The Oxford to Cambridge Arc 2
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Gosford Bridge to Buckingham
The Oxford to Cambridge Arc
The Lion at Wendlebury (formerly the Red Lion). It was built in the 17th century and seems to have been trading as an inn by 1732. Ogilby may have seen the building, but missed its use as an inn by 57 years.
After crossing Gosford Bridge our principal map and itinerary makers were free to roam and construct their own routes to the next major bridging point, already delineated on the Gough Map as Buckingham.
Ogilby and Moll travelled via Bicester, Stratton Audley and Gawcott. Cary went via Weston-on-the-Green, Middleton Stoney, Ardley, Finmere and Tingewick, whereas Patterson combined something of the others, travelling via Bicester, Finmere and Tingewick.
Ogilby’s 1675 route
Ogilby travelled from Gosford to Bicester, noting ‘common fields’ for most of the way. This would have been an open, pre-enclosure landscape with few hedgerows and land parcelled out to individual peasants who would followstrip farming methods. Evidence of this type of farming can often still be seen in the familiar ridge and furrow rippling of the fields where land was later given over to pasture.
I have shown John Senex's 1780 reiteration of Ogilby's original map as it reproduces more clearly.
On his way to Bicester, Ogilby passed through Wendlebury. He was essentially following what are now the A34 and A41, although the winding stretch through Wendlebury itself was by-passed some time between 1935 and 1939 by the dead straight road which now connects Bicester with the M40. However, a good stretch of the old Oxford to Bicester road, now unclassified, which passes through Wendlebury, can be followed in much the same way that Ogilby would have travelled. It winds though Wendlebury before turning eastwards to pass over the Gagle Brook (presumably at the easiest bridging point), before resuming the journey northwards to Bicester. The point at which the road turns northwards marks its conjunction with a Roman road. Immediately in the opposite direction is the site of the entrance gate to the old Roman town of Alchester.
Ogilby continued along the old Roman road to Bicester, or ‘Burcester vulgo Biscester’ as he named it; ‘Biscester’ presumably being the common, or vulgar, name.
He left Bicester, still travelling northwards, along a continuance of the same Roman road, these days the A4421, before bearing right towards Stratton Audley, or ‘Streton Audley’ as he called it, just north of Caversfield (named ‘Caffield’ on the map).
It can only be assumed that the Roman road northwards was not useable, or ran too wide to the West through Fringford, leading Ogilby to prefer the more geographically direct route to Buckingham.
Ogilby travelled from ‘Streton Audley’ northwards on a lane (today unclassified) to a ‘Water Mill’ (still extant as a residence and labelled The Old Mill on the modern Ordnance Survey Map), and into Buckinghamshire.
He travelled to the west of ‘Chickwood’ (Chetwode), as does the lane still, passing through Tingewick Woods, but not through Tingewick itself, before bearing eastwards through ‘Gaynat’ (Gawcott) and so into Buckingham.
In Buckingham, the route will have crossed the River Great Ouse at Hunter Street over the Lord’s Bridge, which for thousands of years was a wooden structure that was repeatedly subject to flooding. The current brick and stone bridge was built in 1846 when the river was redirected to make way for the railway embankment.*
*Buckingham Circular Walk Map http://www.buckinghamuk.info/BTIC_Map_Circular_Walk_A3L.pdf
Herman Moll's 1710 route
This basically maps (on a small scale) the route described above by Ogilby via Bicester. One thing we can take away from Moll's map is that by 1710 the name Bicester had been agreed.
© John Dunn.
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The Oxford to Buckingham route from Cary's New Itinerary; or, An accurate delineation of the great roads both direct and cross throughoutEngland and Wales: with many of the principal roads in Scotland, From an actual admeasurement (1815)
The Oxford to Cambridge Arc
The Gosford Bridge to Buckingham section of John Cary's Oxford to Cambridge itinerary
From Gosford Bridge onwards, the development of the turnpike road system gave cause for Cary’s route to Buckingham to differ considerably from Ogilby’s and Moll’s.
Turnpikes were run by trusts with powers to collect road tolls for maintaining the principal roads of Britain from the 17th to the latter half of the 19th century. By the 1830s over 1,000 trusts administered around 30,000 miles of turnpike road in England and Wales, taking tolls at almost 8,000 toll-gates and side-bars. Turnpikes declined with the coming of the railways and then the Local Government Act 1888 gave responsibility for maintaining main roads to county councils and county borough councils.
The term ‘turnpike’ originates from the similarity of some toll gates to the pike-based weaponry once used to defend troops against attack by cavalry. When the first turnpikes were formed, the extensive deployment of pikemen in the English Civil War 1642-1651 would have still been within living memory.
Pikemen with their pikes, from which the turnpikes took their name.
The new turnpikes of Cary's day meant that instead of following Ogilby’s route to Bicester and on to Buckingham in a more or less geographically direct manner, Cary turned left after Gosford Bridge, to Weston on the Green, following the Towcester, Brackley to Weston Turnpike (1757) along what is now the B430.
This appears to be a much longer way round to Buckingham than Ogilby’s route, but is in fact only some three miles longer. However, Cary’s choice of route must be counted as testament to the improvements in speed and mobility offered by the turnpike road improvements of his day. There was a price to pay of course.
Cary had already met turnpike gates at Jordan Hill on the Banbury road out of Oxford (see above) and Tollgate Cottage in Gosford (see above), both with toll houses that survive to this day. His route passed the recorded sites of more turnpike gates just before the left turn from the Bicester road to Weston-on-the-Green (SP 536 175) on the Gosford Gate Turnpike (1781), in Weston-on-the-Green itself (SP 534 186) and just north of Middleton Stoney (SP 534 239), though it is likely that the two latter were successive sites for the same gate as it was moved in search of the most remunerative location.
At Ardley, the modern B430 resumes its former life as the A43 and Cary’s route followed this to the ‘Barley Mow’. In Cary’s time this was an inn, later to become Barley Mow Farm, which now stands next to what is aptly named the Barley Mow Roundabout, South of Brackley.
At the Barley Mow, Cary’s route turned right to follow the Buckingham and Hanwell Turnpike (1743), now the A421. The next landmark described by Cary along this road was Monk’s House. With a datestone of 1683, the building still stands today as a listed building located at the right turn to Cottisford on a short section of the old road that has been by-passed.
The route continued to Finmere and along a stretch of the turnpike (later the A421, now by-passed) to Tingewick, where there are two candidates for the location of a turnpike gate at which Cary would have paid a toll.
One is on the south side of the main road, opposite Church Lane, where what is reputed to be the old Toll House still stands (SP 65810 32877).
Reputed to be Tingewick Toll House
However, it is clear from the architecture that the building was not intended to be a toll house and was more likely to have been rented temporarily by the turnpike trust until a purpose-built structure could be completed. This latter building stood to the east end of Tingewick at the turnpike road’s junction with the minor road to Gawcot (SP 6608 3288). Whilst the toll house no longer exists, the road through a new housing estate built on the site of this turnpike gate has been named Tollgate Street in its honour.
Pre-1840s Ordnance Survey Map showing TG
Cary continued along the old turnpike into Buckingham, which is now a left fork from the modern by-pass (A421) down Tingewick Road, before crossing to the north side of the Ouse at Castle Bridge and into the town centre.
Today’s Castle Bridge is a modern structure which was constructed of pre-cast concrete between 2001 and 2003. It was built to replace an earlier bridge that had been built c.1851 and had been weakened by traffic. This in turn was on the site of much earlier bridges.
The c. 1851 Castle Bridge.
Copyright undetermined. Image courtesy of University of St Andrews Library.
© John Dunn.
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Route from Paterson’s Roads, 18th Edition, 1826
The Oxford to Cambridge Arc
The Gosford Bridge to Buckingham section of Daniel Paterson's Oxford to Cambridge itinerary
Paterson’s Oxford to Cambridge route via Buckingham and Bedford was a section of his Bristol to Norwich itinerary. He looked back to Ogilby in that he chose to travel through Bicester rather than take the longer way round via the Barley Mow as Cary had done.
Like Ogilby, from Gosford he passed through Wendlebury to pick up the old Roman road to the north of the village. Unlike Ogilby, however, Paterson kept to the Roman road after Bicester, now the A4421, instead of turning off to travel through Stratton Audley and Gawcott.
Being a less geographically direct route to Buckingham, the Roman road between Bicester and Finmere in the 1600s of Ogilby's time had nothing to recommend it. By the time of Paterson’s 1826 road book however that same road had been resurrected as a newly completed turnpike, passing near Fringford and through Newton Purcell just as the A4421 does to this day. Speed of travel would more than compensate for the longer distance covered. This turnpike was a late addition to the Bicester, Aynhoe and Finmere Turnpike Trust, being completed sometime between 1819 and 1823. We know this because Cary did not include the route in an 1819 Itinerary, but Andrew Bryant described it as the ‘New Turnpike Road’ on his 1823 map of Oxfordshire. The Paterson I am using is the 1826 18th edition.
After Gosford Bridge, Paterson passed through the recorded sites of three turnpike gates on the way to Finmere. These were Weston (SP 536 175) on the Gosford Gate Turnpike (1781), King’s End in Bicester (SP 5793 2227) on the Enstone, Heyford, Bicester, Weston & Kirtlington Turnpike (1793) (shown on the map) and Skimming Dish Barn (SP 590 2227), also in Bicester on the Bicester, Aynho & Finmere Turnpike (1791) (shown on the map).
From Bryant’s 1823 map of Oxfordshire, showing the toll bars in Bicester on the Paterson route. Note that the direct North-South route that we know today through Bicester did not exist in Paterson’s time, and was not in fact not completed until around 1950.
From Finmere Paterson followed the Buckingham to Hanwell Turnpike (1743) through the Tingewick turnpike gate into Buckingham, just as Cary had done.
© John Dunn.
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