Littlemore

Littlemore
Oxfordshire
Saints Mary and Nicholas parish church
Location
Grid reference:	SP537028
Location:	51°43’12"N, 1°13’37"W
Data
Population:	5,646  (2011)
Post town:	Oxford
Postcode:	OX4
Dialling code:	01865
Local Government
Council:	Oxford
Parliamentary constituency:	Oxford East
Website:	Littlemore Parish Council

Littlemore is a parish in the Bullingdon Hundred of Oxfordshire that forms a suburb of Oxford. The civil parish includes part of Rose Hill. It is about two and a half miles south-east of Oxford city centre, between Rose Hill, Blackbird Leys, Cowley, and Sandford-on-Thames. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 5,646.

History

In the Middle Ages, and perhaps earlier, most of Littlemore was a detached part of the parish of St Mary the Virgin in Oxford. The rest of the township was in the parish of Iffley. Littlemore was not made a separate ecclesiastical parish until 1847. It became a civil parish in 1866.

Until the early 20th century Littlemore was rural. Extensive development started in the 1920s and continued in the 1950s.

St Nicholas' Priory

Early in the 12th century Sir Robert de Sandford founded a priory of Benedictine nuns on a piece of land called Cherley. It was dedicated originally to Saints Mary, Nicholas and Edmund, but within a few years this was reduced to only St Nicholas. The location of Cherley was described variously as Sandford or Littlemore until the middle of the 13th century, after which it was referred to always as Littlemore.

A blocked 15th-century window of the dormitory range of the former priory, now Minchery Farmhouse

Sir Robert endowed the priory with six virgates of land in Sandford parish. Subsequent members of the de Sandford family made further endowments: another nine virgates of land in Sandford, 10 shillings a year from Wytham, tithes from Bayworth and Lambourn, and land at Garsington, Kennington, Sydenham and Liverton in the parish of Chilton. At one time the priory also claimed the advowson of St Mary's parish church at Puttenham, Hertfordshire and held land at Bureweya or Bergheia in the parish of Soham in Cambridgeshire. King Henry III paid 40 shillings a year to maintain a prebendaria at the priory and in 1232 granted the priory one hide of land at Hendred.

In 1445 Dr John Derby visited the priory on behalf of William Alnwick, Bishop of Lincoln. Seven nuns were living there but their dormitory was in such disrepair that they did not sleep in it, for fear it would collapse. The nuns were breaking their Rule by eating meat every day, three lay women were boarding at the priory, and a Cistercian monk frequently visited and drank with the prioress.

In 1517 Edmund Horde visited the priory on behalf of a subsequent Bishop of Lincoln, William Atwater. He found that the prioress, Katherine Wells, had an illegitimate daughter, the father was a priest who still visited her, and Wells had taken much of the priory's goods and pawned its valuables to provide the girl with a dowry. There was no food, clothing or spending money for the nuns. Within the last year another of the nuns had had an illegitimate child whose father was a married man in Oxford. Some of the other nuns had rebuked Wells but she had responded by putting them in the stocks.

There were five nuns, and Wells had ordered them all to tell Mr Horde that all was well. Bishop Atwater summoned and examined Wells, who admitted these irregularities had been going on for eight years. Atwater deposed her but allowed her to remain in post for the time being, provided she did nothing without Mr Horde's approval. Nine months after Mr Horde's report, Bishop Atwater visited the priory himself. He found that Wells had taken revenge on those nuns who had told the truth, putting one in the stocks for a month and kicking and punching another nun in the head. Another nun continued to misbehave, romping (luctando) with boys in the cloister and refusing to stop. When she was put in the stocks as a punishment, three other nuns released her and burnt the stocks. When Wells tried to rebuke them, the four escaped from the priory via a window and went to stay with friends for two or three weeks.

East door of the dormitory range of the former priory, now Minchery Farmhouse

In 1524 Thomas Wolsey, the Lord Chancellor, recommended that the priory be dissolved. In February 1525 the priory was dissolved and the prioress was pensioned off.

Archaeology

In 1970 the historian William Pantin published a conjectural plan of the priory church, refectory and other buildings arranged around a cloister west of the surviving building. In 2012 The East Oxford Archaeology & History Project excavated part of Minchery Farm Paddock. It found walls of a well-built mediæval stone building at right-angles to the farmhouse. Finds of fine pottery, metalwork, decorated tiles and animal bones suggest it was a domestic building. The building is roughly where Pantin postulated that the refectory may have been.

In 2014 John Moore Heritage Services found and excavated the site of the priory church. It was built in the 13th century, with a choir, central tower, nave, belfry and north transept. A smaller mid-12th-century church may have been on the site before the 13th-century one was built, but the evidence for this was not conclusive.

92 human burials were found on the site. Most were inside the church: in the choir, north transept and nave. The remainder were outside just east of the choir. 35 of the burials were female and 28 were male. The sex of the remaining 29 was not determined. One burial was in a limestone cist, positioned under what would have been the centre of the tower, and contained the remains of a woman aged 45 or older. She is likely to have been a prioress. Another burial near the west end of the nave was a woman aged between 19 and 25, laid face down. Part of the grave had been disturbed, her legs were missing, and the body of an infant was buried where they had been.

Minchery Farmhouse, latterly the Priory pub

Minchery Farmhouse

One building of the priory survives. It has been identified as the east range of the cloister garth, with the chapter house and other rooms on the ground floor and the nuns' dormitory on the first floor. In about 1600 it was remodelled as Minchery Farmhouse. Later it was extended, probably late in the 18th century. As Littlemore became more developed, the house was changed first into a country club and later into the Priory pub, which closed in 2013. The house is now a Grade-II* listed building.

Churches

Roman Catholic church of Blessed Dominic Barberi

Church of England

St Nicholas' priory had a priory church, but until the 19th century Littlemore had no parish church. In 1828 John Henry Newman was appointed vicar of St Mary's and he started agitating for a separate church at Littlemore. The new parish church of Saint Mary and Saint Nicholas was designed by the architect H.J. Underwood, built in 1835 and consecrated in 1836. The chancel and north-east tower were added in 1848, and the vestry in 1918. The church is in a Gothic Revival style and became a model for smaller churches of the time.

Roman Catholic

The Roman Catholic Church of Blessed Dominic Barberi was built in 1969.

Littlemore Hospital

On the southeast side of Littlemore on Sandford Road is the Littlemore Mental Health Centre, which includes Ashurst Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU).

Across the road is the former Littlemore Asylum building by Robert Clarke founded in 1846 under the 1845 Lunacy Act. It was enlarged several times between 1849 and 1901, but from an early stage the buildings were criticised as inadequate for their purpose. The hospital was closed in 1996 and the NHS vacated the site in 1998, selling it for private residential development.

A developer converted the hospital building to private homes, renamed it St George's Manor, and built new residential blocks called Surman House and Radcliffe House in the grounds. Mandelbrote Drive, which serves the estate, is named after Dr Bertram Mandelbrote, whose pioneering work on the therapeutic community ultimately led to the hospital's relocation and the sale of the Victorian buildings.

Littlemore Park and SAE Institute

The SAE Institute moved its headquarters in 2008 to the former Yamanouchi building, itself using a building from the former hospital. In 2005 RO Developments Limited bought the building from Yamanouchi (later Astellas Pharma). RO Developments then converted the former hospital, extensively refurbished the building and in 2008 sold it to the SAE Institute.

Railway

The Wycombe Railway opened Littlemore railway station in 1864 as part of its extension from Thame to Oxford.

In 1963 British Railways withdrew passenger services between Princes Risborough and Oxford and closed all intermediate stations including Littlemore. The line through Littlemore remains open for freight traffic between the Didcot – Oxford main line at Kennington Junction and the BMW Mini factory at Cowley.

Notable residents

The College

John Henry Newman

Littlemore may be best known for the work of Cardinal Newman, whose connection with the village began in 1828, when he was appointed vicar of St Mary the Virgin and soon began holding classes for the residents of Littlemore. He organised a successful petition to have a new church built. From 1842 to 1846 Newman lived at Littlemore, in a house in College Lane, under a rule of strict monastic discipline. There he took up orders with the Roman Catholic Church (a sensation at the time), and was accepted into the faith by Father Dominic Barberi, a prominent Passionist active at the time. Birmingham Oratory bought the property in 1951, and members of an International Religious Order are residents and custodians of the College.

Other residents

The trade unionist Henry Broadhurst (1840–1911) was born in the village, the son of a local stonemason.

The local historian Edmund Arnold Greening Lamborn lived at 34 Oxford Road, Littlemore from 1911 to 1950.

See also

• Littlemore Brook

Sources

• Lobel, Mary D, ed (1957). "Littlemore". A History of the County of Oxford. Victoria County History. 5: Bullingdon Hundred. London: Oxford University Press for the Institute of Historical Research. pp. 206–214. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol5/pp206-214. 
• Page, W.H., ed (1907). "The priory of Littlemore". A History of the County of Oxford. Victoria County History. 2: Ecclesiastical History, etc.. Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co. pp. 75–77. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol2/pp75-77. 
• Pantin, W.A. (1970). "Minchery Farm". Oxoniensia (Oxford: Oxford Architectural and Historical Society) XXXV: 19–26. SSN 0308-5562. 
• Radford, David (2015). "Minchery Farm, Littlemore". Oxoniensia (Oxford: Oxfordshire Architectural and Historical Society) LXXX: 208. SSN 0308-5562. 
• Sherwood, Jennifer; Pevsner, Nikolaus (1974). Oxfordshire. The Buildings of England. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. pp. 688–690. ISBN 0-14-071045-0. 

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Littlemore)

• Littlemore Parish Council Oxfordshire