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With a current population of about 650, Forest Hill (technically part of Forest
Hill with Shotover) lies on a hillside just to the east of Oxford. A cluster of
stone houses, two pubs and a Norman church form a central conservation area
while Shotover House and its surrounding park lie to the south, separated by the
main A40 road.
The road system, which still exists, was fundamental to the primitive hamlet of
Forst Hyll (Old English meaning ‘hill ridge’). At the bottom of the hill ran a
road to Oxford, to the west went the Roman road from Dorchester to Alchester,
and a Saxon track ran to Brill. But the most important of these routes was the
one to Islip (birthplace of Edward the Confessor) and now the B4027. This ran on
to Woodstock, with its royal palace, and in stagecoach days was part of the
turnpike to Worcester and Holyhead.
The village appears in Domesday Book as the manor of Fostel. It passed to those
great Oxford landlords, Oseney Abbey and the monastery of St Frideswide, while
the adjoining manor, held by the prioress of Littlemore, is still remembered in
the modern Minchincourt Farm. The parish church, originally a chapel of the
church at Stanton St John, was dedicated to St Nicholas the Confessor.
The best known of the tenants of Manor Farm was Richard Powell, a spendthrift
Royalist who had borrowed £500 from a John Milton of Stanton St John. Interest
on the loan went to Milton’s son John, the great Puritan poet and pamphleteer.
While in pursuit of his money the poet met and in 1642, to general astonishment,
married Powell’s daughter Mary, then aged 16. It was an unhappy alliance and
Mary soon returned from London to a happier life in Forest Hill. She bore Milton
four children, but died in 1652 aged 25. This sad episode forms the core of
Robert Graves’ Wife to Mr Milton.
In the late 18th century Manor Farm again had literary associations when William
Julius Mickle lived there and translated the Portuguese epic, the Luciads.
Mickle was a considerable poet, a friend of Boswell and Johnson; he was buried
in the village churchyard. But perhaps the most colourful individual of this
period was the Reverend John Mayor who in the 1820s ran into debt over the
building of a new vicarage. He spent some time in Oxford gaol, from where he
managed to fulfil many of his parish duties, even apparently being let out on
Sundays to conduct services.
Later in the 19th century, the village changed rapidly. Manor Farm was
demolished and rebuilt in 1854 by Lincoln College, red-brick houses were built
and, important to daily life, a post office opened in 1882. Standpipes in the
streets supplied water from the village well. An austere Methodist chapel was
built at the end of the century and facing it an equally austere village hall.
Most villagers were still employed on the land while the local woods enabled
hurdle makers to follow their craft.
The First World War changed all this. Sixteen men did not return, a large number
for a small village. New agricultural techniques meant fewer men were needed on
the land, but above all the motor works at Cowley became the main employer. The
first council houses were built, the telephone was available for the prosperous,
and electricity and street lighting arrived in the 1930s. Transport was much
improved — buses made the shops and cinemas of Headington and Oxford accessible
and the vigorous social life of the pre-war village was to some extent replaced
by more urban pleasures.
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