Over Worton
| Over Worton | |
| Oxfordshire | |
|---|---|
 Holy Trinity, Over Worton | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SP429291 |
| Location: | 51°57’32"N, 1°22’34"W |
| Data | |
| Post town: | Chipping Norton |
| Postcode: | OX7 |
| Dialling code: | 01608 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | West Oxfordshire |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Witney |
Over Worton is a hamlet in the Cotswolds in the west of Oxfordshire, half a mile south of a similar hamlet, Nether Worton. The villages are about two miles east of Great Tew, seven and a half miles east of Chipping Norton and seven miles south of Banbury. In 1931 the parish had a population of 72, since when it has not been recorded separately.
History
Just north of Holy Trinity parish churchyard is an Anglo-Saxon barrow, about 60 feet in diameter and six feet high.[1] It is a Scheduled Ancient Monument.[2] Worton has the remains of a mediæval village cross. In the 20th century it was restored as the parish war memorial.[3]
The Domesday Book records that until 1066 one Leofgeat held the manor of Ortune, probably at what is now Nether Worton. After the Norman conquest an estate of three hides and half a yardland at Worton passed to William the Conqueror's half-brother Odo of Bayeux.[4] By 1086 there were 15 households consisting of 10 smallholders and five villagers.[5]
Parish church
Over Worton has had a parish church since at least the 13th century. The earliest known record of it is from 1254.[6] It had a Norman font, which is now in St John's church, Hempton.[7] In the 1820s Over Worton's curate was the evangelical priest Walter Mayers, who in the 1800s had taught classics at Great Ealing School in Middlesex. One of his pupils, John Henry Newman, preached his first sermon in Over Worton in 1824, before abandoning his evangelical persuasion and approaching Rome.
In the 1840s Wilson had the mediæval church demolished and the present Church of England parish church of the Holy Trinity built in its place.[6] It is a Gothic revival building, designed by the architect JM Derick and completed in 1844.[8] The north tower was added in 1849 and has two bells.[6]
In the churchyard east of the chancel is a pair of stone mediæval coffin lids[9] that may be a remnant from the previous church. Other remnants are a memorial tablet and effigy inside the present church. The tablet is in memory of the lawyer Edmund Meese, who died in 1617. The effigy is of a late 16th- or early 17th-century lawyer, and may also represent Edmund Meese.[6]
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Over Worton) |
References
- ↑ National Heritage List 1009414: Anglo-Saxon burial mound immediately north of Over Worton church graveyard (Scheduled ancient monument entry)
- ↑ Harden 1954, p. 143.
- ↑ National Heritage List 1194242: Village cross (Grade II listing)
- ↑ Crossley 1983, pp. 285–293.
- ↑ [Nether and Over Worton Over Worton] in the Domesday Book
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Crossley 1983, pp. 293–300.
- ↑ National Heritage List 1046341: Chapel of Ease of St John the Evangelist (Grade II listing)
- ↑ National Heritage List 1368238: Church of the Holy Trinity (Grade II listing)
- ↑ National Heritage List 1194250: Pair of coffin covers south east of chancel of Church of the Holy Trinity (Grade II listing)
- A History of the County of Oxford - Volume 11 pp 293-300: {{{2}}} (Victoria County History)
- Harden, Donald (1954). "Scheduled Monuments in Oxfordshire". Oxoniensia (Oxford Architectural and Historical Society) XIX: 137–145. http://oxoniensia.org/volumes/1954/harden.pdf.
- Nikolaus Pevsner: The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire, 1974 Penguin Books ISBN 978-0-300-09639-2