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Topographical Dictionary of England, Lewis, 1831

Burford, Oxfordshire

BURFORD, a market town and parish in the hundred of BAMPTON, county of OXFORD, 18½ miles (W. N. W.) from Oxford, and 73 (W. N. W.) from London, on the road from Oxford to Cheltenham, containing, with the hamlet of Upton with Signet, 1686 inhabitants. This place is of considerable antiquity, and was by the Saxons called Beorford, of which its present name is a variation. In 685, an ecclesiastical synod was held here by the kings Ethelred and Berthwald, at which Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherborne, was ordered to write against the error of the British church respecting Easter. In 752, a battle was fought at Battle-edge, a little westward from the town, between Ethelbald, King of Mercia, and Cuthred, King of the West Saxons, who had revolted against his authority, in which Ethelbald was defeated, and the royal standard, bearing the device of a golden dragon, captured. This event was commemorated by an annual festival on Midsummer-eve, for several ages, when the inhabitants paraded the streets, bearing the figures of a dragon and a giant. Soon after the Conquest, the town was bestowed on Robert, Earl of Gloucester, natural son of Henry I. In 1649, an encounter took place between Fairfax and the royalists, when the former was victorious. The town is pleasantly situated on the banks of the small river Windrush; the houses are indifferently built, but the inhabitants are well supplied with water. Races were formerly held here, but they have been long discontinued. The making of saddles, and a considerable trade in malt and wool, that formerly flourished, have much declined; this, added to the diversion of the line of road, which now avoids the town, instead of passing through it as before, has reduced it from a flourishing condition to a state of comparative poverty. The market is on Saturday: fairs are held on the last Saturday in April, for cattle, sheep, and cheese; July 5th, for horses; and September 25th, for horses, sheep, and cheese. A charter was granted by Henry II., conferring on the inhabitants "all customs enjoyed by the free burgesses of Oxford," of many of which they were deprived by Lord Chief Justice Tanfield, in the reign of Elizabeth. They are entitled to elect an alderman, a steward, two bailiffs, and twelve burgesses, at Easter, but of late years these officers have not been regularly appointed; they do not possess magisterial authority, the town being wholly within the jurisdiction of the county magistrates, who hold here petty sessions for the division: a court leet and a court baron are also held.