Prescote

Prescote

Prescote

Human settlement in England

Prescote is a hamlet and civil parish about 4 miles (6.4 km) north of Banbury in Oxfordshire. Its boundaries are the River Cherwell in the southeast, a tributary of the Cherwell called Highfurlong Brook in the west, and Oxfordshire's boundary with Northamptonshire in the northeast.

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History

Prescote's toponym probably means "priest's cottage", referring to a cottage either owned by a priest or more likely inhabited by one.[2] Legend associates Prescote with Saint Fremund, a Mercian prince held to have been martyred in the 9th century AD.[2]

The manor of Prescote is not listed in the Domesday Book of 1086, but had appeared by 1208-09, when the Bishop of Lincoln was the feudal overlord.[2] Prescote comprised two manors that were held separately until 1417-1419, when John Danvers (died 1449) of Calthorpe, Oxfordshire, acquired both of them.[2] In 1796, his descendant Sir Michael Danvers, 5th Baronet (1738–1776) died without a male heir and left Prescote to his son-in-law Augustus Richard Butler.[2] In 1798, Butler sold the estate to the Pares family, who in 1867 sold it to Samuel Jones-Loyd, 1st Baron Overstone.[2] In 1883, Baron Overstone died without a male heir and left his estates to his daughter, Harriet, Lady Wantage.[2] On her death in 1920, Prescote was sold to A.P. McDougall,[2] whose Midland Marts company opened a cattle stockyard in 1921 beside Banbury Merton Street railway station. By 1964, Prescote belonged to Anne Crossman, the wife of Richard Crossman M.P., a descendant of the Danvers family.[2]

Prescote manor house has traces of a mediaeval moat, but a date-stone over the door of the present house indicates that it was built in 1691 by Sir Pope Danvers, 2nd Baronet (1644–1712).[3] The house was extended early in the 19th century.[2] The house at Prescote Manor Farm, about 0.5 miles (800 m) northeast of the Manor House, is dated 1693.[3]

Prescote had a mill on the River Cherwell, called Boltysmylle in 1482 and Boltes Mill in 1613.[2] By 1654, there was a "Prescote Mill", which may be the same as the earlier Boltes Mill.[2] By 1703, the mill was in disrepair but its remains were still recorded as extant in 1797-98 and 1823.[2] Today only its mill stream survives.[2] The mill's decline may be linked with the manor's transition from arable to sheep farming. In 1547, a Danvers leased land at Prescote to a shepherd, and in 1797 it was reported that most of the 385 acres (156 ha) of the farm attached to Prescote Manor was "old inclosed" pasture.[2]

References

  1. [1]
    "Area selected: Cherwell (Non-Metropolitan District)". Neighbourhood Statistics: Full Dataset View. Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 30 March 2010.
  2. [2]
    Colvin et al. 1972, pp. 206–210.
  3. [3]
    Sherwood & Pevsner 1974, p. 560.

Sources and further reading
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