Product Code Database
Cropredy ( ) is a village and civil parish on the River Cherwell, north of Banbury in Oxfordshire.
From 1519 onwards Brasenose College, Oxford owned extensive land in Cropredy. Manor Farm was built in 1693 and Prescote Manorialism was built in 1721.
Cropredy Bridge on the River Cherwell was the site of a major battle in 1644 during the English Civil War. King Charles engaged the Roundhead army led by Sir William Waller. The battle was a stalemate; the Parliamentarian side suffered heavy casualties but ultimately prevented the King's forces from crossing the bridge. A plaque on the bridge bears the inscription: "The site of the Battle of Cropredy Bridge June 1644 from Civil War Good Lord deliver us." Before the battle, some of the church valuables were hidden in the River Cherwell; these included the brass eagle lectern, which was not recovered for 50 years, during which time it was damaged.
The church had a clock by 1512, when the vicar, Roger Lupton, left £6 13s 4d in his will in trust for the churchwardens to pay someone to keep the clock running and chiming every quarter-hour and the village curfew. Lupton's will prescribed that the wardens be fined 6s 8d per month of £10 per year if they were to fail. A new clock may have been installed around 1700, and Lupton's clock may then have been transferred to Claydon. The later clock was itself replaced in 1831 with a new one made by John Moore and Sons of Clerkenwell, London.
The bell tower has a Change ringing of bells. There were six, but in 2007 two new treble bells increased this to eight. Oxford Diocesan Guild of Church Bell ringers, Banbury Branch One of the new bells is named St Mary; the other Fairport Convention Festival Bell.
St Mary's parish is now part of the Benefice of Shires' Edge along with those of Claydon, Great Bourton, Mollington and Wardington.
By the 13th century Cropredy was associated with the legend of Saint Fremund, a who was said to have been martyred in the 9th century. Fremund's relics are supposed to have been moved from Offchurch in Warwickshire to Prescote, where they were lost for a time and then rediscovered and moved to Cropredy. They were then moved to the Augustinians Dunstable Priory, probably in 1207, but an association with Fremund remained at Cropredy. There are records of gifts to a chapel and shrine to the saint here in 1488 and 1539, and a chantry priest serving in St. Fremund's chapel in 1489. During the English Reformation under Edward VI the Crown sold the chapel and its contents in 1549 and it was probably demolished. No trace remains, its site is unknown and it is not clear whether the shrine chapel was at St. Mary's church or elsewhere in the parish.
A Methodist chapel had been built by 1822. The congregation outgrew it so a larger chapel was built on a new site in 1881.
The Oxford and Rugby Railway had been built from northwards past Cropredy by 1852. It never reached , but at it met the Birmingham and Oxford Junction Railway and thus became part of an important north–south main line. The Great Western Railway took over the O&RR before it was completed, and opened Cropredy railway station to serve the village. closed the station in 1956, but the railway remains open as part of the Chiltern Main Line.
Cropredy's public transport is bus route 503 between Banbury and Long Itchington in Warwickshire, operated by Catteralls Coaches with one bus each way a week on Thursdays only and route 502, operated by Stagecoach, between Temple Herdewyke and Banbury with one bus each way a week on Saturdays and Good Friday.
|
|
