page_title: History of Banbury
section_title: 1660 to 1834
hierarchical_section_title: History of Banbury / General history / 1660 to 1834
caption_attribution_description: English: People's Park, Banbury, Oxfordshire in 2001.
context_page_description: Banbury is a circa 1,500-year-old market town and civil parish on the River Cherwell in the Cherwell District of Oxfordshire, England. It is 64 miles northwest of London, 38 miles southeast of Birmingham, 27 miles south of Coventry and 21 miles north northwest of the county town of Oxford.
context_section_description: Quaker missionaries had been active in the Banbury area in the Commonwealth period of the 1650s, and after the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy one Edward Vivers bought land in Banbury in 1664 to build a Friends' Meeting House. This was replaced with a Georgian building in Horsefair in 1751, to which a Tuscan porch was added in about 1820. Several Quaker communities in and around Banbury were recorded in the Visitation Returns of Thomas Secker, Bishop of Oxford in 1738.
  Villagers farmed the parish on a two-field open field system until 1768, when Sir Charles Cope, 2nd Baronet bought out the rights of copyholders, life- and leaseholders and enclosed the common lands.
  The opening of the Oxford Canal from Hawkesbury Junction to Banbury on 30 March 1778 gave the town a cheap and reliable supply of Warwickshire coal. In 1787 the Oxford Canal was extended southwards, finally opening to Oxford on 1 January 1790. The canal's main boat yard was the original outlay of today's Tooley's Boatyard.
  Before the arrival of the Oxford Canal in 1779, the Canalside area was undeveloped, low-lying watermeadows. The canal was then extended to Oxford by Banbury's engineer, John Barnes in 1790. Both Parker's Wharf and Bridge Wharf were serviced by fly-boats to many distant cross country destinations and by market boats to Oxford and Coventry. The canal brought much growth and prosperity to Banbury over the years and is still popular with boat users today. The canal's main boat yard is now the listed site today's Tooley's Boatyard.
  The Cobb family may have obtained The hundred of Banbury when they bought the land site of Banbury castle in 1792 and in 1853 Edward Cobb was lord of the hundreds of Banbury and Bloxham.
  The council objected to the planting of trees in Horse Fair Road, and in 1826 John Walford was then accused of injuring trees planted by the town's commissioners which he considered, like the trees they were planting, to be a waste of money. The commissioners were heckled as a rioting mob destroyed all the trees and fences.
caption: People's Park in 2001.
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