The Bourtons - Little Bourton
Our Villages > Little BourtonLittle Bourton, which has been known as Bourton Parva, is sometimes overlooked. It used to have a Methodist Chapel, now a private house. It used to have a garage and petrol station, soon to become a housing development with a shop. It still has a welcoming pub, The Plough, which serves excellent food, even though years ago it was known as The Dirt House!
Little Bourton used to have nail-makers' cottages but it is said they were demolished by order of Parliament because the nail-makers were minting their own coinage, contrary to law.
It used to have a watermill, the site of which you can still find at Slat Mill on the River Cherwell, down Mill Lane and over the railway, past mellow old brick Pewitt Farm, over the canal bridge to the meadow between canal and mill race. Here a skirmish of the Civil War took place in the 17th Century and Waller's army looked down into the valley from their encampment between Great and Little Bourton, near what is now Littlegood Farm. At this farm you can now buy the most flavoursome free-range eggs, and an old farm building, below the farm, has been made into a rural, accessible holiday let cottage, Littlegood Lodge.
If you are travelling on, or walking the towpath of the Oxford Canal, you can moor up near the isolated lock cottage and walk up a permissive footpath on a track over the railway, and up a farm track past Park Farm. Although many of the houses in the village are modern, there are several Hornton ironstone buildings of historical interest. Park Farm features in "Traditional Domestic Architecture in the Banbury Region" by Raymond B. Wood Jones. (Wykham Books. ISBN 0 9511745 09)
As you proceed up Chapel Lane you will pass the village park on the right. There will soon be interesting robinia-wood play equipment in the Little Bourton pocket park/play area overlooking the Cherwell Valley. Continue up to the top of the village and the main A423 Southam Road to enjoy lunch, or a drink or an evening at The Plough, listed by CAMRA as having the 'Cropredy Bridge 1644' real ale brewed by the new Cherwell Valley micro brewery in Brackley, on one of their hand pumps.
People have moved away, and moved back again the following year, because they missed this friendly community so much.
Thanks to Sally Leszczynski for this introduction to Little Bourton.
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