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, 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 /h5>
