Kidlington

Kidlington
Oxfordshire
Church Street, Kidlngton
Location
Grid reference:	SP490141
Location:	51°49’24"N, 1°17’26"W
Data
Population:	13,723  (2011)
Post town:	Kidlington
Postcode:	OX5
Dialling code:	01865
Local Government
Council:	Cherwell
Parliamentary constituency:	Oxford West and Abingdon
Website:	Kidlington Parish Council

Kidlington is a large village in Oxfordshire, sitting between the River Cherwell and the Oxford Canal, five miles north of Oxford and seven and a half miles southwest of Bicester.

Kidlington's name is derived from the Old English Cudelinga tun: the village of the "Kidlings" (the sons, or 'clan', of Cydel, an otherwise unknown progentitor). The Domesday Book in 1086 records Chedelintone, and by 1214 the spelling Kedelinton appears in a Calendar of Bodleian Charters.

Parish church

The parish church of St Mary the Virgin dates from 1220 but there is evidence of a church on the site since 1073. St Mary's has fine mediæval stained glass and a 220-foot spire. It is a Grade I listed building.

The tower has a ring of eight bells. Richard III Chandler of Drayton Parslow in Buckinghamshire cast the seventh bell in 1700. Abraham I Rudhall of Gloucester cast the tenor bell in 1708 and the fifth bell in 1715. Mears and Stainbank of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry cast the treble, second, third, fourth and sixth bells in 1897, the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

Behind the church there are archaeological remains of a three-sided moat, and a causeway has recently been discovered which may be of Roman origin.

St Mary's Rectory is of the Tudor period and style.

History

Beside the church are the almshouses, built by Sir William Morton in 1671 in memory of his wife and children, whose names are inscribed above the windows. Sir William was a Royalist Commander during the Civil War and lived in nearby Hampden Manor in Mill Street. Other famous residents of Hampden Manor include Sir John Vanbrugh who lived here during the building of Blenheim Palace in Woodstock. The square tower water closet in the front garden of Hampden Manor was built by Vanbrugh. It drains into a brook that now runs underground along Mill Street into the nearby River Cherwell. Thomas Beecham formulated his medicine whilst living in a cottage near the Manor, where he worked for a time as a gardener for John Sydenham.

The village listed in Domesday grew from an ancient village adjacent to the church. Here there are as many 18th century Georgian buildings as modern houses. Until the Enclosure acts in 1818, a large section south of the village was unenclosed common land, and the village was widely known as Kidlington-on-the-Green. Just prior to Second World War, this land was built up in an estate known as Garden City.

There was once a zoo in Kidlington where the Thames Valley Police headquarters is now. This short-lived attraction was in existence from 1931 until 1937, when the animals were transferred to Dudley zoo.

In the 1920s and 1930s Kidlington was subject to ribbon development along the main road through the village. Since 1945 many housing estates have been built behind this on both sides.

In the 20th century Kidlington grew to be a contender for largest village in the United Kingdom with a population of 13,723 (compared with 1,300 in 1901). Kidlington residents have so far resisted proposals to adopt the name of "town", though it clearly qualifies for such status against any normal criteria of size and importance. Following a peremptory change by the Parish Council to name itself "Kidlington Town Council", the change was voted down in a ballot of the local electorate by 98%, and reversed.

Railways

A railway station on the Oxford and Rugby Railway near Langford Lane was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and opened in 1852. The station was named Woodstock Road, although it was nearly three miles from Woodstock and less than a mile from Kidlington. The Oxford and Rugby Railway was part of the Great Western Railway, which in 1890 added a branch line to a new Blenheim and Woodstock railway station at Woodstock and renamed Woodstock Road "Kidlington". British Railways closed Kidlington railway station in 1964. The station building remained in 1983. Speculation from the 1980s onwards was that a new station might be built on land between Flatford Place and Thorne Close on Lyne Road.

Oxford Road Halt on the former Varsity Line, a mile and a half south of the centre of Kidlington, was opened by the London and North Western Railway in 1905 and closed by its successor the London, Midland and Scottish Railway in 1926. Train operator Chiltern Railways decided to build a new Oxford Parkway railway station close to the site of the former halt as part of its Project Evergreen3 development programme, opening in summer 2015, with frequent services to London Marylebone taking one hour.

Lady Anne Morton's almshouses

St Mary the Virgin, Kidlington

Amenities

Kidlington has about 50 shops, banks and building societies, a public library, a large village hall and a weekly market. There are seven public houses, two cafés, and four restaurants. The public houses are concentrated along the main A4260 road through the village: the Highwayman Hotel (originally the Anchor, then The Railway Hotel, finally the Wise Alderman, before being renamed again in 2009), the Black Horse, the Black Bull, the Red Lion, as well as the King's Arms in the Moors, and the Six Bells in Mill Street. The Squire Bassett was converted into a Nepalese Restaurant and renamed the Gurkha Village in 2012.

Economy

Significant to the village's development is the existence of London Oxford Airport. Opposite the airport is the Langford Locks industrial estate and Oxford Motor Park which has showrooms for makes including Honda, Nissan and Toyota. Businesses including Eurocopter, Guylian Chocolates and Essentra Components all have premises in the village.

Campsfield House, an immigration detention centres run for the Government, is next to the industrial area near the airport.

Big Society

• Kidlington Women's Institute.
• Kidlington Amateur Operatic Society (KAOS), founded in 1977
• Kidlington Concert Brass

Kidlington has possessed a brass band continuously since 1892, with earlier foundations dating back to at least the 1850s. The current band was founded by the merger of Kidlington Silver Band and Oxford Concert Brass in 1992.

Sports

• Cricket: Kidlington Cricket Club, founded in 1837
• Football:
  • Kidlington Football Club, founded in 1909
  • Kidlington Royals Football Club
  • Kidlington Old Boys Football Club, formed in 1999
• Rugby: The Gosford All Blacks, founded on 15 May 1956 and taking its name from the New Zealand All Blacks team which was touring that season

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Kidlington)

• Kidlington & District Historical Society
• Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin, Kidlington
• Kidlington Recreational Trust Social Club
• Gosford Hill School
• Kidlington Concert Brass
• Kidlington Amateur Operatic Society
• Kidlington Royals Football Club

References

• Compton, Hugh J (1976). The Oxford Canal. Newton Abbot: David & Charles. pp. 37, 117, 150. ISBN 0-7153-7238-6. 
• A History of the County of Oxford, Volume 12: Wootton Hundred (South) including Woodstock - Victoria County History
• Emery, Frank (1974). The Oxfordshire Landscape. The Making of the English Landscape. London: Hodder & Stoughton. pp. 141, 166, 167, 182, 184. ISBN 0-340-04301-6. 
• Sherwood, Jennifer; Pevsner, Nikolaus (1974). Oxfordshire. The Buildings of England. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. pp. 670–672. ISBN 0-14-071045-0. 
• Wing, William (1881). Annals of Kidlington. Oxford.