Lidstone

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Lidstone
Oxfordshire

Cottages in Lidstone
Location
Grid reference: SP355247
Location: 51°55’11"N, 1°29’7"W
Data
Post town: Chipping Norton
Postcode: OX7
Dialling code: 01608
Local Government
Council: West Oxfordshire
Parliamentary
constituency:
Witney
Website: Enstone Parish

Lidstone is a hamlet on the River Glyme in Oxfordshire, a mile west of Enstone and about three miles east of Chipping Norton.

History and archaeology

In Round Hill Field[1] on a ridge about 700 yards south of Lidstone is a Bronze Age bowl barrow. It is 105 feet in diameter and two feet high. Originally it would have been substantially higher, and would have been created from spoil dug from a circular quarry trench six and a half feet deep. The trench has become filled in but will have survived as a buried feature. The barrow is the most northerly of a line of three that form a line between Lidstone and the village of Spelsbury. It is a scheduled monument. In the middle of the barrow is an Ordnance Survey triangulation station.[2]

By 1279 there was a hide of land at Lidstone that was part of the manor of Heythrop.[3]

Lidstone had a large watermill on the Glyme. It had the largest-diameter waterwheel in Oxfordshire: an overshot wheel 24 feet in diameter[4] and 4 feet wide. Via a 15-foot pitwheel it drove three pairs of millstones. The mill had its own bread oven.[5] The mill was dismantled in 1976 and its machinery taken into storage, but the large iron waterwheel was left in place.[6]

("Wikimedia Commons" has material
about Lidstone)

References

  1. Harden 1954, p. 143.
  2. National Heritage List 1009430: Bowl barrow 600 yards south-west of Hill Farm, Lidstone (Scheduled ancient monument entry)
  3. Crossley 1983, pp. 131–143
  4. Foreman 1983, p. 45.
  5. Foreman 1983, p. 111.
  6. Foreman 1983, plate 22.
19th-century former chapel in Lidstone
  • A History of the County of Oxford - Volume 11 pp 131-143: Heythrop (Victoria County History)
  • Foreman, Wilfrid (1983). Oxfordshire Mills. Chichester: Phillimore & Co Ltd. pp. 45, 111. ISBN 0-85033-441-1. 
  • Harden, D.B. (1954). "Scheduled Monuments in Oxfordshire". Oxoniensia (Oxford: Oxford Architectural and Historical Society) XIX: 137–145.