Calthorpe, Oxfordshire

Calthorpe is a ward in the town of Banbury, Oxfordshire. It contains the Cherwell Heights Estate and the Calthorpe estate.

Calthorpe was once a small village outside Banbury. Easington was first mentioned in 1279 as a rural estate with a local mill, which was attached to the former Calthorpe Manor, whose demesne lands were subsequently leased out to local tenants.

In 1247, hundreds of Banbury were valued at £5 a year and, in 1441, "certainty money" due from the northern part of the hundred was 89s 8d. It was made up of payments from Shutford, Claydon, Swalcliffe, Great Bourton and Little Bourton, Prescote, Hardwick, Calthorpe and Neithrop, Wickham, Wardington, Williamscot, Swalcliffe Lea and the former prebend of Banbury. By 1568, these, except the rent from Wardington, amounted to 69s 4d. In 1652, the total profits of court were valued at 103s 4d a year in "certainty money." In 1875, payments were made only by Williamscot, Swalcliffe, Prescote, Great and Little Bourton, Neithrop, Claydon and Shutford, since the rest were freed from their rent obligations.

On 20 January 1679, Sir John Reade purchased the estate of Calthorpe.

In 1853, Edward Cobb was lord of the hundreds of Banbury and Bloxham, which were leased, with Calthorpe House in Banbury, to Thomas Draper between 1862 and 1869, as was the hundred in 1875. It was included with the house in an auction, but the auction seems not to have gained legal status since, in 1896, Edward Cobb was still the lord of the manor and Thomas Draper was no longer there.

The estate was gradually being developed between 1900 and the 1930s. New housing began to grow significantly in the 1950s and 1960s. The land south of the Foscote Private Hospital in Calthorpe and Easington farm was mostly open farmland until the early 1960s, as shown by the Ordnance Survey maps of 1947, 1955, and 1964. It had only a few farmsteads and houses, an allotment field (now under the Sainsbury's store), and the Municipal Borough of Banbury's small reservoir just south of Easington farm; a water spring lay to the south of it. Two minor streams ran from a spring near the allotment gardens and the land under today's Timms estate. An old clay pit, kiln and brick works lay near the Poets' Corner estate. The pit was of mid-Victorian origin and the buildings were marked on the 1881 O.S. map. The pit had been filled in by the 1920s, the buildings closed by the 1940s and the site built on by the late 1960s.

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