Buscot

Village in Oxfordshire, England

Human settlement in England

Buscot

District

Vale of White Horse

Shire county

Oxfordshire

Region

South East

CountryEnglandSovereign stateUnited KingdomPost townFaringdonPostcode districtSN7Dialling code01367PoliceThames ValleyFire Oxfordshire Ambulance South Central UK Parliament

Wantage

WebsiteBuscot Parish Council

List of places: UK; England; Oxfordshire

51°40′37″N 1°40′01″W / 51.677°N 01.667°W / 51.677; -01.667

Buscot is an English village and civil parish on the River Thames, about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) south-east of Lechlade. Buscot was part of Berkshire until the 1974 boundary changes transferred it to Oxfordshire. Two houses there contain notable collections of paintings.

Amenities and sights

Many of the properties are owned by the National Trust and let to long-term residents, some of whom work the farms surrounding the village. There is a village hall, tea shop and adjacent car park, and a children's playground. In the parish, Buscot Park houses the notable Faringdon Collection of paintings, an Italian water garden, and a walled vegetable garden and fruit orchards. A short walk from the end of the village leads past Buscot Weir field to Buscot Lock on the River Thames. The Old Parsonage, built in 1701, was sold by the Church Commissioners to the author Peter Francis Carew Stucley, who in turn left it in his will to the National Trust in 1964. It still contains Stucley's collection of contemporary paintings acquired in the 1950s and 1960s.^[2] The house is open by appointment.^[3]

Parish church

The Church of England parish church of Saint Mary was built in about 1200.^[4] The stained glass in the east window of the chancel was made by Edward Burne-Jones in 1891.^[5] The bell tower has a ring of four bells, the oldest of which was cast at Bristol in about 1399.^[6] The treble bell was cast by Thomas Gefferies of Bristol^[7] in about 1520.^[6] A further bell was cast by William and Robert Cor of Aldbourne^[7] in Wiltshire in 1708.^[6] The ring was completed by the addition of the present tenor bell, cast by Mears & Stainbank of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry^[7] in 1891.^[6] St Mary's also has a service bell, cast by Edward Neale of Burford^[7] in 1661.^[6]

References

^ "Area selected: Buscot: Parish: Key Statistics". Neighbourhood Statistics: Full Dataset View. Office for National Statistics. Archived from the original on 11 February 2003. Retrieved 30 March 2016.
^ Christopher Winn: I Never Knew That about the Thames (London: Ebury Press, 2010), p. 29.
^ BBC arts site. Retrieved 11 December 2013.
^ Page & Ditchfield 1924, pp. 512–517.
^ Pevsner 1966, p. 108.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Marchant, Andrew (26 May 2010). "Buscot S Mary". Dove's Guide for Church Bell Ringers. Central Council of Church Bell Ringers. Retrieved 12 January 2011.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Dovemaster (31 October 2012). "Bell Founders". Dove's Guide for Church Bell Ringers. Central Council of Church Bell Ringers. Retrieved 12 January 2011.

Sources

Page, W.H.; Ditchfield, P.H., eds. (1924). A History of the County of Berkshire, Volume 4. Victoria County History. pp. 512–517.
Pevsner, Nikolaus (1966). Berkshire. The Buildings of England. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. pp. 108–109.