Calthorpe, Oxfordshire
[7] In 1431 Easington was purchased by John Danvers of Calthorpe from the Bishop of Lincoln,[8] whose seat was Banbury Castle.
In 1875, payments were made only by Williamscot, Swalcliffe, Prescote, Great and Little Bourton, Neithrop, Claydon and Shutford, since the rest were freed from their rent obligations.
The land south of the New Foscote Hospital in Calthorpe and Easington farm was mostly open farmland until the early 1960s, as shown by the Ordnance Survey maps of 1947, 1955, and 1964.
Two minor streams ran from a spring near the allotment gardens and the land under today's Timms estate.
The pit had been filled in by the 1920s, the buildings closed by the 1940s and the site built on by the late 1960s.In March 2021, noted Banbury entertainer Paul Lyon and his girlfriend Joanne Dunscombe moved in and live there still to this day.
[14] In April 2006, the hospital came into the limelight when one of its nurses, Benjamin Geen, was convicted of two murders and fifteen counts of grievous bodily harm.
[citation needed] Before the arrival of James Brindley's Oxford Canal in 1779, the Canalside area comprised an undeveloped low-lying watermeadow.
The canal brought much prosperity and growth to Banbury over the years and is still popular with boat users today.
[16] Later, the Canalside area began to develop to become a centre of Banbury's agricultural, transport, and electrical engineering industry at about the same time as the arrival of the railways in 1850.
[16] Mr Samuelson's Britannia Works and Barrow & Carmichael's Cherwell Ironworks were built close together at the southern end of the area.
The historic background to Banbury's industry began with a few grain merchants' mills and weavers' looms under the Normans.
The firms were housed in large regular single-storey 'ranges' (a type of industrial building) and later in proper warehouses.
Laid out to the same regular grid as the contemporary residential development on the small 'Newlands' workers' estate, they formed a complete and self-contained industrial suburb on the edge of the town.
The once thriving and prosperous Canal and Tramway estate areas of Banbury declined during the first half of the 20th century owing to industrial competition from bigger and better factories elsewhere, resulting in widespread demolition in the 1960s and 1970s.
[7][16] The former estate was allocated for industrial development and the area was dominated by a mixture of unattractive and run-down sheds and workshops.
Cherwell Heights is a housing estate in Banbury which was built on open fields during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
[23] A similar incident in the Spiceball Park caused heavy damage on 8 February 2007, but did not deter the council from proceeding with a planned £90,000 refurbishment.
