[edit]
Early history[edit]
Townhouses on Queen's Avenue, Bicester
Bicester lies close to the junction of two Roman roads – Akeman Street, an east–west route between St Albans and Cirencester, and a north–south route between Dorchester and Towcester, which lies under Queen's Avenue. A Roman fort at Alchester lies 2 miles (3 km) southwest of the town. The West Saxons established a settlement in the 6th century at a nodal point of these ancient routes.
Ecclesiastical history[edit]
St Edburg’s Church, Bicester
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 site was just east of the old Roman road between Dorchester and Towcester that passed through the former Roman town Alchester. 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. Archaeological excavations at Procter's Yard identified the ecclesiastical enclosure boundary, and a large cemetery of Saxon graves suggesting a much larger churchyard has been excavated on the site of the Catholic Church car park almost opposite St. Edburg's.
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 town became established as twin settlements on opposite banks of the River Bure, a tributary of the Ray, Cherwell, and ultimately the River Thames.
By the end of the 13th century, Bicester was the centre of a deanery of 33 churches. The remains of an Augustinian priory founded between 1182 and 1185 survive in the town centre. It is unclear when St. Edburg's Church was rebuilt in stone, but the 12th-century church seems to have had an aisleless cruciform plan. The earliest surviving material includes parts of the nave's north wall, parts of an originally external zigzag string course, the north and south transepts, and the external clasping buttresses of the chancel. The triangular-headed opening at the end of the north wall of the nave was probably an external door of the early church. Three round-headed Norman arches at the end of the nave mark the position of a 13th-century tower.
The Augustinian Priory was founded by Gilbert Bassett around 1183 and endowed with land and buildings around the town and other parishes, including 180 acres (73 ha) and the quarry at Kirtlington, 300 acres (120 ha) at what is now called Wretchwick, 135 acres (55 ha) at Stratton Audley, and on Gravenhill and Arncott. It also held the mill at Clifton and had farms let to tenants at Deddington, Grimsbury, Waddesdon, and Fringford. Although these holdings were extensive and close to the market at Bicester, they appear to have been poorly managed and did not produce much income for the priory.
The priory appropriated the church in the early 13th century. A south aisle was added, and arches were opened in the nave and south transept walls to connect the new aisle with the main body of the church.
A further extension was made in the 14th century when the north aisle was built. The arched openings in the north wall of the nave are supported by octagonal columns. The Perpendicular Gothic north chapel (now vestry) is of a similar date, and on the east wall are two windows. 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.
In the 15th century, the upper walls of the nave were raised to form a clerestory with square-headed Perpendicular Gothic windows. The earlier central tower and its nave arch were taken down and the nave roof was rebuilt (the present roof is a copy of this design built in 1803). The columns of the north arcade were undercut, making them appear very slim and the capitals top heavy. In the east bay of the nave, there are carved decorations probably forming part of a canopied tomb originally set between the columns. The west tower was built in three stages, each stage marked by a horizontal string course running around the outside. The construction would have taken several years to complete. The battlements and crockets on the top of the tower were replaced in the mid 19th century.
Dovecote in Old Place Yard, Bicester
The priory church was built around 1200 and enlarged around 1300 in association with the construction of the Purbeck marble tomb of St. Eadburh. This may have been the gift of the priory's patron Henry de Lacy, 3rd Earl of Lincoln. The walled rectangular enclosure of the priory lay just south of the church. The gatehouse was on the site of 'Chapter and Verse' Guesthouse in Church Lane. The dovecote and houses in Old Place Yard lie within the central precinct. St. Edburg's House is built partly over the site of the large priory church. This was linked by a cloister to a quadrangle containing the refectory, kitchens, dormitory, and prior's lodging. 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.
Early charters promoted Bicester's development as a trading centre, with a market and fair established by the mid 13th century. By this time two further manors are mentioned, Bury End and Nuns Place, later known as Market End and King's End respectively.
Military history[edit]
The town has a long-standing connection with the military. Ward Lock & Co's 'Guide to Oxford and District' suggests that Alchester was 'a kind of Roman Aldershot'. During the English Civil War (1642–49) Bicester was used as the headquarters of parliamentary forces. 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. When Oxford University formed a regiment in 1798, John Coker was elected Colonel.
Military buildings at the Graven Hill supply depot, Bicester
Coker's Bicester militia had sixty privates and six commissioned and non-commissioned officers led by Captain Henry Walford. The militia briefly stood down in 1801 after the Treaty of Amiens, but when hostilities resumed in 1804, concerns over potential invasion led to the reformation of the local militia as the Bicester Independent Company of Infantry. It had double the earlier numbers to provide defence in the event of an invasion or Jacobin insurrection. The Bicester Company was commanded by a captain along with 2 lieutenants, an ensign, 6 sergeants, 6 corporals and 120 privates. Their training and drills were such that they were deemed 'fit to join troops in the line'. 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'.
Later history[edit]
Bicester Manor House, now owned by a housing association
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. Sir Thomas placed the crown on the head of the new King Henry VII at the Battle of Bosworth, and as the step-father of Henry VII he was granted many manors. In his 1593 will, the 4th Earl of Derby, Sir Henry Stanley, bequeathed the manor to his second son Sir William Stanley of Lathom, Lancashire. William became the 6th Earl of Derby in 1594 when his older brother Ferdinando, the 5th Earl, mysteriously died. In 1597, the 6th Earl sold a 9,999-year lease to 31 principal tenants. This in effect gave the manorial rights to the leaseholders, 'purchased for the benefit of those inhabitants or others who might hereafter obtain parts of the demesne'. The leaseholders elected a bailiff to receive the profits from the bailiwick, mainly from the administration of the market, and distribute them to the shareholders. From the bailiff's title the arrangement became known as the Bailiwick of Bicester Market End. By 1752, all of the original leases were in the hands of ten men, who leased the bailiwick control of the market to two local tradesmen.
A fire in 1724 had destroyed the buildings on the eastern side of Water Lane. A Nonconformist congregation was able to acquire a site that had formerly been the tail of a long plot occupied at the other end by the King's Arms. Their chapel built in 1728 was 'surrounded by a burying ground and ornamented with trees'. 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.
Late 17th-century house in Market Square
Edward Hemins was running a bell-foundry in Bicester by 1728 and remained in business until at least 1743. At least 19 of his church bells are known to survive, including some of those in the parishes of Ambrosden, Bletchingdon, Piddington and Wootton in Oxfordshire and Culworth in Northamptonshire.
King's End had a substantially lower population and none of the commercial bustle found on the other side of the Bure. The manorial lords, the Cokers, lived in the manor house from 1584. The house had been rebuilt in the early 18th century remodelled in the 1780s. 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. A westward enlargement of the park also extinguished the road that followed the line of the Roman road. This partly overlapped a pre-1753 close belonging to 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.
The two townships of King's End and Market End evolved distinct spatial characteristics. Inns, shops and high status houses clustered around the triangular market place as commercial activity was increasingly concentrated in Market End. The bailiwick lessees promoted a much less regulated market than that found in boroughs elsewhere. Away from the market, Sheep Street was considered 'very respectable' but its northern end at Crockwell was inhabited by the poorest inhabitants in low quality, subdivided and overcrowded buildings.
The Causeway, Bicester
By 1800, the causeway had dense development forming continuous frontages on both sides. The partially buried watercourses provided a convenient drainage opportunity, and many houses had privies discharging directly into the channels. Downstream, the Bure ran parallel with Water Lane, then the main road out of town towards London. Terraces of cottages were built backing onto the brook, and here too these took advantage of the brook for sewage disposal, with privies cantilevered out from houses over the watercourse. 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.
Until the early 19th century, the road from the market place to King's End ran through a ford of the Bure brook and on to the narrow embanked road across the boggy valley. 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
During the First World War, an airfield was established north of the town for the Royal Flying Corps. This became a Royal Air Force station, and is now Bicester Airfield, the home of Windrushers Gliding Club, which was absorbed into the military gliding club previously based there, to re-emerge in 2004 when the military club left the airfield. An epitome of historical Royal Air Force (RAF) locations in the UK, RAF Bicester represents the most comprehensive portrayal of bomber airfield advancements up until 1939. 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.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD)'s largest ordnance depot at MoD Bicester is just outside the town. The depot has its own internal railway system, the Bicester Military Railway.
