Bloxham 4.51

Bloxham is a village and civil parish in northern Oxfordshire on the edge of the Cotswolds, about 3mi southwest of Banbury. It is on the edge of a valley and overlooked by Hobb Hill. The village is on the A361 road. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 3,374.HistoryRomanUnder Roman rule between the 1st and 5th centuries AD there were several farms and a burial site in the Bloxham area. A poor farming community lived at a site 1/2mi west of the present village.SaxonThe toponym is derived from the Old English Blocc's Ham (the home of Blocc) from the 6th century, when a Saxon settlement was built on the present site of the village, on the banks of a tributary of the Sor Brook. In 1086 the Domesday Book called the village Blochesham. Its name was subsequently recorded as Blocchesham in 1142, Blokesham in 1216, and finally Bloxham in 1316. In the late Anglo-Saxon era Bloxham was part of a large estate, belonging to the Earl of Mercia, stretching from the boundary with Tadmarton and Wigginton in the west to the River Cherwell. As the caput of a hundred it had been important since at least the time of Edward the Elder.