The town is also on the East West Rail route which is due to provide links to Milton Keynes starting in 2025, which is eventually planned to extend to Cambridge.

A considerable volume of high-quality and environmentally friendly housing stock has been constructed, in particular at the Elmsbrook[5] eco-town and the self-built homes at Graven Hill.

This includes the majority of a £14 million central government award to Oxfordshire County Council to develop safer walking and cycling schemes.

[10] St. Edburg’s Church in Bicester was founded as a minster, perhaps in the mid-7th century after St. Birinus converted Cynegils, King of Wessex, following their meeting near Blewbury.

The earliest church was probably a timber structure serving the inhabitants of the growing Saxon settlements on either side of the river Bure, and as a mission centre for the surrounding countryside.

The first documentary reference is the Domesday Book of 1086 which records it as Berencestra, its two manors of Bicester and Wretchwick being held by Robert D'Oyly who built Oxford Castle.

The chapel originally had an upper chamber used later for the vicars' grammar school, accessed from an external staircase which forms part of the north eastern buttress.

The priory farm buildings lay in the area of the present church hall, and these had direct access along Piggy Lane to land in what is now the King's End estate.

Following the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars from 1793, John Coker, the manorial lord of Bicester King's End, formed an 'Association for the Protection of Property against Levellers and Jacobins' as an anti-Painite loyalist band providing local militia and volunteer drafts for the army.

The only action recorded for them is in 1806 at the 21st birthday celebrations of Sir Gregory O Page-Turner when they performed a feu de joie 'and were afterwards regaled at one of the principal inns of the town'.

The Lord of the Manor of Market End was the 1st Earl of Derby Sir Thomas Stanley, who had married Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII.

At the southern and downstream end of Water Lane, there were problems of pollution from animal dung from livery stables on the edge of town associated with the London traffic.

The park was enlarged surrounded by a wall after 1753 when a range of buildings on the north side of King's End Green were demolished by Coker.

The effect of the enlargement of the park was to divert traffic at the Fox Inn through King's End, across the causeway to Market Square and Sheep Street before returning to the Roman road north of Crockwell.

Town houses took their water from wells dug into the substrate which became increasingly polluted by leaching of waste through the alluvial bed of the Bure.

The causeway became the focus for development from the late 18th century as rubbish and debris was dumped on each side of the road to form building platforms.

Notably, it stands as the best-maintained of the bomber bases, a key component of Sir Hugh Trenchard's RAF expansion strategy starting in 1923.

These buildings are mainly grey oolitic limestone, from the Priory Quarry at Kirtlington, 5 miles (8 km) west on Akeman Street, some ginger lias (ironstone) comes from the area around Banbury and white and bluish grey cornbrash limestone was quarried in Crockwell and at Caversfield 2 miles (3 km) to the north.

Local roofing materials included longstraw thatch, which persisted on older and lower status areas on houses and terraced cottages.

19th century bulk transport innovations associated with canal and railway infrastructure allowed imports of blue slate from North Wales.

The new buildings were constructed alongside older wholly vernacular survivals and sometimes superficially updated with fashionable applied facades, fenestration or upper floors and roofs.

[20] The Great Western Railway sought to shorten its mainline route from London Paddington to Birmingham Snow Hill and, in 1910, opened the Bicester cut-off line through the north of the town, to complete a new fast route between the two cities and a large railway station on Buckingham Road named Bicester North, which was opened on 1 July 1910.

In 2011, funding for East West Rail was approved, with a plan to restore passenger services between Oxford and Bletchley via Bicester in 2017, then continuing to Milton Keynes Central or Bedford.

The station was completely rebuilt and, despite objection by some local residents, renamed Bicester Village, after a large retail centre nearby.

[25] Stagecoach in Oxfordshire buses link Bicester with Oxford, Banbury, Brackley, Headington, HM Prison Bullingdon and some local villages.

[52] Bicester Town Council provides a wide range of sport and leisure facilities for local residents and sports team on sites at Pingle Field and Sunderland Drive[53] The historic shopping streets, particularly Sheep Street and Market Square, have a range of independent and national shops together with cafés, pubs and restaurants.

A £70 million redevelopment of the part of the town centre, originally planned to start in 2008, was delayed by the onset of the credit crunch; Sainsbury's developed the project itself, commencing in January 2009.

[54] The development, since named Pioneer Square, is now complete and opened on 9 July 2013, offering a Sainsbury's supermarket, 7 screen Vue Cinemas and many smaller retail units and restaurants such as Nando's and Prezzo.

In early 2023, Cherwell District Council announced plans to pedestrianise the Market Square to create a continental style plaza.

[59] The station will also serve the planned East West Rail Project, connecting Oxford to Cambridge, via Milton Keynes and Bedford.