The Victoria History of the Counties of England

This latest volume of the Oxfordshire VCH covers fourteen rural parishes in the south-east of the county. Most are located in the clay vale below the west-facing scarp of the Chilterns, but a few, notably Benson and Ewelme, take in small patches of hill country, and three, Nettlebed, Nuffield and Swyncombe, lie almost wholly in the uplands. Two villages, Benson and Warborough, border the Thames, once an important highway, while another sort of highway, the Oxford–London road, now the A40 and its roaring replacement, the M40, cuts across the northern tip of the hundred. In the Middle Ages these parishes varied greatly in size, from Easington’s 235 acres to Great Haseley’s 3,255 acres, but at most points in their history they shared common features, characterised by mixed farming and by settlement nucleation which did not preclude the existence of many outlying hamlets and homesteads. In the Chilterns, woodland and its associated crafts, commons and animal husbandry played a larger part in the rural economy, though arable was never wholly absent. For the medievalist, two villages are especially rewarding subjects for study. One, Benson, was originally the centre of a great Anglo-Saxon royal estate, from which many of the hundred’s independent manors and villages were hived off in the tenth and eleventh centuries, in a process now familiar from other parts of the country. The other village, Ewelme, has one of the finest groupings of late medieval buildings in England, church, almshouses and school, and, in its church, one of the finest of late medieval tombs. In early modern and modern times small farmers were more in evidence than great lords, while until recently Oxford colleges have been moderately important landowners. One college holding provides a remarkable instance of continuity: the manor of Cuxham, given by Walter de Merton to his new foundation in 1271 and still in the college’s hands today

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