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This is the Local History page for the Horspath Archaeology & History Group.
This page, and pages linked to this one, will discuss the history of Horspath and the local area from ancient times up to the present [all the text making up this section was supplied by Brian Lowe].
There are various footnotes in the text, denoted by a link of the form [Footnote No. nn]. Clicking on the link will take you to the text making up the footnote. At the end of the footnote text, click on the Return button to return to where you were.
Note: In the text, the original village name of "Horsepath" has been kept until the 20th. century, when it became Horspath.
The Ancient Village of Horspath since 1500
The year 1500 is a convenient point in time to continue the account of this Saxon village, which had its roots in the Roman occupation, but did not become an identifiable settlement until the Saxon era. From that point until 1500 the village changed hardly at all, with the ownership of the manors slowly moving from the influence of the Normans to the Knights Templar, until their confiscation by the Crown in 1308; thence the Knights Hospitaller, until the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when Henry VIII dissolved them and granted them all to Cardinal Wolsey in the guise of his great new college, Cardinal College. But this was to be temporary indeed, for Wolsey died in 1530, when it reverted to the King, and the Manor became part of the Temple Cowley group of manors. All of this would have meant very little to those who lived and worked the land of Horsepath, whose allegiance largely lay to the several absent tenant farmers, and whose working lives had remained unchanged over the previous centuries. 1500 marked the advent of gradual change, and this soon became apparent in the ownership of the lands encircling the village, when the influence of wealthy and influential men made their presence felt across the fields of Horsepath. Cardinal Wolsey, at the height of his power, was the Bursar of Magdalen College, and he had acquired the land of the aforementioned Hospitallers; thus our village came within his jurisdiction, and college men, mostly curates, had the responsibility of preaching in St. Giles - right up until the 1950s! Wolsey had begun the Dissolution of the Monasteries, continued even more energetically by Thomas Cromwell, and immediately other colleges, founded upon dissolved monasteries, began to acquire freehold land in the village. Brasenose (1509), Corpus Christi (1517) and later, All Souls College (who leased from Corpus Christi), bought land, and sub-let these lands to tenant farmers; and even today, much of Horsepath beyond the village is in college ownership. At this time, agriculture here was predominantly arable and sheep farming.
If we look at the village today, very few features remain as they were in 1500. The Church, originally from 1180 onwards, would have been recognisable at that time, and the hedged field pattern to the west of the village, together with the parish boundary over Shotover, and the southernmost boundary of the Royal Forest of Shotover are all as they were then, as was, of course, the ancient Roman road to the west. The track from Cowley existed, with the path up to Wheatley and thus the Old Road, but little else, and it limited the nature of Horsepath to a remote hamlet. Since the demise of "Old Horsepath", or "Upper Horsepath" in the 14th.c, which by 1500 was a distant memory, there was no trackway there except for access to the strip field system to the east of the village. Certainly communication to Cuddesdon and Garsington was restricted to minor footpaths, and like Horsepath, those two settlements were also isolated rural hamlets. The parish boundary has in fact changed little since then.
Thus, apart from land ownership and new tenant farmers, the year 1500 saw no prospect of immediate change for the future, and for the ensuing three hundred years the pace and nature of life remained largely undisturbed - except for those unpredictable events which occasionally affected the nation and very occasionally, the village. In 1539 the imposition of military muster rolls [Footnote No. 01] by Henry VIII, brought about by the possibility of invasion, must have come as a severe awakening for the men of the village, but in the event their services were not required! Henry's Dissolution had altered land ownership, but the Reformation probably had less effect; curates came and went from Magdalen College, though it may well be that Horsepath churchgoers were among the first to experience the Protestant ethic in their services, since Magdalen College was well known to be more than sympathetic to the protestant order of worship!
At the height of the Reformation, in the ensuing reign of Edward VI, the Church was required to provide an inventory of all its goods, [Footnote No. 02] and it is here that we first learn of the bells in St. Giles [see 'Horspath Images' in Timelines]; shortly after this Elizabeth I required Parish Registers to be formally kept, and from this time we possess an invaluable record of village people; when they were baptised, married and buried. One of our bells (1602) is from her reign; what it is to hear her sound today, calling to us for over 400 years from that mediaeval belfry of 1400!
By the year 1513 the original part of the Manor House which we see today was in existence, built by William Bedyll, the manorial tenant; the dining room and kitchen survive from this time, with the southern front and a fine staircase from the 17th.c. (It was again extended in the 19th.c to become the elegant house we know today). The very oldest houses in the village, (see Horspath Listed Buildings [Footnote No. 03]), date from the middle of the 17th.c and beyond, all associated with farms, and some labourers' cottages, together with the collection of outbuildings of Manor Farm. Throughout this century and beyond, the college-owned farms and land (in closes, pasture, open-field strips and furze, predominantly arable or sheep), were worked by tenant farmers and labourers, a system which was to remain unaltered until the 19th.c.
But the following century saw Horsepath's rural solitude pitched into the turmoil of a cataclysmic Civil War. The village's unfortunate proximity to Oxford, which in 1642 became the King's capital and fortress, was to sorely affect this quiet hamlet. Following the Battle of Edgehill, the King had retired to Oxford with both his court and his army, and immediately the village was caught up in the turmoil of the war; roaming bands of Cavaliers regularly seized wood, food, forage and animals from Horsepath and the surrounding villages. It is a sobering fact that the village suffered a dramatic increase in deaths due to the conditions imposed; from just 2 burials in 1641 and 4 in 1642, there was a dramatic rise to 13 in 1644 and even 16 the following year - indeed, the parish register tells us of the burial of a Royalist officer in the churchyard that year- "Captain James Playfott of Portsmouth, in the King's armie". Significantly, there were but 5 baptisms in those two fateful years, and no marriages at all in 1643, 1644 & 1645... testament indeed to the parlous state of the village as the war continued around Oxford. Indeed, the Bishop of Oxford's Palace at nearby Cuddesdon was razed to the ground in 1644 by Colonel Legge to deny it to the Royalists.
1642 also saw the Royalists disarm the County Trained Bands on Bullingdon Green, (partly within the parish, shared with Cowley), a spectacle which must have brought much excitement to Horsepath; In 1644 King Charles, with Prince Rupert, was again on Bullingdon Green for a "Grand Review" of his troops, and in 1645, with the tide against him inexorably turning, even the Parliamentarians held their own review there, preparatory to the siege of the City. By this time both armies were pillaging the area, until it all came to a head in 1646 when Charles escaped in disguise, and Oxford lay open. The Parliamentarian army assembled one last time on Bullingdon Green, shortly after which the city surrendered without a fight, and at last the war ceased to affect the village directly. Events quickly subsided into the customary rural calm, though the curate of Horsepath, one George Nicholson, was later removed by his college for abusing Parliamentary soldiers!
Twenty years later, the cost of this war was to again affect Horsepath when the 1665 Hearth Tax [Footnote No. 04] was implemented to raise money to support the restored King, and the documents survive to this day, giving us an invaluable list identifying the more prosperous inhabitants of the village. A shilling was levied for every hearth, and Edward Joyner, of the Manor House, was taxed for five hearths; and another twenty parishioners were also liable. Another Joyner, one William, came briefly to prominence in 1687, having been seized as a catholic priest, but was released upon having been found to be a "mere lay papist", he also with a connection to the Manor House; at the same time a single Nonconformist was noted in Horsepath, and shortly after the curate, Reynolds Walker, was recorded as having neglected services at the Church for five years!
In 1719 the Old Road, just to the north of the parish, became a Turnpike road, preceding the changes in the road system that was to come; twenty years later Charles Wesley himself was held up on this very road - and in 1789 that road was itself abandoned for the new thoroughfare through Wheatley, taking the route that would eventually be the A40. On the north side of the old road, Shotover House and Estate was purchased from the Crown by Augustus Schultz, subsequently to be held in private ownership, and preserving the landscape right up to the present day. More prophetically, in 1738, the curate, Robert Seeley, established a short-lived school in Horsepath which lasted for just twenty years, and this was but the forerunner of one of the many great changes to come in the 19th.c... the state school. At the turn of the century, another abortive attempt seems to have been made to provide a school, but it was not until 1825 that the vicar, the eccentric Dr. Edward Ellerton, D.D., bought two cottages (one for the school and one for the schoolmistress) together with some land, but several years were to pass before it was established, and that for not very long. It was to take the great Education Act to found a successful and enduring school in the parish in 1858. (See the 19th.c changes below). Ellerton no doubt knew the Vicar of the University Church, John Henry Newman, and may have influenced Newman to bring his mother, Jemima, and his three sisters to stay in Horsepath in 1829. They rented a cottage - large enough for a grand piano - and it is strange to think that the only Englishman canonised by the Pope since the Reformation lived in our midst! Two short years later the ever-present threat of war with another Napoleon required the men of Horsepath to put their names to a Militia Roll [Footnote No. 05]; thus in 1831 we have a list of over fifty men - with names familiar to us today: Cooper, Munt, Surman, Trafford, Coppock, Shepherd and Kimber, who all appear on the Roll. Fortunately, as with Henry VIII's musters, they were not to be required... see the footnote for a list of their names.
Arthur Young, the great agriculturalist, had visited the village in 1813, and his succinct view of Horsepath was "wet, with much stonebrash and open, with much yellow ochre and red sand - turnips succeed greatly; also wheat, beans, barley & clover".
Thus Horsepath carried quietly on until the following century, which was to bring unprecedented social, economic and demographic change, which to transform the character of the village to that which we recognise today.
We live in an age now when we like to think that progress and change relate solely to our time, and owes everything to the present; yet a person born in Horsepath around 1820, and who lived until 1900 would have been witness to a dramatic catalogue of changes, encompassing some eighty years of social and agricultural advancement, and which transformed the village from a modest rural hamlet to the foundation of our busy community today.
One such person who indeed witnessed all this was the village blacksmith, Robert Hunt, whose smithy was to the rear of the Vicarage. He was born in 1822, the son of Thomas Hunt, the blacksmith, and his wife Frances. Most probably his education was at Dr. Ellerton's school in the village, and he then followed his father's trade, though in 1841 he was working for James Henton, farmer, as a blacksmith. In 1851 he married Jane Surman, the daughter of another farmer, Thomas Surman, and that year's census tells us that Robert was now working independently as the village blacksmith. In that capacity he would have known all the farmers and labourers - in, fact everyone who possessed a horse, and subsequently he worked at his forge in what is now Ford's Close. He was also a Churchwarden at St. Giles during the incumbency of Henry Bramley, died at the age of 80 in 1902, and was one of the first to be buried in the "new" churchyard of 1898. There was to be no successor; his forge appears in an Edwardian photograph taken from Church Road. But his long life witnessed much change and reorder -
THUS- the first informative Census, the restoration(s) of the Church, the establishment of both a Post Office and School, the enclosure of the fields and consequent new road and farms, the coming of the railway, the building of a new Vicarage, the agricultural Union taking on the farmers, and the coming of Methodism and associated Chapels, and the establishment of the Parish Council, cricket and football teams. (A litany of social change and improvement within the single lifetime of one Horsepath inhabitant).
The national Census of 1841...this valuable document provides us with a highly accurate insight to the village in this year, listing everybody's name, age and occupation within the population of 303. We see an almost totally agricultural village, describing what people did for their living: recorded among this total are 12 Farmers, 3 Butchers, 2 Publicans, 2 Bakers, 1 Blacksmith, 1 Husbandman, 1 Cordwainer, 1 Shoemaker, 1 Shepherd, 1 Mason, 1 Bricklayer; plus 5 of "Independent means" and a few dependants, for whom the 6 listed Female Servants no doubt worked... and no less than 71 Labourers. The remainder would have been approximately 90 children under "working age" in that year, which would have been about 11 or 12 years old!
Together with the census returns every ten years, the 1840s saw the advent of the postal system, and the first of what was to be five locations for a Post Office was opened; initially in Manor Cottage, though by 1900 it had moved to Oxford Road on the site of the present garage; between the wars and afterwards it was located on the green in the end house facing the bus shelter by the Chequers, which was also a shop, run by Fred Harper and his family. The 1970s saw it relocated to the present shop on the green (originally Percy Coppock's store), run by Barbara and John Lewis, and now a Londis Store in the care of Vipin & Jayshree Patel, but during their time it was eventually closed, and thus came to the Hub, (but opening on Friday mornings only) from November, 2012.
The previous year had found the chancel out of alignment and in a poor state, so it was taken down and a new one built - but mercifully, to save expense, the mediaeval stone windows and mullions were retained, together with the range of ancient stained glass dating back to 1280, albeit fragmented, and today St. Giles can boast of glass much older and of a wider range than is found in most rural churches - (see the footnote to Stained Glass in St. Giles [Footnote No. 07]). In 1844 the singing gallery in the tower, "adorned with gilded, smirking cherubs", which had largely obscured the magnificent mediaeval tower arch, was taken down.
Yet more changes were to come in 1852 when the dilapidated north wall of the nave was rebuilt (with the ancient clerestory disappearing in the process), and the north transept added, matching the south transept and making the church layout more uniform. 30 years later, in the 1880s, this latter space was occupied by the new organ, made by Rouse of Summertown, Oxford... and around this time the bells were also rehung in a new oak frame, with a new treble bell added in 1866 to make the fine ring of six bells [Footnote No. 08] we hear today. This bell, together with the chancel screen and east window, were the gifts of a most generous vicar, the Reverend Henry Ramsden Bramley, a friend and collaborator of Sir John Stainer... both of Magdalen College, who together compiled a collection of Christmas Carols that were to become famously known and sung so widely today.
A list of the curates and vicars of Horspath [Footnote No. 09] are shown in the footnote.
The 1850s witnessed another revolutionary change with the opening of a state school, the original buildings of which were incorporated into an expansion some fifty years later, and which form the core of today's successful school. Magdalen College had advanced the sum of £100 to the building of this school, continuing Rev. Ellerton's generosity in the context of education and the village. For the very first time all the children were provided an education, and the entries typical of the previous censuses of 1841 & 1851 describing ten-year-olds as "labourers" became a thing of the past. In 1905 there was to be further expansion, repeated in the 1950s, just after another education Act of 1944 required secondary education to be undertaken at Wheatley, and primary education remaining in the village. A list of Heads of the school [Footnote No. 10] is provided in the footnote.
Also at this time there occurred a dramatic change in the geography of the land surrounding Horsepath in the guise of Enclosure. This involved the compulsory enclosing of common open land into fields, following the Tithe Schedule of 1848 and the Tithe Map of 1849. This map showed that some 200 years before most of the college-owned land to the west of the village had already been converted into closes, or fields as we know them today - "Peril Meadow, the Great Ground, Little & Big Charley" - indeed, the Corpus Christi estate map of 1605 shows near-identical field boundaries to those we see today; but south of Oxford Road and all the land to the east beyond Gateley up to the road from Wheatley to Garsington was still composed of the open field "strip" system, unchanged since mediaeval times. Of the approximate 1100 acres in the parish, over 600 comprised these open fields, and all divided into around 1600 arable strips all commonly owned and farmed. To the north on the slopes up to Shotover the land remained largely pasture, furze and scrub. All the strips disappeared, together with the numerous small fields they occupied, and the land was parcelled up into a much simpler field system we recognise today. With this dramatic revision came the necessary laying out of new roads, such as Cuddesdon Road, the extension of Gateley along to Littleworth, that from Blenheim along to the Old Road, and Sandy Lane back to Gidley. New Farms also appeared: Ways Farm, Old Horspath Farm and Hill Farm all were established as a result of Enclosure. The alteration in the landscape was both dramatic, swift and sudden...
But it was in the following decade that the most graphic change occurred in the village... both physically and audibly... in the coming of the Railway! Between 1862 and 1864 an army of navvies descended upon the village, hewed out a tunnel through from Littleworth, running into a deep cutting, and with the tons of excavated earth built an enormous embankment beyond, striding over the village green, incorporating an underbridge to carry Butts Lane and one over the road heading for Garsington, with the embankment continuing halfway to Cowley. Those who lived on the green thereby lost their lovely rural view across the fields to Garsington, and Horsepath was truncated. There was scant compensation for all this, because it was not to be until 1911 when a small halt was erected that anyone could actually catch a train in the village, and even then that only lasted till 1917; the replacement structure (preceded in style by that at Towersey on the same line), composed of railway sleepers and a spartan tin pagoda perched high on the embankment, was not opened until 1933! 99 years after inauguration the line was closed as part of the Dr. Beeching cuts; but Horspath, resourceful as ever, converted the tunnel into a bat sanctuary, used the bridge as a traffic calming measure, and in some places, householders removed sections of the embankment to extend gardens with the views to the east restored! But it has to be said that the railway line proved to be of enormous value during the Second World War due to its link with Cowley, and the frail pagoda used as a makeshift defensive point by the Home Guard! See the railway timeline for a more comprehensive account of events.
In that same decade (1866) the old 17th.c Vicarage was demolished, and the one we see today (now also known as - "The Old Vicarage"!) erected in the same grounds facing the Church, first occupied by the Revd. Henry Bramley, and all subsequent vicars until the death of the Revd. Sam Bird in 1980. Magdalen College again provided funding, including a large communal room to the east for schooling, in which even today can be seen the college arms above the fireplace. Some twenty years later the Manor House was substantially extended to the building we see today. These two distinctive properties feature in the listed buildings of the village.
The 1870s saw a totally unexpected development in the guise of Trade Unionism within Horsepath; a radical departure from the traditional status quo in the village - the organising of a branch of the National Agricultural Labourers Union to redress, if possible, the disparity in wages paid by the various farmers. The Horsepath Branch was formed on 3rd. March, 1873, as a part of the Littlemore Branch, with a committee of 8, plus John Harris as the delegate. Meetings were usually held at private houses, or in the "Chequers" public house, and on the 11th. March the men met to consider upon the men in employment of James Eeley, Michael Surman & Bernard Herman (all Horsepath farmers & landowners), who were paid two shillings a week less than those employed by John Chillingworth, and three shillings less than his cattlemen.
The members agreed unanimously to refuse to work at rates less than Chillingworth's men, and notice was served. Eeley and Herman instantly agreed to give a rise in pay, and thus the men "got their wages rose". It is not recorded how Michael Surman's men fared, but it seems that the principal activity of the Branch thereafter became primarily concerned with contributions going to support other labourers, money raised to bolster the branches in East Anglia, and to provide funds for sick pay. A few Horsepath men moved away to seek work, but most returned after a few weeks, and by 1876 the whole affair subsided, and the farms carried on as before. The Minute Book of this Branch still exists - an exceedingly rare survival from so short a period of activity. List of NALU Workers at one 1871 meeting [Footnote No. 11]
The same decade saw the establishment of the Methodist Movement in Horsepath. The single Religious Census of 8th. March, 1851 recorded no Wesleyan adherents in the village, though an average attendance of 100 was recorded at St. Giles - so the Methodist Movement was slow in coming to the village, since there were chapels established in Headington and Cowley by that year. By 1868 there were organised house meetings in an "awkwardly placed dwelling", so a local farmer, William Cooper, offered the use of a room he owned on Oxford Road to be used as a Chapel. The room required finishing and decorating at a cost of £8, and the appeal to raise this attracted 53 donors - (a significant number in a community of about 370). This building was opened (on the site of the present "Old Bakehouse") and was used until around 1880, according to the seven years lease it was afforded; but then services seem to have gone into decline, and it was not until 1892 that attendance was revived by Brother W Richings and reopened in April of that year. A "wheezy old harmonium" provided the music, and again the number of worshippers increased, but the room was damp and completely without sanitation. Help arrived in the form of another new farmer, Mr. William Lindsay and his wife, (who occupied College Farm), owned by Corpus Christi, from whom he bought the piece of land for £25 - on which the Hub now stands. Mr A E Vallis, a Headington builder, erected the new Chapel at a cost of £400, which was licensed for Public Worship on 10th. January, 1910, and opened by the Revd. Grainger Hargreaves, (Superintendent of the Oxford Circuit) the following 3rd. February. The Chapel came under the Wesley Hall section of the Oxford Circuit, later moving to Headington, and then Rose Hill in 1946. (The previous Chapel room, bought by George Merrick Fowler of the Manor, became the Parish Reading Room, surviving until after WW2, when it was demolished). In 1960 the Methodists celebrated 50 years of worship in their Chapel, but congregations in the 1980s began to dwindle, and by an ironic twist of fate the Chapel was to close nearly 50 years after this, after 99 years... exactly the same length of time that the railway had existed!
The last decade of the momentous 19th.c saw further innovations in that the Parish Council was established in 1894, and the beginning of the village's long history in the game of cricket was born when a recreation ground was provided in the form of land purchased from Corpus Christi College. The Church bought land to the north in order to provide an extension to the graveyard, opening to burials in 1898... Robert Hunt, the witness to all that change in 19th.c Horsepath, was laid to rest there in 1902. Yet with all those dramatic social, physical and demographic changes, the population barely changed... from 306 in 1841 to 333 in 1901.
Thus Horsepath moved into the following century, the new Parish Council changing its name to Horspath in 1912. It would seem that all the 19th.c innovation and social improvements to the village would be the foundation for a secure and settled future; but yet more change was to come, wrought by external influences far beyond the control of a still rural community, and the twentieth century was to be the harbinger of a village transformed in nature, size and composition.
Horsepath entered the century learning early the death of Queen Victoria, which ushered in the "Edwardian" era, and the village celebrated the coronation of the new king, Edward VII - just ten years later the Parish Council's Coronation Committee was meeting again to plan for George V's crowning and Horsepath's celebrations, where 200 sat down for a lunch in the Barn, and later 100 had tea... all for £25.00!! See the link for a fuller account. The following year the Parish Council moved to adopt an official spelling of the village name, voting for "Horspath", which it has been ever since. The population in 1901 stood at 333, and ten years later, slightly more at 382, representing a 12.5% increase... the pattern was being set for this new century. This slight increase was reflected in the building of some new houses at various locations round the village, particularly round the green, and in 1908 the "motor rail halt" was established by the bridge, opening on February 1st., providing the community with direct links to Oxford and Thame, and beyond... after 44 years without them! (It was to remain for a mere eight years!). At almost the same time, plans were in hand to acquire land from Corpus Christi College in order to build a new Wesleyan Chapel, which held its first service on February 3rd., 1910 (Chapel Timeline). The Kelly's Directory for 1911 listed six farmers, and by this time the Post Office had moved to a location by the Chequers facing the green (next to another semi-detached house which bears the inscription "1911"). See the footnote "Horspath 100 years ago" [Footnote No. 12].
Two events then occurred to affect not only Horspath, but the entire country. William Morris established his purpose-built motor car factory in 1913 at Cowley, less than a mile from the parish boundary, attracting the prospect of new employment beyond the farming work mostly occupying the village, and drawing new people to Horspath. The advent of the motor car was to change everything for Horspath, Oxford and the nation beyond... and then, the following year, the "Great War" as it appropriately became known, descended upon the entire populace. It involved every town, village and hamlet in providing men for the armed forces, and very few were the places that lost not a single man. In this war there was no real "Home Front" but while the men were away fighting, inevitably news of the casualties began to come in, with a loss of a Horspath man in every year save 1914. See the footnote "Horspath War Dead" [Footnote No. 13] for a full account of the eight men of Horspath who made the supreme sacrifice; they lie, or are commemorated, in France, Belgium, Italy, Egypt and Iraq. A ninth casualty happened to be commemorated only in the Chapel, as he died not on active service, but in a Nottingham munitions explosion; and a tenth man, the only commissioned officer, also had his memorial brass in the Church, though he came from Cowley; but his parents lie in the churchyard, and worshipped at St. Giles... The present War Memorial was unveiled in the Church on 13th. November, 1921 (and a further two names added after WW2).
The Census of 1921 actually recorded a drop in the village population from 382 to 361, and the new decade saw the village reverting to a quiet community, though changes continued. The Pound (a walled compound for animals) behind the Chequers was finally closed, and following a threat of diphtheria, the pond in front of the church wall was filled in. The Parish Council purchased an ex-army wooden hut from Wendover in 1923 and erected it at the entrance to the village to become the first Village Hall (close to the site of the present one), together with land from Corpus Christi for a recreation ground. The proximity of the Morris Motors works was greatly augmented with the establishment in 1926 of the neighbouring Pressed Steel Company - nearer to the village, and part of it actually within the parish boundary, resulting in the prospect of increased employment in the village. Consequently, the rise in population and the beginning of house building up the left-hand side of Gidley Way and along Butts Road, with additional housing scattered elsewhere began an era of expansion and demographic change - the 1931 Census at 540 reflected a significant rise of 50% in the population.
Simultaneously, there occurred a slight expansion to the Parish Boundary in 1928, when Magdalen Wood and Open Brasenose woods were added to the western side of the parish (today bisected by the ring road), which was later to provide an additional element to Horspath's WW2 many wartime activities. In 1933 the village acquired its second railway halt - a raised platform of planking, with shelter provided by a small tin "pagoda", all precariously perched on a latticework of railway sleepers on the steep embankment, reached by way of a cinder path from the green. Around the same time the Church installed electric lighting in place of the gaslamps.
The increase in population brought people from all over the country, and this resulted in a dramatic change in the demographic make-up of the village. Many professional persons sought to live here, and many others came to work in the factories - the village's proximity to Oxford and Cowley offered the benefits of both living in a still rural community while working in a modern environment close by, facilitated by both road and rail. Gradually many of the farmhouses became private residences, and some ten years later only Manor Farm and Hill Farm were still working on the land.
Thus at the end of the 1930s, Horspath, like all the other villages surrounding Oxford and its industrial satellite, Cowley, had changed from its agricultural and rural character to that of a widely mixed community with good communications, and social activities previously unknown. In 1937 Commander and Mrs. Wrightson moved into the Manor House, and their influence spurred the village into the establishment of both the Womens' Institute and the Boy Scouts in the space of a year. The establishment of these organised groups was to be the precursor of much greater communal activity when the clouds of war again descended upon Horspath, and as part of the national fight in the Second World War.
Horspath's contributions to this very different conflict were many and varied, and in some ways, unique, and for the first time the concept of the "Home Front" was a real and ever-present factor. There were two distinct aspects to this war effort within the village, and they need to be studied separately, for very different they were.
Within the village, even before the declaration of war, much was conceived, planned and created for Civil Defence and the continuation of social life. To obtain a first-hand, authentic and fascinating account of all this it is well worth reading the footnote "Horspath Village War Record, 1939-45", [Footnote No. 14] written by Mrs. Wrightson, and as a verbatim account it has the authentic flavour of those anxious years, typical of living and working together in an Oxfordshire village, describing the contributions and sacrifices made.
The School became a rest centre, and the location of the mobile bath unit; the Manor a first aid post; the village hall a school; the British Restaurant was established in one of Manor Farm's cowsheds, run by the W.I., who met in the "Chequers". The Air Raid Precaution, Local Defence Volunteers (later the Home Guard) and the Mothers' Union were all formed very early in the conflict, and some Land Girls worked on the farms. The W.I. was employed in jam making & preserving, running a savings club plus knitting, sewing and cooking; a Christmas Club for the troops was formed, together with both pig and poultry clubs.
A moment of light relief was provided by Freddy Mullins, the landlord of the Chequers when the blackout was imposed - he had shutters made for the bay windows, on the inside of which were paintings of the village green and the cricket pitch! (See photo 22)
Just before war was declared, on 1st. September, 1939, the first evacuees descended upon the village - 39 children from Rosebery Avenue School, Holborn, accompanied by teachers Mr. Pettipher, Mrs. Lane and Miss Callard. Mrs. Wrightson, the Billeting Officer, was tasked with finding homes for these youngsters, lifted from the urban heart of Holborn, London, and deposited in the leafy calm of Horspath. By 1940 there were 51, and steady integration was achieved by the goodwill of Horspath villagers. They continued their education at the school under Mrs. Back, and later decamped to the village hall as there were now so many more children.
(Miss Callard stayed in Horspath after the war, teaching at the school, attending St. Giles as a worshipper and bellringer, and living on the corner of Butts Road. She was the lady who so expertly used her calligraphic skill to write the "Horspath Scrapbook" in 1955, and examples of her work can be seen in the Church today).
But Horspath's other wartime connections were very different. Geographically, lying just north of the industrial complex of Morris Motors & Pressed Steel meant that a part of No.1 Metal Produce & Recovery Depot (See the link to MPRD), extended into the village, where vast piles of crashed and wrecked aircraft lay awaiting the breaker's torch for metal reclamation - the inevitable result of conflict and many wartime flying accidents.
At the other end of the parish, Cowley-produced light tanks, armoured cars, and field guns were being tested up on Shotover, which became a proving ground for the newly made weapons of war which regularly drove through the parish; this paradoxical situation was further compounded in that to the west of the village boundary lay the army encampment of Slade Camp. Built just before the war as an addition to Cowley Barracks for the Oxford & Bucks Light Infantry, and opened in March 1940, it extended from the edge of Brasenose Wood right across to what we now know as the Slade... (the Northern Bypass now cuts neatly through the middle of this area). It was a large hutted encampment which was occupied as an army camp till just before D-Day; it then acted as a prisoner-of-war camp for Germans and Italians, and at the end of hostilities became No. 2 Military Disembarkation Unit for the repatriation of army personnel prior to their discharge.
After the war, it was used for emergency housing until the provision of council housing in the 1950s. Little but the narrow roads there remain today, together with some brick foundations of the larger buildings such as storage sheds, latrines and blocks, and a solitary pillbox at the end of the Ridings. Near Brasenose Wood was a gun emplacement, and in Peril Meadow, a gas testing shed was erected; and up at the upper end of Cuddesdon Road was a barrage balloon site.
In addition to all this, cutting through the heart of Horspath was the vital railway line, used for bringing in the wounded to the Military Hospital at Holton, and the remains of hundreds of crashed aircraft for MPRD at Cowley; and used for the transporting out of munitions and equipment from the Cowley factories to storage units and the docks, vital in maintaining the continuous war effort. The stretch from Cowley Station to Horspath Tunnel represented the steepest gradient on this railway line, and frequently two locomotives had to be employed to reach Horspath and beyond; sparks from steam-hauled ammunition trains were dangerous things, particularly in the tunnel!
Unlike the previous conflict, this war involved the entire village community, and from the total of 77 persons on the Village Roll of Honour, [Footnote No. 15] only two men from Horspath lost their lives - their names appear on the War Memorial in St. Giles and on the village green. These two men, Sergeant Frederick George Lambert and Lance-Sergeant Stanley Charles Hinton were both in the Royal Artillery, and died in the Far East campaign against Japan. Their official numbers indicate that they joined up much at the same time, and fought their war together, dying in 1942 in the longest-fought army campaign - that of Burma, 1942-5. Lambert was lost in the retreat from Burma, and Hinton in the ill-fated Arakan offensive.