Jul 10, 2020 | Historical Miscellany
Introduction The first half of the nineteenth century saw an unprecedented expansion in the efforts of central government to gather information about aspects of national life that had previously been held to be matters for purely local concern. For example, listing...
Jul 3, 2020 | Historical Miscellany
Introduction Wilfred Foreman in his definitive book, Oxfordshire Mills (Phillimore, 1983), records in excess of two hundred watermills in the county, many of which were mentioned in the Domesday Survey of 1086, suggesting that they are largely of Saxon origin....
Jul 3, 2020 | Historical Miscellany
For a short period in the 1970s Adderbury played a role in international affairs. Government drivers delivered ministerial red boxes requiring decisions on topics such as the terms of an International Monetary Fund loan to the UK, yet another attempt to find a...
Jun 25, 2020 | Historical Miscellany
PRIZE FIGHT PANIC: ADDERBURY IN 1837 Prize fights were enormously popular in the first four decades of the nineteenth century. The sport enjoyed the patronage of aristocrats and even of royalty, with enormous sums being gambled on the outcomes of matches. Nonetheless,...
Jun 25, 2020 | Historical Miscellany
Although there had previously been alternatives to agricultural work in Adderbury, notably with plush weaving, which involved some 34 inhabitants in 1841 (see Taylor, 1964), the first activity that could be properly called “industrial” in the village came with the...
Jun 19, 2020 | Historical Miscellany
A beautiful old-fashioned English oak tree resides, in all its summer splendour, on a tiny green at the junction of Horn Hill and the Milton roads – does it have a story? Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee was celebrated nation-wide on 21st June, 1887. Adderbury marked...
