Text this colour is a link for Members only. Support us by becoming a Member for only £3 a month by joining our 'Buy Me A Coffee page'; Membership gives you access to all content and removes ads.
Text this colour links to Pages. Text this colour links to Family Trees. Place the mouse over images to see a larger image. Click on paintings to see the painter's Biography Page. Mouse over links for a preview. Move the mouse off the painting or link to close the popup.
All About History Books
The Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker of Swinbroke. Baker was a secular clerk from Swinbroke, now Swinbrook, an Oxfordshire village two miles east of Burford. His Chronicle describes the events of the period 1303-1356: Gaveston, Bannockburn, Boroughbridge, the murder of King Edward II, the Scottish Wars, Sluys, Crécy, the Black Death, Winchelsea and Poitiers. To quote Herbert Bruce 'it possesses a vigorous and characteristic style, and its value for particular events between 1303 and 1356 has been recognised by its editor and by subsequent writers'. The book provides remarkable detail about the events it describes. Baker's text has been augmented with hundreds of notes, including extracts from other contemporary chronicles, such as the Annales Londonienses, Annales Paulini, Murimuth, Lanercost, Avesbury, Guisborough and Froissart to enrich the reader's understanding. The translation takes as its source the 'Chronicon Galfridi le Baker de Swynebroke' published in 1889, edited by Edward Maunde Thompson. Available at Amazon in eBook and Paperback.
History of Steeple Ashton by William Wing is in Prehistory.
Books, Prehistory, History of Steeple Ashton by William Wing, History of Steeple Ashton
The etymology of the name appears to be the East town with a Steeple or Tower a Steeple or Stepull being simply a tower not necessarily attached to a church1 although at the present time the word generally designates the Spire of a Church many instances may be cited of Villages bearing the prefix of Steeple in which no spire ever existedb. The parish was probably named East from its situation in the eastern part of the ancient Hundred of Levecanole one of the divisions of the County named in the Doomsday survey or it may be in reference to its lying east of Steeple Barton a place of some importance in very early times Maiden Bower a spot in that parish well known to the foxhunter is a British earthwork the name being derived from the Celtic Maidian strong and beorgh fortress.c. Near this ancient fortress and in the same parish within a stone's throw of the turnpike road to Oxford was till the latter part of the year 1843 the ruin of a Druidical altar called the Hoar stone [Map] which originally consisted of two side pieces and a lintel as at Rollright and Stonehenge this venerable relic of a by gone race was at the time I mention broken to pieces by the farmer in occupation of the field but the fragments were collected and piled together on the spot the altar had occupied by order of the proprietor Henry Hall Esq
Note a. MS note by JH Parker Esq
Note b. See Stevens's Description of Malmesbury Abbey which is said to have had two Steeples one a Pyramid the other a Tower also Harward's Digcourse of a feareful Lightening which on Nov 17 1606 did in a very short time burne up the Spire of the Steeple of Blechingley in Surrey and at the same time melt into infinite fragments a goodly ring of bells
Note c. Warton's History of Kiddington page 71 edit 1815.