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Pre-1800[edit]
St Mary the Virgin parish church, rebuilt c. 1485
The Rollright Stones, a stone circle 2+1⁄2 miles (4 kilometres) north of Chipping Norton, reflect prehistoric habitation in the area. The town name means "market north town", with "Chipping" (from Old English cēping) meaning "market". Chipping Norton began as a small settlement beneath a hill, where the earthworks of the motte-and-bailey Chipping Norton Castle can still be seen. The Church of England parish church dedicated to St Mary the Virgin stands on the hill next to the castle. Parts of today's building may date from the 12th century. It retains features of the 13th and 14th centuries. The nave was largely rebuilt in about 1485 with a Perpendicular Gothic clerestory. It is believed to have been funded by John Ashfield, a wool merchant, making St Mary's an example of a "wool church".
In July 1549, the Vicar of Chipping Norton, Henry Joyes or Joyce, led parishioners in a popular rising after the suppression of chantries and other religious reforms left him to minister alone to a congregation of 800 and reduced the budget for schooling. The rising was brutally put down by Lord Grey de Wilton. Joyes was captured, then hanged in chains from the tower of his church. The bell tower rebuilt in 1825 has a ring of eight bells, all cast in 1907 by Mears and Stainbank of Whitechapel Bell Foundry. It also has a Sanctus bell cast in 1624 by Roger I Purdue of Bristol.
Wool in the Middle Ages made the Cotswolds one of England's wealthiest parts and many of the medieval buildings survive in the centre of Chipping Norton. There is still a market every Wednesday and a mop fair in September, when the High Street is closed to through traffic. In 1205 a new market place was laid out higher up the hill. Sheep farming was largely displaced by arable, but agriculture remained important. Many original houses round the market place received fashionable Georgian façades in the 18th century. An inscription on the almshouses records them as founded in 1640 as "The work and gift of Henry Cornish, gent".
Chipping Norton Almshouses, founded in 1640
In the mid-18th century, extract of willow bark became recognized for its soothing effects on fever, pain, and inflammation after the Revd Edward Stone of Chipping Norton (1702–1768) noticed that the bitter taste of willow bark resembled the taste of the bark of the cinchona tree, known as "Peruvian bark", which was used successfully in Peru to treat a variety of ailments. Stone experimented with preparations of powdered willow bark on people in the town for five years. He found it to be as effective as Peruvian bark and a cheaper domestic version, and in 1763 he sent a report of his findings to the Royal Society in London. His discovery became the basis of the drug aspirin. A blue plaque commemorating his work is displayed on a building in West Street near the Fox Hotel.
Post-1800[edit]
In 1796, James and William Hitchman founded Hitchman's Brewery in West Street. The business moved in 1849 to a larger brewery in Albion Street that included a malthouse and its own water wells. Three generations of Hitchmans ran this, but in 1890 Alfred Hitchman sold it as a limited company that acquired other breweries in 1891 and 1917. In 1924, it merged with Hunt Edmunds of Banbury; in 1931, the brewery here was closed. Other local industries included a woollen mill (see below), a glove-maker, a tannery and an iron foundry.
Chipping Norton had a workhouse by the 1770s. In 1836 the architect George Wilkinson built a larger one with four wings round an octagonal central building, similar to one he was building at Witney. The architect G. E. Street added a chapel to Chipping Norton workhouse in 1856–1857. The building became a hospital in the Second World War. It was taken over by the National Health Service in 1948 as Cotshill Hospital, later became a psychiatric hospital, and was closed in 1983. It has been redeveloped as private residences.
The Town Hall, designed in the neoclassical style was completed in 1842.
Chipping Norton Railway (CNR) opened in 1855, linking with Kingham on the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway. In 1887, a second railway opened to the Oxford and Rugby Railway at King's Sutton and the CNR became part of the Banbury and Cheltenham Direct Railway (B&CDR). Extending the railway from Chipping Norton involved a tunnel 685 yards (626 m) long under Elmsfield Farm west of the town. In 1951, British Railways withdrew passenger services between Chipping Norton and Banbury. In 1962, it closed the station at Kingham, and two years later the B&CDR to freight, and dismantled the line. The disused railway tunnel is bricked up at both ends for safety and used as a refuge for bats. (See Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981)
In May 1873, rioting occurred after the sentencing of the Ascott Martyrs – 16 local women accused of trying to interfere with strikebreakers at a farm. Bliss Tweed Mill in the west of town was built as a tweed mill by William Bliss in 1872. In 1913 to 1914, the millworkers struck for eight months. The mill closed in 1980 and was turned into flats. It remains a landmark, visible from Worcester Road. The neoclassical Holy Trinity Roman Catholic church was built in 1836 by the architect John Adey Repton, grandson of the English garden designer Humphry Repton.
Chipping Norton railway station, opened in 1855, pictured here in the early 1900s
Bliss Mill, built in 1872
