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Weston-on-the-Green is not only on the green but also on the road. It is
just south of Akeman Street, the Roman road from Corinium to Silchester. In
later years the roads to Bicester and Northampton were both turnpikes, with a
tollgate at Weston. In 1847 a William Marriott was fined five
shillings and costs for preventing the Rev A. H. Matthews (the
magistrate) from passing him on the turnpike by driving on the wrong
side of the road.
Weston is a typical English village of stone houses, many with thatched roofs, a
manor house, a church and also a recently restored duck pond. The village
school, which closed in 1984, was the only thatched school in Oxfordshire.
It has always been a farming community and in the 19th century many women
supplemented the family income by lace-making. Some of their lace was sold by a
splendid woman called Dinah Tuffrey, who acted as the local carrier and pedlar,
walking to Bicester and then taking trains to places further afield where she
sold local produce, and bringing back goods to the village.
Justice was dispensed by the magistrate aided by the village constable, whose
account book gives a marvellous description of his arrangement of a marriage
between Martha Coggins and Thomas Monk to enable Marthas baby to be born in
wedlock. Summary justice for adulterers and other offenders was given in the
form of rough music, where the villagers banged pots and pans to make a
hideous noise at the offenders house, and even threw soot down the chimney!
In the 18th century the church had fallen into disrepair and was restored by the
then lord of the manor. While on his Grand Tour in Italy he commissioned an
altar piece from Pompeo Batoni it is still in the church today. Sadly the
Berties tenure of the manor ended in 1918 when Richard Bertie was killed in
Palestine four days before the end of the First World War. The whole estate was
sold in 1919 and the manor house is now an hotel.
In addition to Weston Manor Hotel there are two pubs, the Chequers and the Ben
Jonson. Both are thatched buildings and the Ben Jonson seems to have been the
centre of activities at the annual Village Feast in September. As the Bicester
Advertiser put it in 1879, a number of amusements of the itinerant kind
arrived at Weston either before or after St Giless Fair in Oxford. In addition
to this celebration there was the Weston on the Green Club Feast which took
place in early summer. It seems to have been a savings club affiliated to the
church and at the feast there was a service with a sermon and a sit-down dinner.
The chapel, which was built by the Methodists themselves in 1838, still
celebrates its anniversary with a splendid tea party.
North of the village on the A43 is Weston airfield, built in the First World War
and now used by a civilian gliding club and by the RAF for parachute training.
It is a common sight, in good weather, to see parachutes dropping from the sky,
some of them free-falling from a great height.
Mad Maude, one of the village ghosts, in one story was a demented dairymaid who
fell from the tower. Another version is that she was a nun who was burned to
death as punishment for immoral behaviour. Either way, she is said to haunt a
bedroom at the manor. There is also a ghostly coach and horses at the manor and
one of the farmhouses has a 17th century serving woman who helps out at parties.
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