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The name Leafield comes from La Felde, French for the field, though it was
usually called Feld or Field Town until the 19th century. It was probably given
this name because the site was a natural clearing within Wychwood Forest. The
ancient core of the village centres round the greens to the south of Leafield
Barrow, on a small island of very infertile gravelly soil, which, in contrast to
the surrounding area, is probably incapable of supporting fully-developed
woodland. This would have made it attractive to settlers and, together with the
presence of water from ponds and wells in the Oxford Clay around Leafield, no
doubt explains the siting of the village.
For much of its existence, Leafield remained remote. Two themes which recur
throughout Leafields history are the strong links between the village and the
surrounding Wychwood Forest and, secondly, crime. The two are closely related,
partly because the forest in its legal sense of an area under Forest Law, gave
scope for punishing many minor offences, but also because in its literal sense
it provided hiding and protection for wrongdoers. By the early 19th century,
the district had a very bad name. Arthur Young, writing in 1813, said: The
vicinity is filled with poachers, deer-stealers, thieves and pilferers of every
kind: offences of almost every description abound so much, that the offenders
are a terror to all quiet and well-disposed persons; and Oxford gaol would be
uninhabited, were it not for this fertile source of crimes. It was only after
the deforestation of Wychwood in 1857 and the attendant changes in social and
economic conditions that Leafields reputation for lawlessness diminished.
Leafield had a number of customs associated with the forest. On Palm Sunday, the
children went with bottles and liquorice into the forest to the spring known as
Worts Well, or Uzzle, and drank the liquorice dissolved in the water. This
seems to have been a continuance of an ancient custom, based on the supposed
healing powers of the spring. According to John Kibble, a local historian who
wrote in the 1920s, prayers were said at the spring:
Hast then a wound to heal
The wych doth grieve thee?
Come then unto this welle,
It will relieve thee:
Nolie me tangeries,
And other maladies
Have here thyr remedies
Praysd be the Lord.
The local clergy did not approve of the custom. One Leafield villager has a
crucifix given to her grandmother by the vicar, as a reward for being the only
child to attend church on Palm Sunday, instead of going to the forest!
In the 18th and 19th centuries Leafield was an important centre for pottery
manufacture, though the industry was probably established here very much
earlier. The pottery was known as Field Town Chiney and was crude, everyday
earthenware, with a treacly orangey-brown glaze. Broken pieces are frequently
found in the village gardens.
The main landmark in the village is the church, built, together with the old
vicarage, in 1859 by the eminent Victorian architect, Sir George Gilbert Scott.
It is the third on this site. The first, built sometime before 1533, and the
second, which replaced it in 1822, were tiny chapels of ease. Communion and
other regular services were held here, but for baptisms, marriages and burials
the villagers had to go to Shipton. There was a handful of exceptions, as when
in 1606 Robert Jeferie was baptised in the chapel because he was sicke and
weake. In 1831 a local farmer, Peter Harris, gave land for a churchyard, but
marriages were not celebrated in Leafield until 1853.
Across the road from the church is the village cross. It is not known when or
why it was first erected, but by the 19th century it was in a ruinous state. It
was restored in 1873 as a memorial to Leafields deliverance from a smallpox
epidemic.
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