Oxfordshire vol. XXII - Chadlington and Area
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Work in Progress
This volume will cover a swathe of west Oxfordshire rural parishes from Chastleton on the west (projecting into Gloucestershire) through to Spelsbury, Enstone, and Kiddington on the east. To their north lies the market town of Chipping Norton (covered in VCH Oxfordshire XXI, published in 2024), while to the south lay Wychwood forest (covered in VCH Oxfordshire XIX, published 2019).
The parishes occupy a typical Cotswold landscape of undulating hills cut by stream and river valleys, supporting the mixed sheep-corn farming characteristic of the area. Several contain large landscaped parks focused on grand country houses, notably at Chastleton, Cornwell, Sarsden, Kiddington, and Ditchley (straddling the Spelsbury-Enstone boundary). Chipping Norton and other nearby towns provided a ready market, and several places had early links with Wychwood, some of them formerly including detached woodland there, and enjoying associated common rights. Landscaping at Sarsden was associated with Humphry Repton and his son George, while at nearby Cornwell the architect Clough Williams-Ellis (of Portmeirion fame) 'reconditioned' the village 'virtually as a stage set' in 1938-9. Chadlington, formerly a detached chapelry of Charlbury, gave its name to the triple hundred within which the parishes lay.
Subject to continued funding, we hope to have the volume in draft by late 2025 for publication in 2026 or 2027, leaving just one volume needed to complete the VCH Oxfordshire series.
Places included: Chadlington; Chilson (with Shorthampton and Walcot); Chastleton; Churchill; Cornwell; Enstone (with Cleveley, Gagingwell, Lidstone, Radford); Kiddington (with Asterleigh); Kingham; Sarsden; Spelsbury (with Ditchley).