[2] Eynsham's name is first attested in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which took its present form in the later ninth century, as Egonesham.

(The Chronicle portrays the settlement as one of four captured by a West Saxon named Cuthwulf in 571 CE following the Battle of Bedcanford.

[3] Eynsham grew up near the historically important ford of Swinford on the River Thames flood plain.

Excavations have shown that the site was used in the Bronze Age (3000–300 BCE) for a rectilinear enclosure edging a gravel terrace.

[citation needed] Evidence has been found of 6th–7th-century Saxon buildings[4] at New Wintles Farm,[5] about three-quarters of a mile (1 km) from the present parish church.

[4] In the reign of the early ninth-century Mercian king Cenwulf, Eynsham was the site of a royal manor of three-hundred hides.

[6]: 32 In 1005 Aethelmar, kinsman of Aethelred II founded a Benedictine abbey on the site of the earlier minster.

[8] By 1790 a newly completed Oxford Canal was trading with Eynsham Wharf, mainly to sell coal from the Midlands.

[11] It consolidated its position by buying the Talbot Inn in 1845 and the freehold of Eynsham Wharf in 1849,[12] perhaps in response to the railway mania that was taking traffic from canals and navigations.

[15] While some parts of the ground floor continued to serve as the fire station; others were turned into a village gaol.

In the 15th, the nave was rebuilt, a clerestory and north aisle were added and a west tower was built.

[16] In 1928 the Roman Catholic parish of Witney leased the upper storey of the Bartholomew Room, making it St Peter's Chapel.

[16] Building of a new Roman Catholic church began in the 1930s but was delayed by the Second World War and completed only in 1967.

As a specialist technology college, it draws pupils mainly from primaries at Eynsham, Standlake, Stanton Harcourt, Freeland, Cassington and Hanborough.