Black Bourton
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Black Bourton is a village and civil parish in the West Oxfordshire district of Oxfordshire, England, about three miles south of Carterton. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 274.
It boasts a celebrated church with world renowned thirteenth century wall paintings and tombs dedicated to the Hungerford family. They, and the major landowners who followed them, used to live in a large manor house with swan pool which was eventually demolished in the 1930s and little evidence of it remains.
The village borders onto RAF Brize Norton, home of the Royal Air Force's C-17s and soon to be the centre for all RAF transport movements.
Black Bourton is famous for its active village association which puts on different events annually, usually involving loud music and alcohol in significant quantities.
[edit] The village
The name Bourton* means "settlement near a fortified place", often a fortified manor house. There are the remains of a moat connected with the Shill Brook in the grounds of Moat Cottage, formerly Moat Farm. So it is reasonable to assume that hereabouts was the original fortified place and that the village grew up round this centre. The church, as one would expect, is only a field’s distance away.
The earliest record of the village (called Burtone) is in Domesday Book (1086) where the land is shown as divided between three Norman manors. The Hundred Rolls of 1279 still show three manors and give in astonishing detail particulars of feudal holdings and even the names of freemen and serfs living upon them. One mill is mentioned at this time - There had been two in Domesday. There remains a mill building at the old Mill farm on the Bampton Road (now disused as a mill, but converted to a private dwelling house), with mill-pond, and sluices still in-situ, which is fed from the Shill.
Of the three manors, one in the south of the village was held by Oseney Abbey of Oxford. That in the north of the village came by marriage into the possession of the Hungerford family in the fifteenth century. Oseney continued to own the southern manor, Manor Farm, until after the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII, when Christ Church succeeded to all the Abbey lands. Christ Church has continued to own Manor Farm ever since. Meanwhile, the Hungerfords built themselves a mansion, Bourton Place, on their land between Mill Lane and the Shill Brook, and divided ownership of the village with Christ Church until the eighteenth century.
- It has been suggested that the "Black" in the name Black Bourton is a reference to the Black habits of Augustianian monks of Oseney Abby
For centuries, the people of Black Bourton lived by farming, broadly based on the common field system. Some tenant farmers as well as the two large estates would own some enclosures round about their farmsteads. They would also own strips in the common fields, as would some of the villagers. Others of the villagers were without land and worked for the better off. All this was changed when Enclosure came to Black Bourton by Act of Parliament in 1770. The land was redivided into compact blocks according to the amount of each individual's holdings in the common fields. All too often the small owner was left in the end with nothing, since the small plot he was allocated might not be worth the fencing - and it had to be fenced at the owner's cost. So, after Enclosure, ownership of land was generally concentrated in fewer hands. In the case of Black Bourton, ownership after Enclosure was even more concentrated than elsewhere and accompanied a complete change of effective ownership. What happened was that the then Duke of Marlborough had been buying up land in Black Bourton before Enclosure, including the greater part of the Hungerford estate. At the same time he acquired the 100-year lease of Manor Farm and then, in 1812, the remaining 50 acres of the Hungerford estate. Thus for nearly a century (between 1760 and 1860) Blenheim in effect owned the whole of Black Bourton. Moreover, in the 35 years after Enclosure the value of land in terms of rent had risen about eightfold.
The Hungerfords meanwhile had suffered a sad decline and fall. The last remaining member of the Black Bourton branch of the family, a girl, married Paul Elers in 1737 and he later became owner of Bourton Place. The estate declined under his management to such an extent that he was obliged in the 1 760s to sell the greater Part of it. It is sad that he had not the prescience to know how his acres would improve in value after Enclosure. Paul Elers was chiefly noted for being father of that Anna Maria who married Richard Lovell Edgeworth, writer and educationist, in 1764. Their daughter was Maria Edgeworth, the well-known writer, who was born at Bourton Place and spent her early years there.
Paul Elers died in 1781. The old Hungerford mansion was pulled down in 1812. All that remains in Black Bourton of the once illustrious family are, first the Hungerford Chapel with the figure of Lady Elinor, then, some overgrown foundations of the great house in a field down Mill Lane, and the site and well-marked confines of the late medieval swannery, known as Swan Pool, in the grounds of Moat House.
The local historian can usually more easily find out about the lives of the great than about those of the common people. In the case of Black Bourton a glimpse can be had of the lives of the poorest inhabitants in the years 1791-1816. This is owing to the existence of an Overseers' Book for those years, which was previously kept in the Parish Chest. Here are entered rent paid for the Poor House in spinning and carding wool, subscriptions to the Sunday School for educating the pauper children, but chiefly pages and pages of entries of sums paid in outdoor relief, either to supplement wages or to support periods of unemployment. It is clear that in the years covered many labourers' families lived in the direst poverty. But a happier note is struck in 1798 by the entry: "Paid the Ringers on account of Nelson’s Victory - 5s. 0.".
James Lupton was Vicar from 1827 till his death in 1873. He was a forceful lively figure as is shown in his correspondence with the Dean and Chapter of Christ
Church to whom he reported from time to time on the condition of the village. "When I went to the place there was scarcely a woman then that had not had a child before she was married. Things were much altered after I went". In 1851 - "Not one in twelve of the labouring poor can either read or write". No wonder he was so anxious to build a school. He tried to beg a piece of land from Christ Church for this purpose; but Christ Church’s tenant, the Duke, was unwilling. At last there was a change of Duke and a piece of land was found in what is now School Lane, so that Vicar Lupton's report to his patrons in 1868 said: ‘Their school and house are still there, though no longer school or school house. They are attractive buildings designed by George Gilbert Scott.
The 1860s was a decade of considerable progress and achievement in Black Bourton. Besides the new school and the restoration of the church, there was a new Primitive Methodist Chapel built by the congregation. There was a row of model cottages built by Christ Church for the workers on Manor Farm Manor Farm itself was rebuilt for a new tenant, Henry Akers. And in 1870 there was the railway. Now you could go to Fairford or go to Witney or go to Oxford. Some people even went on to London.
It is a long way from Domesday Book; but someone has come all the way and that is Vicar Lupton’s daughter, Miss Mary Lupton, who for years has been researching the history of the village and will continue to do so until she dies in 1901. She was a remarkable daughter of a remarkable father, something of a new woman with her interest in social reform and women’s suffrage. After her death, her papers were arranged and compressed and published as a History of the Parish of Black Bourton by the Oxfordshire Archaeological
