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Hixet Wood

By Barbara Allison and Linda Mowat     Where did the name of this road come from? The earliest map of Charlbury – the 1761 Thomas Pride map, tracings of which are in the museum – called the street we now know as Hixet Wood Hicks’s Wood. So like most people, we thought this street name was a …

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A Charlbury baker

By Linda Mowat John Penn, baker of Charlbury, died in 1695, leaving his worldly goods to his widow Ellenor. He did not list these items in his will, but the inventory subsequently made of his possessions offers us a rare insight into the life of a seventeenth-century tradesman in the town. John’s premises included a bakehouse and a boulting …

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Inventory of 1680

Here is the inventory of a labourer named Thomas Becket. He died in 1680. We don’t know his age, but he didn’t appear to have any children. His wife died a few days after him, and his brother in law, another labourer called John Archer, had probate for his possessions. £ s d In the …

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