| Woodeaton | |
|---|---|
 Holy Rood parish church | |
  Woodeaton Location withinOxfordshire | |
| Population | 191 (2021 census, includesElsfield) |
| OS grid reference | SP5312 |
| Civil parish |
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| District | |
| Shire county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | Oxford |
| Postcode district | OX3 |
| Dialling code | 01865 |
| Police | Thames Valley |
| Fire | Oxfordshire |
| Ambulance | South Central |
| UK Parliament | |
| |
Woodeaton orWood Eaton is a village andcivil parish about 4 miles (6.4 km) northeast ofOxford, England. It also has a special needs school called Woodeaton Manor School.
There was aRomano-Celtic temple north of where theparish church now stands, and probably aRomano-British settlement and shrine as well.[1] The shrine was used successively byRoman pagans and Christians.[2] A small square temple was built in the first century AD.[3] This was replaced with a more substantial building that had moulded stonework and decorated plasterwork, and a rectangular perimeter wall was added that enclosed an area around the temple building.[3] Numerous notable bronze artefacts have been discovered at and around the site[3] and are now housed in theAshmolean Museum in Oxford.[4] A sixth-centuryAnglo-Saxon pendant has also been found at the site, but the reason for its presence at a Roman site is not clear.[5]
TheOld Englishtoponym was originallyEatun. By the 12th century it had become Wood Eaton, perhaps to distinguish it fromWater Eaton just over 1 mile (1.6 km) to the west.[2] TheDomesday Book records that by 1086 the Norman noblemanRoger d'Ivry held the manor of Eaton. In about 1160 Helewis Avenel gave avirgate of land at Woodeaton toEynsham Abbey. The Abbey had agrange andmanor court house in Woodeaton, recorded in 1366, but no trace remains. The Manor remained with the abbey until theDissolution of the Monasteries in 1538.[2]
At the centre of the village, by thevillage green, are the base and shaft of a 13th-century stone cross.[6] The cross is both ascheduled monument[7] and a Grade I listed building.[8] After theDissolution of the Monasteries in 1536 the manor of Woodeaton was bought and sold by two speculators in succession. Then in 1544Richard Taverner (1505–75), the translator ofTaverner's Bible, bought the manor. He retired to the village and had amanor house built in the 1550s,[2] and he is buried in Holy Rood churchyard. Woodeaton remained in the Taverner family until 1604. The manor then passed through various hands until it was bought by the Nourse family fromMiddleton Keynes,Buckinghamshire sometime between 1623 and 1625. In 1774 John Nourse, the last of the male line, died and left the manor to his daughter Elizabeth Weyland, wife of John Weyland.[2]
In 1775 Weyland had the old manor house demolished and the present Woodeaton Manor built. The new house has a modest exterior but in 1791 the architect SirJohn Soane enhanced its main rooms with marble chimneypieces, added anIonic porch ofCoade stone, a service wing and an ornate main hall.[9] The manor remained with the family until 1912 when Captain Mark Weyland sold the house and part of the land.Christ Church, Oxford now owns most of the former manor lands.[2] Since 1950 Woodeaton Manor House has been anOxfordshire County Council school for children with special educational needs. The current headteacher of the school is Sarah Stacey. The house is aGrade II* listed building.[10]
Woodeaton has had a parish church since the early or middle part of the 11th century,[11] when aSaxon timber one was built.[12] This was destroyed by fire by about 1080 at the latest.[12] The presentChurch of England parish church of the HolyRood originates from an earlyNorman stone church that was built between 1070 and 1120 to replace the destroyed Saxon one.[13] It was a small building, dominated by a western tower.[13] The original Norman layout is not entirely certain: there may have been a small nave east of the tower and an even smallerchancel beyond that, or the tower may have been a "tower-nave" with only a chancel to the east of it.[14] In about 1180–1220 a late Norman southaisle and possible south chapel were added and in about 1200–50 the chancel was extended.[15] AnEarly English Gothic doorway in the south wall of the chancel is of a style that suggests a date of 1200–30.[16]
Several Early Englishlancet windows in the chancel also date from this period. Thenave was rebuilt in about 1250–1300.[16] Later in the Middle Ages, the east and south walls of the chancel were rebuilt and were given latePerpendicular Gothic windows.[16] The eastern window in the south wall of the nave was also revised with Perpendiculartracery.[16] The Perpendicular Gothicbelltower was added in either the 14th[6][17] or 15th century.[2] Unusually the tower is built on columns erected inside the nave. This seems to be because the ground falls away west of the church to an extent that precluded building a tower conventionally to the west of the nave.[16] The south porch was built in the 18th century.[2] In 2010 the church roof was restored, re-using many of the originalStonesfield slates.[18] Holy Rood church is a Grade I listed building.[17]
The tower has aring of five bells, all of which were cast by Henry II Bagley ofChacombe,[19]Northamptonshire in 1680.[20] Holy Rood also has aSanctus bell cast by Richard Keene ofBurford[19] in 1674.[20] The tower has aturret clock similar to that atSt Nicholas' Church, Islip, except that the iron bars of its frame are nutted together rather than wedged.[21] It may have been made in about 1700.[21] In the 1960sDr. C.F.C. Beeson described it as"long disused, rusted".[21]
In the 14th century a large image ofSaint Christopher was painted on the north wall inside the nave.[22] Restoration work in 2010 exposed remnants of an early 14th-century crucifixion scene above the rood beam over the chancel arch.[23] Both the chancel and the nave have pews with 15th-century carved wooden bench ends.[6] The wooden screen in the chancel arch and some of the nave seating was added late in the 15th or early in the 16th century.[16] Reportedly there was a roodtympanum but this had been removed before 1846.[16] In the 18th century the wooden pulpit,tester and reading desk were added,[6] along with the wooden panelling andwest gallery.[2] Some timbers from the chancel screen tympanum seem to have been re-used in the 18th-century reading desk and pew floors.[16] There is also onebox pew at the front of the nave, presumably for the manorial family.
James Sadler, the first English balloonist, landed near the village after his first ascent fromChrist Church Meadow in Oxford on 4 October 1784. He had flown a distance of about 6 miles (10 km) and reached a height of about 3,600 feet (1,100 m).[citation needed]
Woodeaton is a small village with no shop orpublic house. Woodeaton Wood is about 0.5 miles (800 m) southeast of the village, on the southwest side of Drun's Hill.
Media related toWoodeaton at Wikimedia Commons
