Black Bourton is a village, civil parish and benefice about 2 miles (3 km) south of Carterton, Oxfordshire. The village is on the Shill brook, which divides the parish from west to east, and the northern part of Black Bourton brook, which flows southwards from Shill brook towards the Thames. The 2011 Census recorded the parish population as 266.
The place name Bourton, probably tūn by or within a burh, referred perhaps to an unidentified prehistoric or later earthwork near an Anglo-Saxon settlement or to the nearby royal and ecclesiastical centre at Bampton.
The prefix ‘Black’, recorded consistently from the late 16th century, referred possibly to dark loam soil in the parish’s southern half, but more likely to the Black (Augustinian) canons of Osney abbey, owners of Abbots Bourton manor. During the Middle Ages the parish was distinguished as Bourton by Bampton.
Today RAF Brize Norton adjoins the parish. The northern boundary of the parish is along the middle of the main runway of the airfield.
The influential romantic novelist Maria Edgeworth was born in Black Bourton in 1768. A cul-de-sac in Carterton is named “Edgeworth Drive” after her. The painter William Turner, often known as William Turner of Oxford to distinguish him from his better known namesake, was born in Black Bourton in 1789.
Bourton Place was the manor house of the Hungerford family. It was demolished in about 1800.
Derelict cottages on Christ Church‘s estate were replaced c. 1863 by 3 pairs of model cottages and a larger lodging block (above left), designed in rustic Gothic style by W.C.C. Bramwell of Oxford, and built of squared and coursed limestone. At the same time Bramwell also extensively refurbished Manor Farm (above right) and added a new main south block, now Shilbrook Manor.
New institutional buildings were the vicarage house, rebuilt in 1842–3, the Primitive Methodist chapel at Spout green, built in 1861–2, and the National school on the corner of School Lane and Burford road (left), designed by the architect Sir George Gilbert Scott. The school was built in 1865 opposite the vicarage house on land given by the Duke of Marlborough, much of the cost being met by the vicar James Lupton.
In 1873 the East Gloucestershire Railway between Fairford and Witney was opened. It provided Alvescot railway station 1⁄2 mile (800 m) west of Black Bourton on the road to Alvescot and Carterton railway station in Black Bourton, now stables at Elmwood House. The Great Western Railway took over the line in 1890 and British Railways closed it in 1962.
The war memorial commemorates 5 men killed in the First World War out of a total or 55 who served from the parish and one in the Second out of a total of 94. During the Second World War, the churchyard was used by the R.A.F. Station at Brize Norton and most of the war graves are those of airmen. They are together in a group immediately to the left of the entrance. The other graves are elsewhere in the churchyard.
See also Church history and ‘Our links with Brize Norton and Carterton‘.
Extracts republished from British History Online and Wikipedia