Bainton is a

hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...

comprising a cluster of farms in the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

Stoke Lyne Stoke Lyne is a village and civil parish about north of Bicester, Oxfordshire in southern England. Battle of Fethan leag In AD 584 a Saxon army led by King Ceawlin of Wessex and his son Cutha fought an army of Britons "at the place which is ...

, about north of the centre of Bicester.

History

The

toponym Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of ''toponyms'' ( proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of ...

comes from the

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...

for "Bada's farm".Lobel, 1959, pages 312–323 The

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

records that in 1086 Ghilo de

Picquigny Picquigny () is a commune in the Somme department in Hauts-de-France in northern France. Geography Picquigny is situated at the junction of the N235, the D141 and D3 roads, on the banks of the river Somme, some northwest (and downstream) of ...

held the manor of Bainton. In 1279 Bainton had 17 households. In 1316 18 villagers were assessed to pay taxes but by 1520 the figure had fallen to five. By the 1950s Bainton comprised only four farmhouses and a cottage. In 1530 the manor was sold to Edward Peckham,

cofferer The Cofferer of the Household was formerly an office in the English and British Royal Household. Next in rank to the Comptroller, the holder paid the wages of some of the servants above and below stairs, was a member of the Board of Green Cloth, ...

Henry VIII Henry VIII (28 June 149128 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. His disa ...

and John Williams, later 1st Baron Williams de Thame. In 1613 Edward Ewer of Bucknell sold the manor to Sir William Cope, 2nd Baronet of

Hanwell Hanwell () is a town in the London Borough of Ealing, in the historic County of Middlesex, England. It is about 1.5 miles west of Ealing Broadway and had a population of 28,768 as of 2011. It is the westernmost location of the London post t ...

for £5,300. A legal dispute between them ensued, which ended with Ewer recovering the manor in 1628. The Ewer family could not afford to keep Bainton, and sold the manor again in 1637. By the middle of the 17th century Bainton had been converted from arable farming to pasture. This required less labour so the hamlet became depopulated. Bainton Manor Farm is a coursed rubblestone house. It was constructed in either the latter part of the 16th or earlier part of the 17th century, during the

Great Rebuilding A Great Rebuilding is a period in which a heightened level of construction work, architectural change, or rebuilding occurred. More specifically, W. G. Hoskins defined the term "The Great Rebuilding" in England as the period from the mid-16th centu ...

of England, originally as the

manor house A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were held the lord's manorial courts, communal meals ...

. In 1783 John Warde, founder and first Master of the Bicester Hunt, was using it as a hunting-box, Joseph Bullock of

Caversfield Caversfield is a village and civil parish about north of the centre of Bicester. In 1844 Caversfield became part of Oxfordshire, but until then it was always an exclave of Buckinghamshire. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as ...

had bought the manor and the two men together built stables and kennels there. northwest of the hamlet an

obelisk An obelisk (; from grc, ὀβελίσκος ; diminutive of ''obelos'', " spit, nail, pointed pillar") is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape or pyramidion at the top. Originally constructed by An ...

marks the grave of a favourite foxhound.

References

Sources

* *

External links

* {{authority control Villages in Oxfordshire