Chipping Norton

Chipping Norton is a market town and civil parish in the Cotswold Hills in the West Oxfordshire district of Oxfordshire, England, about south-west of Banbury and north-west of Oxford. The 2011 Census recorded the civil parish population as 5,719. It was estimated at 6,254 in 2019.

History

Pre-1800

The Rollright Stones, a stone circle 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.Beer, ''Rebellion and Riot'', Kent State UP, p. 150. 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"''.

Post-1800

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 and 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.

Chipping Norton was one of the boroughs reformed by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. Its Town Hall designed in the neoclassical style was completed in 1842.

Chipping Norton Railway (CNR) opened in 1855, linking with on the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway. In 1887 a second railway opened to the Oxford and Rugby Railway at and the CNR became part of the Banbury and Cheltenham Direct Railway (B&CDR). Extending the railway from Chipping Norton involved a tunnel long under Elmsfield Farm west of the town. In 1951 British Railways withdrew passenger services between Chipping Norton and . 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 town lost its status as a municipal borough in 1974, when the Local Government Act 1972 made it a successor parish in the district of West Oxfordshire. 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.

Governance

Chipping Norton is in the Witney parliamentary constituency, whose Member of Parliament from 2001 to 2016 was David Cameron, prime minister from 2010 to 2016 and leader of the Conservative Party from 2005. Since 2016 the MP has been the Conservative Robert Courts. One Conservative and two Labour councillors represent the town on West Oxfordshire District Council.

Amenities

The town theatre began life as a Salvation Army Citadel, its first stones, now visible in the auditorium, being laid in 1888. It continued as a furniture warehouse before being spotted by two Royal Shakespeare Company actors, Tamara and John Malcolm, in 1968. In 1973, fundraising for the new theatre began in earnest, and a pantomime, ''Beauty and the Beast'' was staged in the town hall. The Theatre was opened in 1975 by Tom Baker (who played the title character, the Doctor, in the BBC
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