Cuddesdon

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cuddesdon is a pre-Domesday village located in the hundred of Bullingdon, within the county of Oxfordshire in England. Due to the presence there of not only a Saxon Parish Church, but also an Anglican theological college and, until the 1960s, the Ecclesiastical Palace of the Bishop of the diocese of Oxford, it is also known as the 'Holy Hill'.

The village has a population of approximately 430, with an additional 120 in the orbital hamlet of Denton (2001 census).

The village used to be a linear settlement along the high street, but since nineteenth century ecclesiastical developments to the north of the village and twentieth-century residential developments (principally Bishop's Wood and Parkside), it has become a nuclear settlement centred on the Green.

The southern boundary of the parish is formed by the River Thame and the eastern by Cuddesdon Brook which flows from Coombe Wood, to the north of the village, down to the Thame. The village is sited on a hill that overlooks southern Oxfordshire and the Parliamentary constituency of Henley. There are good views towards both the Chiltern Hills and the North Wessex Downs AONB.

There is a free monthly parish newsletter and a reasonably active social life in the village, with annual fireworks, a village fete and various groups which meet regularly such as the film club.

Over the past fifty years, many facilities and businesses in Cuddesdon, as in similar villages up and down the country, have closed down and mostly been converted into housing for an increasingly commuter population. These include the petrol station, the shop, the school, the mill, the second public house and various farm buildings. Thus the village has turned from a compact community into a dormitory village.

The Parish Church of All Saints, the Bat and Ball inn, the Village Hall, Ripon College Cuddesdon, Dovehouse Farm and Slay Barn Farm are all still active.

Between his retirement in 1991 and death in 2000, Robert Runcie, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, was Baron of Cuddesdon.