Stanton Harcourt

"STANTON-HARCOURT, a parish in the hundred of Wootton, county Oxford, 5 miles S.E. of Witney, its post town, and 5 W. of Oxford. The village, which is chiefly agricultural, is situated near the river Thames and the Windrush. The parish includes the hamlets of Sutton and West End. This place was granted by Adeliza, second wife of Henry I., to her kinswoman Milicent, wife of Richard de Camville, whose daughter Isabel married Robert de Harcourt, from whom the village derived the adjunct to its name. The manor continued for above six centuries in the Harcourt, family, who entertained Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, here in the reign of Charles I., and in the tower of the old manor-house Pope finished his 5th Book of Homer, during his stay at Cockthorpe in 1718. The ruins are now converted into a farmhouse. In this parish are a number of large stones, called the Devil's Coits; on the spot where they stand the Saxons routed the Britons in 614. The living is a vicarage, with the curacy of South Leigh annexed, in the diocese of Oxford, value £136, in the patronage of the bishop. The church, dedicated to St. Michael, is an ancient structure, with a square tower containing five bells. The interior contains effigies of the Harcourts, from Richard II.'s time, and 3 brasses; the earliest 1460. There are epitaphs on Robert Huntingdon, by Congreve, and on Dr. Friend, by Pope. The parochial charities produce about £34 per annum, of which £19 go to the school. There is a Roman Catholic chapel."

"SUTTON, a hamlet in the parish of Stanton Harcourt, county Oxford, 6 miles W. of Oxford, near the river Thames."

"WEST-END, a hamlet in the parish of Stanton-Harcourt, hundred of Wotton, county Oxford, 5 miles N.W. of Witney, and 9 from Abingdon."

[The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland (1868) Transcribed by Colin Hinson ©2003]