VICTORIA COUNTY HISTORY of OXFORDSHIRE
Vol VI - Ploughley Hundred
Wendlebury - extract
Two substantial families can definitely be said to have lived in the village over a long period—the Traffords and Vennimores. Henry Trafford inhabited the largest house in 166526 and his successors continued to be freeholders under the earls of Abingdon throughout the 18th century.27 By 1801 the family was clearly much reduced, but it continued to live in the parish until at least 1832.28 A Vennimore held property as early as 165829 and the family only sold its land shortly before 1774.30 Another family, the Bees, who were mercers and hosiers of Oxford and London, held property from the mid-17th century well into the 18th century.31
26 Hearth Tax Oxon. 189.
27 MS. Top. Oxon. b 178-89.
28 O.R.O. Incl. award; ibid. Land tax assess. 1832.
29 E 179/161/319.
30 Queen's Coll. Mun. X 4a
31 Hearth Tax Oxon. 189; MS. Top. Oxon. b 178-89; ibid. c 167, pp. 301-2; see below, p. 344.
Kirtlington - extract
Most of the medieval demesne of both Kirtlington and Northbrook was unconsolidated, but in 1279 Kirtlington manor is described as having a new park.72 This park was probably inclosed from the East Field, since in 1750 the 'old park', an area of 75 acres, was taken into Sir James Dashwood's new park.73 A few houses in the 13th century had small closes.74 The 1476 rental mentions 6 closes of pasture and 8 of arable, totalling 39 and 60 acres respectively.75 Sixteenth-century surveys give no estimates of acreage inclosed, but new inclosure does not appear to have been extensive. It seems unlikely to have caused the complicity of some Kirtlington men in the Oxfordshire rising of 1596.76 In 1750 about 400 acres of inclosures were concentrated around the village and at Northbrook, of which Sir James Dashwood owned 230 acres.77 Strip cultivation was still in full operation; John Trafford's New farm, for example, a copyhold of 245 acres, consisted of 278 pieces scattered through 115 different furlongs.78 The new park, comprising 496 acres, reduced the size of the East Field, although the 1750 map shows many uninclosed strips inside it, a few of which still survived at the time of the award. At that date inclosures had increased to 900 acres, of which the Dashwood's Park farm accounted for 165 acres. Under the award 2,535 acres were inclosed.
72 Rot. Hund. (Rec. Corn.), ii. 822. Thomas Brokenton was 'parcarius parci de Curtlyngton' in 1428: New Coll. D. nos. 32,33.
73 St. John's Coll. Surv. 1750; cf. New Coll. terrier 1768.
74 Aulnay D.
75 D.L. 43/8/17.
76 Cal. S.P. Dom. 1595-7, 317, 320, 343.
77 St. John's Coll. Surv. 1750.
78 Ibid.