Hampton Gay
| Hampton Gay | |
| Oxfordshire | |
|---|---|
 St. Giles' parish church | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SP489164 |
| Location: | 51°50’42"N, 1°17’27"W |
| Data | |
| Post town: | Kidlington |
| Postcode: | OX5 |
| Dialling code: | 01865 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Cherwell |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Banbury |
| Website: | hamptongayandpoyle.co.uk |
Hampton Gay is a tiny village in Oxfordshire, at the end of a dead-end lane by a loop in the River Cherwell to the north of Oxford. Its sister village, Hampton Poyle, is less than a mile across the fields, connected by footpath if not any direct road. It is about a mile and a half north of Kidlington.
The name 'Hampton' is commonplace across Britain, meaning 'home farm'. The suffix Gay derives from the de Gay family, who owned the land in the twelfth century. The de Poyle family a century later gave their name to Hampton Poyle.
Contents
History
In 1972 a cast bronze clasp was found at Hampton Gay near St Giles' parish church.[1][2] It is decorated with stylised Acanthus leaves and may be late Saxon, from the 10th or 11th century.[1]
Manor
After the Norman conquest, Robert D'Oyly gave an estate of three hides at Hampton Gay to his brother in arms Roger d'Ivry, while a second estate of two hides at Hampton Gay belonged to the Crown. D'Ivry's holding became part of the honour of St Valery, which in the 13th century was owned by Richard, 1st Earl of Cornwall. Under his successor Edmund, 2nd Earl of Cornwall towards the end of the 13th century the d'Ivry holding was merged with the Duchy of Cornwall. The royal estate at Hampton Gay became part of the honour of Gloucester and thereby followed the same descent as the manor of Finmere.[3]
The Domesday Book of 1086 records that one Rainald was the tenant of both the d'Ivry and the royal estate.
In about 1170 Reginald de Gay gave a virgate of land (about thirty acres) to the house of the Knights Templar at Cowley, Oxfordshire. In about 1311 the Templars were suppressed and their holding at Hampton Gay was transferred to the Knights Hospitaller of Saint John of Jerusalem. In about 1218 Robert de Gay gave the tenancy of half a hide of the St. Valery estate to the Benedictine convent at Godstow. Between 1195 and 1205 the Augustinian Abbey of Osney bought the tenancy of two virgates at Hampton Gay from Robert de Gay, who in stages from 1210 to 1222 gave the remainder of his tenancy to the abbey.[3] The three religious orders retained their estates at Hampton Gay until 1539, when they were suppressed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries and forfeited their lands to the Crown, which in 1542 sold Hampton Gay to Leonard Chamberlayne of Shirburn. In 1544 Chamberlayne sold the estate to John Barry of Eynsham, whose family owned Hampton Gay until they got into financial difficulties and sold it in 1682.[3]
The Barry family built the manor house in the 16th century. It has an E-shaped plan with gabled wings and a battlemented central porch.[4] Its Elizabethan form remained unaltered until the 19th century, including original Elizabethan panelling in its principal rooms, but in 1809 it was reported to be in a neglected state. In the 1880s the house was divided into two tenements[3] but in 1887 it was gutted by fire.[4] It has never been restored and remains an ivy-clad ruin. It is a Grade II listed building and a scheduled monument.
Economic and social history
Hampton Gay had a water mill on the River Cherwell by 1219, when it became the property of Osney Abbey. It was a grist mill until 1681, when Vincent Barry leased it[3] to a Mr Hutton, who converted it into a paper mill.[5] In 1684 Hutton took over the corn mill at Adderbury Grounds, 12.0 miles (19.3 km) upstream of Hampton Gay, and converted that into a paper mill.[5] The mills produced pulp, but the paper was made in batches by hand until 1812, when Hampton Gay mill was re-equipped with a modern Fourdrinier machine that made paper mechanically and continuously.[5] In 1863–73 the paper mill was rebuilt with a gasworks, steam engine and other machinery. In 1875 it was destroyed by fire but from 1876 it was restored to production. In 1880 it had both a water wheel powered by the river and a steam engine fed by a Cornish boiler, and could produce about a ton of paper per day. The tenants running the mill were J. and B. New, and when the manor house was divided they became tenants of one of its two portions. However, by 1887 the News had gone bankrupt and their stock in trade was sold to settle unpaid rent.[3]
Hampton Gay's population was more numerous in mediæval times than at present.[3][6] However it declined, and in 1428 the village was exempted from taxation because it had fewer than 10 householders. John Barry, who bought the manor in 1544, had made his money from wool, and he or his heirs enclosed land at Hampton Gay for sheep pasture. In 1596 Hampton Gay villagers joined those from Hampton Poyle who were plotting an agrarian revolt against the enclosures. Led by Bartholemew Steer who farmed the land at Hampton Gay, the rebels planned to murder landowners including Vincent Barry and his daughter and then to march on London. A carpenter at Hampton Gay warned Barry, and five ringleaders were arrested and taken to London for trial. Bartholemew Steer, who was recognised as the leader was sentenced to be hanged drawn and quartered. However, the Government also recognised the cause of the rebels' grievance and determined that "order should be taken about inclosures...that the poor may be able to live". Parliament duly passed an Act (39 Eliz. 1 c. 2) to restore to arable use all lands that had been converted to pasture since the accession of Elizabeth I in 1558.[3]
The population of Hampton Gay continued to dwindle from the closing of the mill to the 1990's and is considered no more than a hamlet.
Parish church
Tithe records show that Hampton Gay had a parish church by 1074. The Church of England parish church, St Giles had included features from at least as early as the 13th century, but in 1767–72 the Rev. Thomas Hindes, a member of the family that then owned the manor, had it completely rebuilt.[3] In 1842 the antiquarian J.H. Parker condemned St. Giles' Georgian architecture as "a very bad specimen of the meeting-house style".[4] In 1859–60 the curate, Rev. F. C. Hingeston, altered the church to his own designs, replacing its round-headed Georgian windows with ones in an Early Gothic style and having the south doorway re-cut in a Norman revival fashion.
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Hampton Gay) |
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Hinton 1974, p. 98.
- ↑ Hinton 1975, p. 331.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 Lobel 1959, pp. 152–159
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Sherwood & Pevsner 1974, p. 630.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Foreman 1983, p. 71
- ↑ Emery 1974, p. 103.
- Emery, Frank (1974). Hoskins, W.G.. ed. The Oxfordshire Landscape. The Making of the English Landscape. London: Hodder & Stoughton. p. 103. ISBN 0-340-04301-6. https://archive.org/details/oxfordshirelands0000emer.
- Foreman, Wilfrid (1983). Oxfordshire Mills. Chichester: Phillimore & Co Ltd. pp. 71–72. ISBN 0-85033-441-1.
- Hinton, David A. (1974). "A Bronze Clasp from Water Eaton". Oxoniensia (Oxford: Oxfordshire Architectural and Historical Society) XXXIX: 98. SSN 0308-5562. http://oxoniensia.org/volumes/1974/notes.pdf#page=3.
- Hinton, David A. (1975). "A Bronze Clasp not from Water Eaton". Oxoniensia (Oxford: Oxfordshire Architectural and Historical Society) XL: 331. SSN 0308-5562. http://oxoniensia.org/volumes/1975/notes.pdf#page=7.
- A History of the County of Oxford - Volume 6 pp 152-159: Hampton Gay (Victoria County History)
- Nikolaus Pevsner: The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire, 1974 Penguin Books ISBN 978-0-300-09639-2
- Stone, Jean (2014). River Cherwell. Amberley Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4456-3443-2.
