MAPPING BAMPTON: A JOURNEY IN SPACE AND TIME

3 Mapping Bampton

We turn now to the 19th century development of Bampton. The first large-scale national mapping (at 25’’ to 1 mile, or the equivalent of 1:2500) was created by the Ordnance Survey from the middle of the nineteenth century and the first edition map for Bampton was surveyed in 1876. Revisions were made in 1899, 1913 and 1921.

Once again, much on these maps is recognisable today, but some features are worthy of note.

MAPPING BAMPTON: A JOURNEY IN SPACE AND TIME

To those familiar with the North East portion of the settlement being dominated by modern residential development, to find “Beam Cottage” standing alone and separated from the historic core of the settlement is interesting (and will be discussed below). The cottage appears to be connected to what was formerly known as New Inn Lane (now Bushey Row) by a path. This path is still traceable today as a public right of way through various modern residential estates.

Overall, the late 19th Century experience is overwhelmingly one of slow pace of change. Buckland Road and the area around Fisher’s Bridge remained sparsely developed throughout the later 19th Century, and is depicted in mapping as a fairly loose trail of modest artisans dwellings. Aston Road exhibits a similar pattern of peteringout settlement.

MAPPING BAMPTON: A JOURNEY IN SPACE AND TIME

Larger examples of these maps can be seen at the exhibition or on the website - https://www.bamptonarchive.org

MAPPING BAMPTON: A JOURNEY IN SPACE AND TIME

Larger examples of these maps can be seen at the exhibition or on the website - https://www.bamptonarchive.org

MAPPING BAMPTON: A JOURNEY IN SPACE AND TIME

The Swan public house, built south of the bridge sometime before 1842, marked the limit of expansion of the settlement southwards. This remains essentially the case today. Such scattered and late growth suggests that development along these routes was not particularly related to the development of Bampton’s historic core . The relative unimportance of Buckland Road is perhaps accounted for by the late construction of a Turnpike road and bridge over the Thames to the south at Tadpole Bridge, and even then one could not escape Bampton itself without having to ford the Shillbrook at what is now Fisher’s bridge until the present bridge was constructed here in the 19th Century. Also, before modern field drainage, the land here had a propensity to flood. All of which probably served to send most heavy traffic for the south to cross the Thames at the much more established ancient (stone) river crossing at Radcot.

On Buckland Road cases. Stone remained the primary construction material long after the arrival of the railway allowed brick to be imported at modest cost. The cottages at Mill Green and possibly those on the east of Queen Street were built by the local mason Samuel Spencer in the 1830s, and from the 1850s the Earl of Shrewsbury took the opportunity to develop some of his holdings in Bampton. Some of the resulting dwellings were quite substantial with Westbrook house on Bridge Street being a good example of polite architecture that would have compared well with anything in the urban centres of Witney or Faringdon.

Mapping of the late 19th Century is perhaps slightly deceptive about the scale of change in Bampton. There was considerable re-building throughout the later 19th Century within the historic core, leading to a sense of general ‘improvement’ being expressed in local sources. Much of this involved the reconstruction of dwellings on their existing footprints, and it takes a keen eye to identify such

Other new houses included Windsor Cottages (1887) and Victoria Cottages (1893) on Broad Street, both brick-fronted terraces replacing stone and thatched cottages; Oban (c. 1835) and Albion Place (1875) on Bridge Street; Belgrave Cottages (1903) and Bourton Cottages (1906) on Church Street; Eton Villas (1907) on the corner of Church and Broad Streets, and Folly View (1906) and Fleur de Lis Villas (c. 1910) south of the market place. These are some of the most notable constructions and re-constructions that began in part to challenge earlier readings of the settlement’s historic core with some demonstrating greater massing or slightly altered alignment to their predecessors.

Taking a more holistic approach we can see very different spatial relationships between Weald and Bampton than are experienced today. The settlement of Weald is more clearly defined, and from these maps it may be more naturally centred on an area of broadening observable in the western portion of Mill Street (Now Bridge Street) around the area of Mill Green. The area now covered by 20th Century development of ‘Castle View’ was also considerably more open in the 19th Century. Indeed, it may be surprising to learn that traditionally the Weald township boundary is much further to the north and east than many may assume.

MAPPING BAMPTON: A JOURNEY IN SPACE AND TIME

The boundary between Bampton and Weald township roughly bisects the settlement. Beginning from the modern public footpath that connects the fields to the South of Bampton with Primrose Lane, the boundary continues up Cheyne Lane, across the west side of the market place to Cheapside, west along Church Street, and then around to west side of the churchyard. This boundary includes the Deanery, Churchgate House (one of the three former vicarages), and much of the south-west part of the settlement in Weald, but leaves the church itself, Bampton Manor House, and all of Broad Street in Bampton. The authors of the Victoria County History note that this boundary is broadly consistent with what is known about the medieval division of the settlement into three manors.

This series of maps can also be used to illustrate changes to the 19th Century population of Bampton. From the 1820s the impact of parliamentary enclosure was felt keenly. Many former commoners relinquished their land and either continued as rural labourers or abandoned the agricultural economy altogether. This resulted in concentrations of rural labourers in Bampton at dense concentrations in Rosemary Lane and Kerwood’s Yard. The former was a longstanding area associated with the poor, being mentioned

MAPPING BAMPTON: A JOURNEY IN SPACE AND TIME

as a site chosen site by the parish for a “workhouse capable of employing and housing 60 persons or more” in 1768 before the construction of the later poorhouses on Weald Street. Both became known as notorious slums during the 19th Century. Pressures on these areas may have fallen in the late 19th Century following a long recession and a national crisis in agricultural productivity that saw the population of Bampton fall from its 1860s peak of 1,713 (accommodated in 393 houses, with another 15 unoccupied).

When the 3rd edition map was published in 1921 Bampton’s population was only 1,104. This latter fall can be identified on the mapping in the abandonment and clearance of areas where very high density labourers’ cottages were provided.

Kerwood’s Yard is no longer annotated in 1921 and its site had been cleared. Similarly, the high density labourers’ accommodation in the area around the former workhouse in Rosemary Lane and latterly in Weald Street was consolidated and substantially cleared by the 1920s.

The physical relationships between different parts of 19th Century Bampton are generally very recognisable today, but it is important to not lose sight of the fact that the inhabitants of 19th Century Bampton would have perceived these relationships very differently. Modern perceptions of Bampton are likely to focus on the transition through the settlement in modern motor vehiclesbroadly speaking reducing our understanding of the settlement to that of the three major routes through it, and of course the confluence of those routes at the Market Square. However, as we have seen, Bampton ceased to be a meaningful market very early in its existence (perhaps as early as the 16th Century) and the various attempts to revive this status- most easily evidenced today by early the 19th Century addition of a market house- appeared to do little to address this. In 1853 Rev Giles complained that the market hall itself was little used and expensive to maintain- noting that it’s meagre income from exhibitions and lectures were “hardly sufficient to heat the room and to pay for the windows, which are broken by the boys congregated in the market place below”. By the late nineteenth century it had become storage for the town’s fire engine and by 1885 it must have presented a rather lamentable sight.