Ryeland Family Tree

The Genealogy of the Ryeland and connected Families

Burford, , Oxfordshire, England

Notes:
BURFORD HISTORY



This summary history has been graciously provided by Raymond Moody, a Burford resident historian, who has written a number of published books on the subject.



The name Burford is derived from Burh-ford, the defended settlement by a ford. The first certain reference to Burford is in the Doomsday Book of 1086, when it was an undistinguished agricultural village of around 200 population, with two mills on the river and the usual meadow, agricultural land and rough pasture. It seems to have been rather undeveloped and worth less than most neighboring villages. It was part of the great landholding of Bishop Odo, the Conqueror's half-brother, and his tenant here, was Earl Aubrey, himself a great man in the north of England. Who actually lived here is unknown. When Odo rebelled against William 11 and was defeated his lands were confiscated, and Burford was given to Robert FitzHamon, whose base was west of here and whose lands became the core of the Honour of Gloucester. FitzHamon's daughter married the natural son of Henry I, who became the first Earl of Gloucester. FitzHamon granted Burford a charter for a merchant guild and a market sometime before 1107, making it one of the very earliest in the country. By 1250 Burford was a developed market town, with burgage tenements laid out well up the present High Street, and a common seal for the burgesses which survives to this day. The seal shows the lion rampant gardant that was FitzHamons device, and is still used as Buford's badge.

The hamlets of Upton (half-a-mile up-river from Burford town) and Signet (pronounced Sy-net: one mile to the south) probably existed in Norman times or earlier, but become important as the core of the agricultural manor of Burford, separate from the town controlled by the guild. The centre of this manor was at Bury Barns, on the cross roads above the town, by the present roundabout. The lords of the manor were the holders ot' the Honour of Gloucester, the de Clares and later the Despencers,. and then the Earl of Warwick, the Kingmaker, and intermitently the Crown. The lords were of course never resident here. which made It possible for the town to behave as a free borough. During Tudor times the manor was leased to the Crown in to a succession of tenants including Harman, Henry VIIl's barber-surgeon. It was eventually sold to Sir John Fortescue, Chancellor of the Exchequer under Elizabeth, in 1601, and by his heirs to Sir Laurence Tanfield. Tanfield was resident here and took legal steps to assert his lordship over the town. It was proved in court that the town charters were granted by earlier lords of the manor, and that the town was run by the burgesses and the two presiding bailiffs only as officers of the lord. From this point onward the corporation (into which the earlier guild had developed) became less important and more or less concentrated its activrties to managing the town's charity lands until after a series of administrative muddles, it was abolished buy Act of Parliament in 1860.

The Rectory of Burford (and the Chapelry of Fulbrook) were given to the newly founded Abbey of Keynsham by Earl William of Gloucester around 1170. Since then Burford and Fulbrook, although separate parishes, have been served by the same Vicar: with or without the assistance of curates. Upton and Signet developed into a separate township within the ecclesiastical parish of Burford and then into a separate civil parish, and was reunited with Burford 1952. Burford now has a Mayor and Town Council.

The Priory or Hospital of St. John was a small Augustinian foundation which stood on the site of the present Priory. It was abolished al the Dissolution, and after various false starts, was developed into a mansion by Tanfield. It was sold to William Lenthall, the Speaker of the Long Parliament, and his family remained squires of Burford, until their debts forced them to sell in 1828. The house, which had been greatly reduced in size by the last Lenthall. remained derelict until the early years of this century when it was restored and lived in by E.J.Horniman, after the last war it was purchased by a community of Anglican Benedictine nuns.

Burford has been remarkably constant in size for seven centuries. It has been a market town, a centre for cloth manufacture, a notable leather town, a racing centre. second only to Newmarket until the last century, and a town of coaches and inns. In the late nineteenth century the absence of a railways and the agricultural recession caused its commercial decline but spared it Victorian development, and this century the motor car has brought back visitors and trade.

Raymond Moody

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Burford in 1840



Burford is in Bampton hundred, on the southern bank of the Windrush, 18 miles west by north of Oxford, through Witney. The area of the parish, including the hamlet of Upton and Signet, is 2,170 acres ; the population, in 1831, was 1,620 for the town, above one-sixth agricultural ; and 246 for the hamlet, about half agricultural : together 1,866. Burford was the scene of conflict (A.D. 752) between the rival kings of Wessex and Mercia, Cuthred and Ethelbald ; the latter was defeated, and his standard, a golden dragon, taken. The scene of the engagement is still distinguished as

Latitude: 51.8, Longitude: -1.633333