West Hagbourne
West Hagbourne maps (2 available)
Map of Oxfordshire
Beautifully hand-drawn and coloured, dating from around 1840
See this old map of Oxfordshire
Personalised maps
Create an historic map centred directly on any postcode!
West Hagbourne books (11 available)
Banbury Town Walk Guide
Paperback
Banbury - A History and Celebration
Hardback
Henley-on-Thames Town and City Memories
Paperback
West Hagbourne memories
Read and share memories of West Hagbourne and Oxfordshire inspired by Frith photos
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You can also read memories of nearby places in Oxfordshire below.
Oxfordshire memories
Boot Inn 1955, now The Old Boot, a private house
Ceased operation as a pub in 1959. Now (2007) privately occupied by the Beran family. Previous owners were a builder who divided the land, the village schoolmaster, and the Jarvis'. A few relics of its pub days remain with serving hatches still visible and vertical planking in the hallway. The black rectangle to the left of the building was the privy, now gone. The large tree behind has gone but we have a Silver Birch of equal size by the front gate.
A memory of East Hagbourne contributed by Max Beran
The Prior family of Steventon
My grandmother lived in Steventon with her own grandmother around 1880. She was Florence Prior and her own gran was Eliza Prior who by then was a widow and a laundress living in Timsbury Cottage. I have tried to find the cottage but the only place I have seen with a similar name is Timsbury Villa. I sometimes wonder if it is the same place. My own visit to Steventon was around 1986. I remember visiting St Michael's Church and having a picnic in the next field among all the cowslips and other wild flowers. It was beautiful. I walked around the churchyard and found many tombstones for the Prior family including one who was in the Grenadier Guards and was ...read more here
A memory of Steventon contributed by John Howard Norfolk
The best time of my life
I was 8 when I moved to Steventon. We used to live in Didcot while I was a baby. I enjoyed Didcot and liked the town side of it. Also we moved here because my mum and dad wanted to live in the countryside while I was growing up to my teens. My mum is called Sharon Tappin and my dad is called Clive Tappin. So far we have been here for a year and I really like it here and also I am settled in to the school.
My name is Rebecca Tappin.
A memory of Steventon contributed by Rebecca Tappin
Homesick
I went to Steventon as a 'Mother's Help' to an Italian family. I came from near Manchester. I had to clean, look after a baby and a toddler and help with cooking.
But I had never been away from home before and decided it wasn't for me. It was a lovely house on the Causeway which was a listed building. The family didn't own it. I remember the lady making me wash and iron all my bedding while my mum sat with me in the kitchen to take me home!
A memory of Steventon contributed by Dianne Littlewood
Extracts From West Hagbourne & Oxfordshire books
The Crown and Thistle
Hotel, first mentioned
in 1605, was a coaching
inn, and one of the town’s
best known ones. It is
still popular, and has the
truncated remains of its
inn courtyard within – we
see it here from the yard
end of the carriageway
through the building.
The further part of the
yard in this view now has
a roof supported on posts
to give shelter to tables
and chairs.
An extract from from"Abingdon Photographic Memories".
Skirting the modern
shopping centre, our
tour reaches Stert
Street, which runs south
towards the Market
Place; in the 1890s, it
was one of Abingdon’s
main shopping streets.
On the right, W H
Hooke’s bookshop (now
a jeweller’s) is the start
of the market place
encroachment. We are
looking towards
St Nicholas’s Church.
Until 1883, only its tower
was visible; then two
pubs which jutted into
the street, one on each
side, were demolished for
road improvement. Little
survives on the left today
apart from the two gables
of No 3, a 15th-century
house, partly hidden by
the horse-less cart.
An extract from from"Abingdon Photographic Memories".
The Fraternity of the Holy Cross built the two bridges, the
causeway across Nag’s Head Island, and then the long causeway
that runs south for over a thousand yards across the flood plain to
Culham, where they built a five-arched stone bridge between 1416
and 1422. Culham Bridge crossed the cut dug for Abbot Orderic in
1052 and known as the Swift Ditch. It is difficult nowadays to see
that quiet stream as the main navigation channel, rather than the
Thames itself, but so indeed it was for centuries. This view shows
Burford Bridge.
An extract from from"Abingdon Photographic Memories".
Stevens’s Boatyard
on the east end of
Nag’s Head Island also
incorporated the landing
stage for the Crown and
Thistle Hotel in Bridge
Street, some hundred
yards away from the
river. Note the elegant
steam launch tied up at
the landing stage with
its striped awning to
protect passengers. The
house between the trees
is Cosener’s House, built
on the site where the
cosener or kitcheners
lived – he was the
medieval official who ran
the Abingdon Abbey’s
kitchens.
An extract from from"Abingdon Photographic Memories".
A little further along the road
towards East Hanney is the
1930s Lamb Inn. Beyond it,
the pair of gables belong to
one of a crescent of 1950s
council houses. The drainage
ditch on the right has now
been filled in and paved over
as a footpath, and the area
in front of the pub is now
entirely a tarmac car park.
An extract from from"Abingdon Photographic Memories".