MAPPING BAMPTON: A JOURNEY IN SPACE AND TIME

The character of the market place in the 19th Century was therefore rather different to today. It was more likely defined by the presence of trades premises, inns and light industry. There has been long-standing infilling of the northern section of the market place; much of it light industrial, but also including an inn (The Bell). The map (and photographic evidence) suggest a rather informal and unattractive appearance. The construction of a war memorial in the 1920s replaced a wheelwright’s shop and in so doing most likely changed the character of this area substantially.

The closure of the Bell Inn and its eventual replacement with the Village Hall, probably underscored this area’s change. However, the light-industrial character of this infilling persisted throughout the 20th Century where the area was latterly occupied by a motor repair garage. After the closure of this business there were proposals to “green” the space, but they amounted to nothing and further residential development was permitted. See page 29.

MAPPING BAMPTON: A JOURNEY IN SPACE AND TIME

High Street looking east

High Street looking west

MAPPING BAMPTON: A JOURNEY IN SPACE AND TIME

SCHEME TO SHOW THE PROPOSED GREENING OF THE MARKET SQUARE GARAGE SITE FOLLOWING DEMOLITION, AND THE OPENING UP OF THE NEW CROSS VIEWS OF THE MARKET SQUARE, BAMPTON

Having considered the changing character of the market place it is necessary to consider the uses to which other open spaces and routes through Bampton have been put. The modern road network, with regularised lane widths and clearly defined kerbs certainly makes the modern relationship with the principal roads through Bampton very different to how they were perceived in the past. The northern part of Bridge Street is of particular interest, being very broad and demonstrating a large ‘indentation’ where it meets Cheyne Lane, defined by the curious orientation of buildings that now house the

MAPPING BAMPTON: A JOURNEY IN SPACE AND TIME

butchers’ shop and the terrace of housing known as Albion Place. The same phenomenon can be observed at the western most part of High Street. These areas should obviously be read as extensions to the market place rather than streets in their modern sense.

The junction of Bridge Street and Church View exhibits a similar pattern with the orientation of Knapps Farm (one of the oldest extant buildings in Bampton) being very different to the neighbouring properties. It is therefore possible to describe a triangular open space at the southern termination of Church View. It is also possible (but less certain) that the phenomenon is repeated a further time across from the site of the former mill at what today is known as Castle View. Other widenings at the junction of streets would have been observable until relatively recently. The junction between Church View and Church Street would, until the construction of Belgrave Cottages in 1903 have also read as a broadly triangular open space south of the church.

This latter point will be described in further detail below.

These open spaces, largely preserved until the advent of modern roadbuilding performed an important role throughout Bampton’s history as the location for the annual horse fair. This fair was hosted along the upper part of Broad Street and along Church Lane (modern Church View).

MAPPING BAMPTON: A JOURNEY IN SPACE AND TIME

Broad Street being used to ‘run’ horses to prove their soundness before sale.

The fair itself can be traced to the 13th Century so its continued presence in this specific part of Bampton may represent a relic of considerably older practices.

There are other places shown on these early Ordnance Survey maps that have almost completely disappeared from modern memory. A good example is the area continuously named as Wright’s Hill; known on early Ordnance Survey mapping as situated immediately to the south of the Shillbrook where it is forded (now bridged) by Cheyne Lane and on the very fringe of what could be considered the settlement core. It once consisted of a handful of cottages and agricultural buildings, named for the pre-enclosure field adjacent to which it sat. At enclosure the field disappeared into the modern field system, and within a generation or two so did the need to describe this peripheral area as a distinct settlement. The cottages standing here were cleared as early as the 1920s. As a name for this part of modern Bampton, it has now therefore effectively disappeared, perhaps in the space of as little as 100 years.

Beyond Bampton other important administrative changes were felt in the landscape. In the mid 19th Century the ancient arrangement of the Parish containing multiple benefices was brought to an end. The hamlets of Aston/Cote and Lew were recognised in 1845 as parishes in their own right. In anticipation of this both Aston/Cote and Lew had gained churches of their own in 1839 and 1841 respectively.

They now became the parish churches of those growing settlements. The positioning of the new church in Lew changed the character of this settlement considerably. Situated to the north of the modern A4095 the focus of the settlement began to move away from its historic core through

MAPPING BAMPTON: A JOURNEY IN SPACE AND TIME

a process of new-build and elimination of older buildings that were the home to rural labouring poor. The result of this gradual process is that Lew is today experienced as a linear settlement strung loosely along the A4095 rather than a dispersed pattern settlement. A final point on printed maps of Bampton. While maps are a source of information, they are of course historic artefacts themselves. They record the decisions to identify what was considered significant in the landscape. The marking of buildings, boundaries, tracks and roads, perhaps even the ‘principal’ trees (a practice not perpetuated after the 1st Edition) may appear obvious, but maps are less useful at defining landscape features and are of course utterly incapable of recording features that appear and also disappear between editions. Cumulatively, the effect may result in the subtleties of past people’s experience of the landscapes surrounding them being lost. Maps alone cannot show you the land use of a specific plot (beyond very general terms). A map cannot tell a historian what his historic brother considered the ‘short cut’ from one point to another. A line that delineates a legal boundary cannot tell us who welcomed visitors at their front door or who erected a tall fence to keep everyone out.

It can be interesting to note which features and buildings cartographers considered worthy of naming. The inclusion of Ham Court, the Lady Well, and (later) the location of the discovery of archaeological remains near Beam Cottage indicate places of emerging antiquarian interest. It is of note that some of the very few attempts to show landscape features (these are not topographical maps) include the earthworks and moat associated with Ham Court. The naming of national (and private) schools, the market hall, church, chapels, non-conformist sites and vicarages all demonstrate the 19th Century certainties of what constituted a respectable community, as does the naming of principal farms. The prominence of inns and public houses also demonstrates their important historic roles. The naming of some more minor cottages (e.g. Beam Cottage) are more curious. Were these singled out because of their contemporary topographical prominence, or due to a memory of their former importance within the historic settlement pattern? These early Ordnance Survey maps are also some of the first to include environmental information: the area surrounding the Shillbrook being marked “land liable to flood”.

4 DRAWING THE BOUNDARIES: BAMPTON AND ENCLOSURE.

The many early enclosures around the historic core of Bampton were post-medieval or earlier. Much of this enclosure was associated with the arrangement of the three principle manors of Bampton. The manorial history of Bampton is complex and largely outside the scope of this work, but a brief outline will contextualise the way in which Bampton was divided when it stood on the precipice of enclosure. Before the late Saxon period Bampton was a single large Royal manor. It became divided in the course of the 10th and 11th centuries to become three manors. The first was Bampton Earls (also known as King’s Bampton, or Bampton Talbot after the family who held it from the 14th Century onwards and who became the Earls of Shrewsbury.). The next was Bampton Deanery, a division made by King Eadwig in his grant to Bampton minster between 955 and 957, and so named because it was after the Norman conquest transferred to the Dean and Chapter of Exeter Cathedral. And finally there was Bampton D’Oilly, held by the family of the same name. Over time these manors were each divided into either moieties (from the Latin mediatus, meaning half) or let out in various parcels of land that resulted in

MAPPING BAMPTON: A JOURNEY IN SPACE AND TIME

each manor forming a number of distinct estates. The process was complex and is probably only of interest to serious students of manorial histories. I am not one. For the purposes of this work it is significant as it accounts for a great many of the early enclosures that are visible surrounding the immediate environs of Bampton. It also explains why many early maps of Bampton appear incomplete- before a programme of systematic mapping, visual plans only record the property in which the owner of the manor or estate has an interest. The best surviving example is a survey made for the Earl of Shrewsbury in 1789. This was created to ‘sort out’ once and for all the problem of Shrewsbury and his neighbour at Ham Court, a Mr. Coventry, delineating their holdings. On the ground their respective holdings which had been separated around a 100 years previously in a “most injudicious manner that the estates are most intermixed and interfere with each other in a most inconvenient manner which might have been prevented if it had been carried out by men of judgment”. See next page.

Throughout the early modern period Bampton’s status as a centre of trade (traditionally of tanning and leather glove making) was declining. In 1789 the Earl of Shrewsbury’s surveyor described Bampton quite decisively as a “former market town”. The importance of its agricultural hinterland would become a proportionately more important part of its economy. By the end of the eighteenth century the enclosures of Bampton were situated in the areas considered to be the richest for agricultural purposes. This broadly defined by the area along the Buckland turnpike road to the south of the settlement in an area named Brookfast Closes-the name being descriptive as the closes are equally spaced perpendicular either side of the route of the Shillbrook. This area of closes appears to have been bounded to the south by Meadow Brook, beyond which to the south was open meadow. Other early closes are to the South West of Weald, accessed by droveways and known by the 18th Century as either the “moor” or “marsh” closes in various sources. The two names appear contradictory, but considering there is also record also of the “Maw ditch” in this area, it seems much more likely to be the former, derived as it is from the Saxon word Mōr, used to denote grassland. Both these sets of closes are immediately identifiable as being typical of their type -narrow, rectilinear and ‘ladder like’ in character. Many of these closes are preserved in the modern landscape, or at least their former presence is still discernible despite modern weakening of landscape structure through intensive farming practices in the 20th Century. To the north of Bampton there were larger enclosures forming the demesnes of the Bampton Manors of the Deanery and Ham Court. Other important early enclosures include land set aside to fund relief of the poor (“the poor closes”). In 1768, when a poor house was first constructed in Rosemary Lane, this close was used as a source of construction timber.