted to Sir George Darcy.<ref name="Eynsham pc"/>

By 1790 a newly completed Oxford Canal was trading with Eynsham Wharf, mainly to sell coal from the Midlands.Template:Sfn From 1792 the Oxford Canal employed a wharfinger at EynshamTemplate:Sfn and in 1800 bought the lease of the wharf.Template:Sfn It consolidated its position by buying the Talbot Inn in 1845 and the freehold of Eynsham Wharf in 1849,Template:Sfn perhaps in response to the railway mania that was taking traffic from canals and navigations. Eynsham Lock, on the Thames just above the confluence with Wharf Stream, was the last flash lock on the Thames, not rebuilt as a pound lock until 1928. The village suffered several fires in its history.Template:Sfn Among the worst were a Whit Monday morning one in 1629,Template:Sfn which destroyed 12 housesTemplate:Sfn and another in 1681 that destroyed 20.Template:Sfn By the early 19th century the parish had its own fire engine in a parish fire station on the ground floor of the early 18th-century Bartholomew Room, where it remained up to 1949.Template:Sfn

The Bartholomew Room was built in 1703 from an endowment of John Liam Bartholomew in 1701 to found a parish charity school.Template:Sfn Its lower storey was arcaded, presumably as market premises,Template:Sfn but the arcades were walled up in the later 19th century.Template:Sfn While some parts of the ground floor continued to serve as the fire station; others were turned into a village gaol.Template:Sfn From 1928, a local Roman Catholic congregation used the upper room for its services.Template:Sfn In 1983 the parish council bought and restored the building.Template:Sfn

File:Oxford-eynsham-osm-map.png

Map of the village

RoadsEdit

File:Oxfordeynsham5.JPG

Swinford Bridge over the Thames

By the mid-18th century, Swinford had a ferry, but the main road was in poor condition. Heavier road traffic between Oxford and Witney preferred to pass further north via Bladon, where the better-maintained Oxford–Woodstock and Witney–Woodstock roads met. When the latter became a turnpike in 1751, the road via Eynsham and Swinford ferry was included as a branch.Template:Sfn In 1769 the Earl of Abingdon opened Swinford Toll Bridge to replace the ferry. The Witney–Woodstock road ceased to be a turnpike in 1869, but the Witney–Oxford road remained one until 1877.Template:Sfn Eynsham was a major coaching stop on the London–Fishguard road.Template:Citation needed Since 1922 this has been numbered as the A40. There is a planned expansion of the A40 between Eynsham and Witney into a dual carriage way, with work expected to commence in 2023 should planning permission be granted.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 1936 a bypass for the main road was built north of the village and the road over Swinford bridge renumbered as B4044.

RailEdit

The Witney Railway between Witney and Yarnton opened through Eynsham parish in 1861. The station was on the south side of the village. The Great Western Railway took over the line in 1890 and enlarged Eynsham station in 1944. British Railways closed the line to passenger trains in 1962 and in 1970 to goods traffic. The track was dismantled. The station has since been demolished and a business park built there. In February 2015 the Witney Oxford Transport Group proposed reopening the station as an alternative to improving the A40 road as proposed by Oxfordshire County Council. The case centred on the severe traffic congestion on the roads to and from Oxford.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

IndustryEdit

Local industries include gravel extraction and a factory for superconducting magnets, Siemens Magnet Technology Ltd.<ref>Company site. Retrieved 9 July 2019.</ref>

ChurchesEdit

Church of EnglandEdit

The Church of England parish church, St Leonard's, was built the 13th century. In the 15th, the nave was rebuilt, a clerestory and north aisle were added and a west tower was built.Template:Sfn There are Mass dials on the south wall. The building was restored three times: by William Wilkinson in 1856, Harry Drinkwater in 1892Template:Sfn and over eight years in the 1980s.Template:Citation needed The west tower has a ring of six bells. James Keene of Woodstock cast the third in 1653. Richard Keene cast the fifth in 1673. John Taylor & Co of Loughborough cast or recast the treble, second, fourth and tenor bells in 1895. The church also has a Sanctus bell that Mears and Stainbank of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry cast in 1924.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> St Leonard's is a Grade II* listed building.<ref>Template:NHLE</ref>

File:Eynsham, Baptist Church - geograph.org.uk - 919860.jpg

Eynsham Baptist Church

BaptistEdit

The Baptist church in Lombard Street was opened in either 1808Template:Sfn or 1818.<ref>Template:NHLE</ref>

Roman CatholicEdit

In 1895 Herbert May founded a Roman Catholic mission at his home, Newland Lodge.Template:Sfn The lodge burnt down in 1897, after which Mass was said at the Railway Inn until May had a new house built for him.Template:Sfn The mission closed when May moved to Oxford.Template:Sfn In 1928 the Roman Catholic parish of Witney leased the upper storey of the Bartholomew Room, making it St Peter's Chapel.Template:Sfn Building of a new Roman Catholic church began in the 1930s but was delayed by the Second World War and completed only in 1967.Template:Sfn

AmenitiesEdit

Eynsham Primary School<ref>Eynsham Primary School Template:Webarchive</ref> is a community primary school. Eynsham's Bartholomew School<ref name="Bartholomew School">Bartholomew School.</ref> is the county secondary school for the district. As a specialist technology college, it draws pupils mainly from primaries at Eynsham, Standlake, Stanton Harcourt, Freeland, Cassington and Hanborough.<ref name="Bartholomew School"/>

Eynsham Football Club plays in the Oxfordshire Senior League Division One.<ref>Oxfordshire Senior Football League website.</ref> Eynsham Sports and Social Club plays in Witney and District Football League Division Three and its reserve team in Division Four.<ref>Witney and District Football League.</ref> Eynsham Cricket Club<ref>Eynsham Cricket Club</ref> plays in Oxfordshire Cricket Association League Division Three.<ref>Oxfordshire Cricket Association.Template:Dead link</ref>

Eynsham has a Women's Institute<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and a Morris dancing troupe.<ref>Eynsham Morris.</ref>

Notable residentsEdit

In order of birth:

Dida of Eynsham (late 7th century), a Mercian noble
Ælfric of Eynsham (c. 955 – c. 1010), a monk, abbot and religious writer
Adam of Eynsham (early 13th century), a monk, abbot and writer
Anthony Kitchin (1471–1563) became Abbot of Eynsham, then Bishop of Llandaff.
Thomas Jordan (c. 1612–1685), child actor and poet, may have been born in Eynsham, where his family had land.
John Deval (1710–1774), Master Mason to the King
E. K. Chambers (1866–1954), Shakespeare scholar and local historian, retired to Eynsham and died there.
Eric Gordon (1905–1992), Bishop of Sodor and Man, retired to Eynsham and died there.
Mollie Harris (1913–1995), actress and author, lived in Eynsham and wrote a book about it: From Acre End, 1982.
Kingsley Amis (1922-1995), author, lived in Eynsham with his wife Hilary Amis in 1948 where she gave birth to their first child, Philip.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Tommy Vance (1940–2005) was a BBC Radio 1 and Virgin Radio disc jockey born in Eynsham.
Anthony J. Batten (born 1940), Canadian visual artist, was born at Eynsham Hall.
Marc Hudson (born 1987), singer for power metal band DragonForce