Bainton, Oxfordshire

The toponym comes from the Old English for "Bada's farm".[1]

The Domesday Book records that in 1086 Ghilo de Picquigny held the manor of Bainton.[1]

In 1279 Bainton had 17 households.[1] In 1316 18 villagers were assessed to pay taxes but by 1520 the figure had fallen to five.[1] By the 1950s Bainton comprised only four farmhouses and a cottage.[1]

In 1530 the manor was sold to Edward Peckham, cofferer to Henry VIII and John Williams, later 1st Baron Williams de Thame.[1] In 1613 Edward Ewer of Bucknell sold the manor to Sir William Cope, 2nd Baronet of Hanwell for £5,300.[1] A legal dispute between them ensued, which ended with Ewer recovering the manor in 1628.[1] The Ewer family could not afford to keep Bainton, and sold the manor again in 1637.[1]

By the middle of the 17th century Bainton had been converted from arable farming to pasture.[1] This required less labour so the hamlet became depopulated.[1]

Bainton Manor Farm is a coursed rubblestone house.[1] It was constructed in either the latter part of the 16th or earlier part of the 17th century,[1] during the Great Rebuilding of England, originally as the manor house.[1] In 1783 John Warde, founder and first Master of the Bicester Hunt,[2] was using it as a hunting-box, Joseph Bullock of Caversfield had bought the manor and the two men together built stables and kennels there.[1] 330 yards (300 m) northwest of the hamlet an obelisk marks the grave of a favourite foxhound.[3]

• Lobel, Mary D, ed. (1959). A History of the County of Oxford, Volume 6. Victoria County History. pp. 312–323.
• Sherwood, Jennifer; Pevsner, Nikolaus (1974). Oxfordshire. The Buildings of England. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. p. 789. ISBN 0-14-071045-0.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bainton, Oxfordshire.

• Bainton in the Domesday Book