Banbury

Banbury is a market town on the River Cherwell in northern Oxfordshire. Its medieval prosperity rested on wool, and two old routes met here: the Salt Way and Banbury Lane, which ran westward toward the Fosse Way. The Bishop of Lincoln held the town at the time of Domesday Book; his successor Alexander began building Banbury Castle in 1135. In 1554 Queen Mary I granted a royal charter incorporating Banbury as a borough.

During the English Civil War the castle held a royalist garrison despite strong Parliamentarian sympathies in the town. It was besieged and demolished after the war. More than a century later, the Oxford Canal reached Banbury in 1778, bringing Warwickshire coal by water; the canal opened through to Oxford in 1790.