Steeple Aston, Oxfordshire - Hopcrofts Holt Hotel - postcard c.1995

• Postcard

   

• Picture / Image:  Hopcrofts Holt Hotel, Steeple Aston, Oxfordshire 
• Publisher: the Hotel / E & L Film Partnership
• Postally used: no
• Stamp:  n/a
• Postmark(s): n/a
• Sent to:  n/a
• Notes / condition: has a bumped corner bottom right

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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Steeple Aston is a village and civil parish on the edge of the Cherwell Valley, in the Cherwell District of Oxfordshire, England, about 7 miles (11 km) west of Bicester and 10 miles (16 km) south of Banbury. The 2011 Census recorded the parish population as 947.[1]

The village is 108 metres (354 ft) above sea level. The River Cherwell and Oxford Canal pass 1 mile (2 km) east of the village. The river forms part of the eastern boundary of the parish. The parish's southern boundary, 1⁄2 mile (800 m) south of the village, also forms part of Cherwell District's boundary with West Oxfordshire.

The earliest evidence of occupation in the area is an Iron Age burial site in the west of the parish near Hopcroft's Holt.[2][3]

The Domesday Book of 1086 records Steeple Aston as Estone, derived from East Tun meaning "east village". By 1220 it was Stipelestun, with the "steeple" prefix probably referring to the church tower.[2]

The Domesday Book of 1086 records that Odo, Bishop of Bayeux was overlord of the manor of Steeple Aston.[2]

The Holt Hotel at Hopcroft's Holt, about 1 mile (1.6 km) southwest of the village on the A4260 main road began as a coaching inn in 1475. It was frequented by the 17th century highwayman Claude Duval who is said to haunt it.[4] In 1754 the licensee and his wife at Hopcroft's Holt were murdered.[2] In 1774 the inn at Hopcroft's Holt was called the King's Arms.[2]

The village has several 17th-century buildings from the Great Rebuilding of England. The School formerly occupied a building in North Side built in 1640. Next to it are Radcliffe's Almshouses which Brasenose College founded in the 1660s. In South Side, Grange Cottage is early 17th century and Manor Farm House is late 17th century.[5]

Church and chapel

Parish church of SS Peter & Paul

The Church of England parish church of Saints Peter and Paul is 13th century, with subsequent Perpendicular Gothic alterations, and the architect John Plowman restored it in 1842.[5] The parish church is the source of the Steeple Aston cope, an important piece of 14th century embroidery now on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

The church tower has a ring of eight bells.[6][7] Richard Keene of Burford[8] cast the three oldest bells in 1674 and 1675.[9] A further bell was cast in 1700 by one of the Chandler family[9] of bell-founders from Drayton Parslow[8] in Buckinghamshire. Two bells were added in the 19th century cast by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry: one cast by Thomas Mears II in 1827[9] and the other, the present tenor, cast by Mears and Stainbank in 1879.[9] This completed a ring of six bells,[2] with the smallest of the Keene bells being the treble. In 1986 the Whitechapel Bell Foundry cast two slightly smaller bells which were added as a new treble and second bell, increasing the ring to eight.[9] SS Peter and Paul has also a Sanctus bell, cast in 1701 by Henry Bagley II,[9] who had foundries in the Northamptonshire villages of Chacombe and Ecton.[8]

Steeple Aston had a small number of recusants in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries and a small number of Quakers in the 17th century.[2] Methodist meetings were held in the home of one of the villagers for a few years early in the 19th century but had ceased by 1817.[2] Meetings were held in 1838 and 1839 to hear Primitive Methodist preachers and were well-attended despite uproarious organised protests.[2] A Methodist chapel in South Street was opened in 1852. It was used for worship until 1968 when it was converted into a private residence.[2]