Mixbury
Mixbury is a village on the county border, just south-east of Brackley.
The toponym is derived from the Old English mixen-burgh, meaning “fortification near dung-heap”. “Burgh” refers to Beaumont Castle, which was built about 1100. It no longer stands, but its earthworks remain at the north end of the village.
The Domesday Book records that in 1086 Roger d’Ivry held a manor of 17 hides at Missberie. The manor was part of the Honour of St. Valery by 1213, when Robert de St. Valery gave Mixbury’s mesne lordship to the Augustinian Osney Abbey. The abbey retained Mixbury until it was suppressed in the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539.
The main road between Buckingham and Banbury passes through the parish just south of the village. It was made into a turnpike by an Act of Parliament in 1744.
Mixbury’s inclosure act was passed in 1729 and the inclosure award was made the next year. This is by far the earliest inclosure act for an Oxfordshire parish: the next was not passed until 1758. The area enclosed under the act was about 2,000 acres; land enclosed before 1729 by agreement without the need for an act had been about 445 acres.
The original village consisted of thatch-roofed rubblestone cottages clustered between the church and the stream. In 1874 they were demolished under an order of the Court of Chancery and replaced with two rows of brick-faced semi- detached estate cottages laid out as a model village along the road leading south from the church.
All Saints’ Church dates from the 12th century. The earliest remaining part being the Norman south doorway, dating from about 1170. Early in the 14th century all the windows were replaced with Decorated Gothic ones, and a south aisle of three bays and a west tower were added. The Perpendicular Gothic clerestory was added later. The chancel was restored in 1843 and the remainder of the church was restored around 1848. The west tower has three bells.
The treble bell was cast in 1577 by John Appowell, of Buckingham. The tenor in 1609 by Robert Atton, of Buckingham. Then the second in 1627 by Bartholomew Atton, of Buckingham. The church clock appears to be late 17th century, though no records exist of an exact date.
The rector had the village school built in 1838. In 1928 it was reorganised as a junior school and older pupils were transferred to the school at Fringford. It was reorganised as an infants’ school in 1948, but then closed in 1955.