- Foreword
- Brasenose Leases
- ‘All Christians for evermore’: the Ascott Village Charity
- Apprentice Boys
- A Study of the Vegetable Gardens in Shipton-under-Wychwood and Milton-under-Wychwood in Oxfordshire to Ascertain their Economic Importance
- The Gorton Family of Milton and Oddington
- Eliza Gorton
- The Townsend-Averys of Church Street, Shipton
Introduction to The Wychwoods Local History Society Journal No 30
After thirty years the formal Howard-Drake connection with the WLHS Journal is coming to an end. Joan and her co-editor Trudy Yates have decided to step down as editors, and I have taken their place.
Joan’s late husband, Jack Howard-Drake, was Chairman of the Society and Editor of the Journal from 1985 to 1992, and after Margaret Ware had been editor for five years, Joan, Sue Jourdan and Trudy took on the job in 1997. Sue left in 2012, since when Joan and Trudy have been joint editors.
They have presided over a fascinating series of Journals, and have also regularly contributed articles of their own. The Society’s gratitude and debt to them is immeasurable. It will not be easy – especially as a recent incomer to the Wychwoods – to follow them. In this, my first Journal, I have received infinite help and doses of wisdom from them both. We offer them our best wishes for the future and hope that they will continue their research and share the results with the members of the Society.
In this, the 30th volume in the series, all three of the Wychwood villages are represented, with articles covering a chronological span from c.1300 to the present day. Joan Howard-Drake reports on leases granted in Shipton and Milton by Brasenose College from the early fourteenth century.
Wendy Pearse writes about the foundation of the Ascott Charity c.1480 and takes the history of its properties down to the twentieth century.
Wendy Pearse also contributes an article on the Charity’s financial support for Ascott boys going into apprenticeships in the nineteenth century.
Michael Ralston, who lives in Gloucestershire, is descended from George Gorton, a Baptist minister in Milton in the mid-nineteenth century and the father of Robert Gorton, who was a baker, and, judging from his photograph portrait, made a comfortable living from it. Michael sent us the obituary of George Gorton from the Baptists’ publication, The Gospel Standard, which is of great interest. We reproduce it here together with the account written by George’s wife Eliza, of her own awakening to the Baptist movement.
Trudy Yates’s account of the Townsend/Avery dynasty and their shop in Shipton brings us down to our own era, since the shop flourishes today as Elaine Ireland’s flower shop, named after her grandmother, Ivy Avery. Trudy has managed to identify several of the people who appear in the photograph on p.48, but if anyone can recognise others, please let us know.
Finally, last year, the Journal tried to inspire the house-proud; this year it encourages vegetable gardeners, with Nigel Braithwaite’s account of vegetable gardens in Milton and Shipton in 1963, which he wrote as a project for his Geography A-Level.
Nicola Coldstream
[Download Full Journal No 30 PDF here]
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