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Bicester

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Bicester
Sheep Street, Bicester
Population28,672 (2001)
OS grid referenceSP5822
Civil parish
  • Bicester
District
Shire county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post townBICESTER
Postcode districtOX25 - 27
Dialling code01869
PoliceThames Valley
FireOxfordshire
AmbulanceSouth Central
UK Parliament
WebsiteBicester Town Council
List of places
UK
England
Oxfordshire

Bicester (Template:Pron-en BIS-tər) is a town and civil parish in the Cherwell district of north-eastern Oxfordshire in England.

This historic market centre is one of the fastest growing towns in Oxfordshire [1] Development has been favoured by its proximity to junction 9 of the M40 motorway linking it to London, Birmingham and Banbury. It has good road links to Oxford, Kidlington, Brackley, Buckingham, Aylesbury and Witney, as well as rail service.

History

Bicester has a history going back to Saxon times [2]. The name Bicester, which has been in use since the mid 17th century, derives from earlier forms including Berncestre, Burencestre, Burcester, Biciter and Bissiter (the John Speed map of 1610 shows four alternative spellings and Miss G. H. Dannatt found 45 variants in wills of the 17th and 18th centuries). Theories advanced for the meaning of the name include "of Beorna" (a personal name), "The Fort of the Warriors" or literally from Latin Bi-cester to mean "The 2 forts". The ruins of the Roman settlement of Alchester lie 2 miles (3 km) southwest of the town and remains of an Augustinian priory established in 1180 survive in the town centre.[3]

The West Saxons established a settlement in the 6th century at a nodal point of a series of ancient routes [4]. A north-south Roman route, known as the Stratton (Audley) Road, from Dorchester to Towcester, passed through King’s End. Akeman Street, an east-west Roman road from Cirencester to St. Albans lies 2 miles (3.2 km) south, adjacent to the Roman fortress and town at Alchester.

The first documentary reference is the Domesday Book survey of 1086 when it is recorded as Berencestra, its two manors of Bicester and Wretchwick being held by Robert d'Oily who built Oxford Castle. The town became established as twin settlements on opposite banks of the River Bure, a tributary of the Ray, Cherwell and ultimately the Thames.

Early charters promoted Bicester's development as a trading centre, with a market and fair established by the mid 13th century. By this time two further manors are mentioned, Bury End and Nuns Place, later known as Market End and King's End respectively.

The lord of the manor of Market End was the Earl of Derby who in 1597 sold a 9,999 year lease to 31 principal tenants. This in effect gave the manorial rights to the leaseholders, ‘purchased for the benefit of those inhabitants or others who might hereafter obtain parts of the demesne’. The leaseholders elected a bailiff to receive the profits from the bailiwick, mainly from the administration of the market and distribute them to the shareholders. From the bailiff’s title the arrangement became known as the Bailiwick of Bicester Market End. By 1752 all of the original leases were in the hands of ten men, who leased the bailiwick control of the market to two local tradesmen.

A fire in 1724 had destroyed the buildings on the eastern side of Water Lane. A Nonconformist congregation was able to acquire a site that had formerly been the tail of a long plot occupied at the other end by the King’s Arms. Their chapel built in 1728 was ‘surrounded by a burying ground and ornamented with trees. At the southern and downstream end of Water Lane, there were problems of pollution from animal dung from livery stables on the edge of town associated with the London traffic.

King’s End had a substantially lower population and none of the commercial bustle found on the other side of the Bure. The manorial lords, the Cokers, lived in the manor house since 1584. The house had been rebuilt in the early 18th century remodelled in the 1780s The park was enlarged surrounded by a wall after 1753 when a range of buildings on the north side of King’s End Green were demolished by Coker. A westward enlargement of the park also extinguished the road which followed the line of the Roman route. This partly overlapped a pre 1753 close belonging to Coker. The effect of the enlargement of the park was to divert traffic at the Fox Inn through King’s End, across the causeway to the Market Square and Sheep Street before returning to the Roman road north of Crockwell.

Market Square

The two townships of King's End and Market End evolved distinct spatial characteristics. Inns, shops and high status houses clustered around the triangular market place as commercial activity was increasingly concentrated in Market End. The bailiwick lessees promoted a much less regulated market than that found in boroughs elsewhere. Away from the market, Sheep Street was considered ‘very respectable’ but its northern end at Crockwell was inhabited by the poorest inhabitants in low quality, subdivided and overcrowded buildings.

By 1800, the causeway had dense development forming continuous frontages on both sides. The partially buried watercourses provided a convenient drainage opportunity, and many houses had privies discharging directly into the channels. Downstream, the Bure ran parallel with Water Lane, then the main road out of town towards London. Terraces of cottages were built backing onto the stream, and here too these too took advantage of the steam for sewage disposal, with privies cantilevered out from houses over the watercourse. Town houses took their water from wells dug into the substrate which became increasingly polluted by leaching of waste through the alluvial bed of the Bure.

Until the early 19th century the road from the market place to Kings End ran through a ford of the Bure stream and on to the narrow embanked road across the boggy valley. The causeway became the focus for development from the late 18th century as rubbish and debris was dumped on each side of the road to form building platforms, minor channels of the braded stream were encased and culverted as construction proceeded.

Architecture

The vernacular buildings of the town have features of both the Cotswold dip slope to the northwest and the Thames Valley to the southeast. The earliest surviving buildings of the town are the medieval church of St. Edburg; the vicarage of 1500 and two post dissolution houses in the former Priory Precinct constructed from reused mediaeval material. These buildings are mainly grey oolitic limestone, from the Priory Quarry at Kirtlington, five miles (8 km) west on Akeman Street, some ginger lias (ironstone) comes from the area around Banbury and white and bluish grey cornbrash limestone was quarried in Crockwell and at Caversfield two miles (3 km) to the north.

Early secular buildings were box framed structures, using timber from the Bernwood Forest on the western slopes of the Chilterns five miles (8 km) east. Infilling of frames was of stud and lath with lime render and limewash. Others were of brick or local rubble stonework. The river valleys to the south and east of the town were the source of clay for widespread local production of brick and tile. In the 18th and 19th centuries the Page-Turners had a brick fields in Wretchwick and Blackthorn and which operated alongside smaller produces such as the farmer George Coppock who produced bricks as a sideline.

Local roofing materials included longstraw thatch, which persisted on older and lower status areas on houses and terraced cottages. Thatch had to be laid at pitches in excess of 50 degrees. This generated narrow and steep gables which also suited heavy limestone roofs made with Stonesfield slate or other roofing slabs from the Cotswolds. The other widespread roofing material was local red clay plain tiles. 19th century bulk transport innovations associated with canal and railway infrastructure allowed imports of blue slate from North Wales. These could be laid at much more shallow pitches on fashionable high status houses.

Apart from imported slate, a striking characteristic of all of the new buildings of the early 19th century is the continued use of local vernacular materials, albeit in buildings of non-vernacular design. The new buildings were constructed alongside older wholly vernacular survivals and, sometimes superficially updated with fashionable applied facades, fenestration or upper floors and roofs.

Modern-day Bicester

Twinning

Bicester is twinned with:

Official website: Bicester and District Twinning Association

The town has a long-standing connection with the military. Ward Lock & Co's 'Guide to Oxford and District' suggests that Alchester was 'a kind of Roman Aldershot'. During the Civil War (1642–49) Bicester was used as the headquarters of parliamentary forces. Following the outbreak of the French Wars from 1793, John Coker, the manorial lord of Bicester King’s End, formed an ‘Association for the Protection of Property against Levellers and Jacobins’ as an anti-Painite loyalist band providing local militia and volunteer drafts for the army. When Oxford University formed a regiment in 1798, John Coker was elected Colonel.

Coker’s Bicester militia had sixty privates, and six commissioned and non-commissioned officers led by Captain Henry Walford. The militia briefly stood down in 1801 after the Treaty of Amiens. But when hostilities resumed after 1804 invasion anxiety was so great as to warrant the reformation of the local militia as the Bicester Independent Company of Infantry. It had double the earlier numbers to provide defence in the event of an invasion or Jacobin insurrection. The Bicester Company was commanded by a captain, with 2 lieutenants, an ensign, 6 sergeants, 6 corporals and 120 privates. Their training and drill were such that they were deemed ‘fit to join troops in the line’. The only action recorded for them is in 1806 at the 21st birthday celebrations of Sir Gregory O Page-Turner when they performed a feu de joie ‘and were afterwards regaled at one of the principal inns of the town’.

During the first world war an airfield was established north of the town for the Royal Flying Corps. This became a Royal Air Force station, but is now Bicester Airfield, the home of Windrushers Gliding Club, which was absorbed into the military gliding club previous based there, to re-emerge in 2004 when the military club left the airfield.

The British Army's largest ordnance depot - the Central Ordnance Depot of the Royal Logistic Corps- is located just outside the town. The depot has its own internal railway system, the Bicester Military Railway.

Social infrastructure

Rail links

Bicester benefited from the Railway Mania of the 1840s. The Buckinghamshire Railway completed the railway between Bletchley and Oxford in 1851, opening "a neat station at the bottom of the London road" in 1850 to serve Bicester. The town's first fatal railway accident occurred at this station in September [5]. In 1910 the Great Western Railway built the Bicester cut-off line through Bicester to complete a new fast route between London and Birmingham, and opened a large station on Buckingham Road to serve Bicester. The GWR station is Bicester North, and to avoid confusion the Buckinghamshire Railway station is now called Bicester Town.

Residents' Associations

Bicester boasts a number of very active Residents' Associations including:

  • BPRA - Bure Park Residents Association
  • LVCA - Langford Village Community Association
  • BPVRA - Bicester Parkland View Residents Association

Schools

Bicester has two secondary schools: Bicester Community College (BCC) and The Cooper School. There are a number of primary schools including Langford Village Primary,Glory Farm Primary, Southwold, Brookside Primary School, St Edburg's, Five Acres, Longfields and Bure Park Primary. If NW Bicester eco town is built there will be more schools for the eco houses.

Shopping

The historic shopping streets, particularly Sheep Street and Market Square, have a wide range of local and national shops together with cafés, pubs and restaurants. Sheep Street is now pedestrianised with car parks nearby. Weekly markets take place on Fridays in the town centre along with farmers' markets and an occasional French market. A £70 million re-development of the town centre, originally planned to start in 2008, had been delayed by the onset of the credit crunch; Sainsbury's pledged develop the project itself in January 2009, but no start has been made on the site (as of April 2010). See Cherwell District Council website

South of Bicester beyond Pingle Field is Bicester Village Shopping Centre. Further towards Oxford is Bicester Avenue, one of the largest garden centres in the UK.

Churches

Most churches in Bicester belong to the ecumenical organisation Churches Together in Bicester:

Churches independent of Churches Together are:

Trivia

References

  1. ^ Census 1951-2001
  2. ^ Dunkin. History and Antiquities of Bicester(1816)
  3. ^ VCH Oxon volii
  4. ^ Parkinson.op cit p 6
  5. ^ Blomfield. History of the Present deanery of Bicester 1882-94)
  • Beesley, Alfred (1841). The History of Banbury (Extra illustrated version- vol. 16 OxLSC). {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  • Blomfield, J.C. (1882–94). History of the present deanery of Bicester, Part 2. Oxford. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)CS1 maint: date format (link) CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • Bond, C.J. (1980). The Small Towns of Oxfordshire in the Nineteenth Century, in "T Rowley (Ed). The Oxford Region 55-79". {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  • Dannatt G.H. (1961–62). Bicester in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, in Oxoniensia, vols XXVI/XXVII. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)CS1 maint: date format (link)
  • Dunkin, John (1816). The History and Antiquities of Bicester; a market town in Oxfordshire. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  • Dunkin, John (1823). History and Antiquities of the hundreds of Bullingdon and Ploughley. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  • Lawton, E.R. (1992). The Bicester Military Railway. Oxford Publishing Co. ISBN 0-86093-467-5. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • Mitchell, V. (2005). Country Railway Routes: Oxford to Bletchley. Middleton Press. ISBN 1-90447-457-8. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • Parkinson, R. (2007). Continuity and Change in an Oxfordshire Market Town- Bicester 1801-1861. Oxford: unpublished dissertation, Kellogg College. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  • Sherwood, Jennifer (1974). The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. pp. 452–456. ISBN 0 14 071045 0. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • Kennett, White; D.D. (1718 approx; expanded edition 1818). Parochial antiquities attempted in the history of Ambrosden, Burchester, and other adjacent parts in the Counties of Oxford and Bucks. Oxford: Oxford, Clarendon Press. pp. Volume 1, xvii + 582, Volume 2, 526 + un-numbered Indices of names and places, together with an extensive Glossary. ISBN N/A. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help); Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • A Pictorial and Descriptive Guide to Oxford and District. London: Ward Lock & Co. 1928. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)


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