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Main article: History of Banbury
People's Park in 2001
Banbury's oldest pub, the Reindeer Inn
Archaeological evidence has been found for a British Iron Age settlement with circular buildings, dating back to 200 BC, in the Hennef Way area. Later there was a Roman villa at Wykham Park.
The area was settled by the Saxons around the late 5th century. It was a local centre for Anglo-Saxon settlement by the mid-6th century. Banbury developed in the Anglo-Saxon period 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.
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 in the 1640s, when it was besieged.
During the Civil War, 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 town later became pro-Parliamentarian, but the castle was manned by a Royalist garrison who supported King Charles I. The Reindeer Inn (now 'Ye Olde Reine Deer Inn') was reputedly used as a base by Oliver Cromwell, particularly in preparing for the Battle of Edge Hill in 1642. In 1645, Parliamentary troops were billeted in nearby Hanwell for nine weeks and villagers petitioned the Warwickshire Committee of Accounts to pay for feeding them. The castle was demolished after the war.
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. In 1787 the Oxford Canal was extended southwards, finally opening to Oxford on 1 January 1790. The canal's main boat yard was the original outlay of today's Tooley's Boatyard. The railway reached Banbury in 1850; Merton Street station on the Buckinghamshire Railway to Bletchley opened in May 1850, followed by Bridge Street station, later renamed Banbury General, on the Great Western Railway in September 1850.
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 New Foscote Hospital in Calthorpe and Easington Farm were mostly open farmland until the early 1960s. 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 once daily, from London Marylebone via High Wycombe and Bicester onwards to Birmingham and Kidderminster and by CrossCountry Trains from Bournemouth and Reading to Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle.
Banbury used to have a large cattle market. 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 and Dashwood Primary School has been built on its site. The estate, which lies between Banbury and Hanwell, was built on the grounds of Hanwell Farm during 2005 and 2006.
Banburyshire[edit]
The name 'Banburyshire' is sometimes used informally to describe the 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. "Stones Map of Banburyshire" held by the Centre of Banbury Studies was published in the 1870s or 1880s and it asserted that the term originated in the 1830s but no source is given for that assertion. In the 1850s magazine articles used "Banburyshire" or the hyphenated term "Banbury-shire". The Banburyshire Natural History Society was formed in 1881.
In the 20th century a number of books used the term "Banburyshire" in their titles, dating from the early 1960s.
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, Cropredy, Deddington, Wroxton, Great Bourton, and Bloxham) plus parts of the neighbouring counties of Northamptonshire and Warwickshire.
