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The name Charlbury is of Anglo-Saxon origin, from the old English ‘burgh’, a
fortified place or earthwork, belonging to ‘Ceorl’, possibly a personal name but
more likely meaning that it was inhabited by freemen.
In the 8th century it belonged to the Mercian kings and in 1094 it was given by
the Norman Bishop of Lincoln to Eynsham Abbey. When the abbey was dissolved by
Henry VIII, there were two claimants to the manor of Charlbury. One was Sir
Henry Lee of Ditchley, who had installed his mistress, Ann Vavasour at Lee’s
Rest, the other Sir Thomas White, who founded St John’s College, Oxford in 1555.
Eventually the courts found in favour of the President and Scholars of St
John’s, who leased Charlbury to Sir Henry Lee and his descendants for the term
of three lives. In 1857, by exchange, the property passed to the owner of
Cornbury Park. St John’s College still appoints the vicars of Charlbury.
Cornbury Park was an important part of the history of Charlbury. An Elizabethan
hunting lodge, the gift of Queen Elizabeth I to the Earl of Leicester, it was
demolished and a beautiful house built in its stead by Lord Clarendon in the
reign of Charles I.
Spinning and weaving went on in many homes, and in the early 1800s the gloving
industry was revived by leading Quakers to help alleviate the poverty resulting
from the Napoleonic Wars. Gloving continued as a cottage industry and then in
small factories until the early 1960s and the glove-makers Fownes, whose crest
was a falcon, built Falcon Villas in Hundley Way for their employees. Charlbury
was mainly a self sufficient agricultural community, served by its own craftsmen
and shopkeepers, its own corn mill (pulled down in 1935), several malt-houses,
inns and many beer-houses, its own water supply and gasworks, until after the
Second World War.
In 1853 the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway was opened. In 1977
heavy lorries were banned from the town centre, a oneway scheme was devised and
a ring-route for through traffic designated.
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