Cropredy

Cropredy, showing the canal.

Cropredy is a village in Oxfordshire in England, five miles North of Banbury.

Cropredy stands on the West bank of the River Cherwell. It has Anglo-Saxon origins, and is recorded in the Domesday Book. The name of the village springs from the Saxon words cropp (a hill) and ridig (a stream). Its church, St Mary's, is medieval and built of the local ironstone.

From 1519 onwards, Brasenose College, Oxford owned extensive property in Cropredy, a fact commemorated in the name of the pub The Brasenose Arms. The village has another pub called The Red Lion; there are also several shops, a Post Office and a village school for children aged between 5 and 11 years.

To the West of the village runs the main railway line from Oxford to Birmingham. The line was built by the Great Western Railway and there was a station at Cropredy until the 1960s.

The village is bounded to the East by the Oxford Canal. There is a lock here, and at the South end of the village a wharf. Nowadays this is used by pleasure boats, but it was originally built as a coal wharf. The canal connects the Coventry Canal to the River Thames and opened from Coventry in 1778, although it was not completed southward to Oxford until 1790. The canal runs beside the River Cherwell.

Cropredy Bridge on the River Cherwell was the site of a major battle in 1644 during the English civil war. King Charles' engaged the Parliamentarian army led by Sir William Waller. The battle was a stalemate; Parliamentarian side suffered heavy casualties but ultimately prevented the King's forces from crossing the bridge. A plaque on the bridge bears the inscription: “Site of the Battle of Cropredy Bridge 1644. From Civil War deliver us.”

On farmland East of the village the folk-rock band Fairport Convention stage an annual three-day event called the Cropredy Festival, which attracts up to 20,000 music fans.

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