Headington

Headington is an eastern suburb of Oxford, England. It is at the top of Headington Hill overlooking the city in the Thames valley below, and bordering Marston to the north-west, Cowley to the south, and Barton and Risinghurst to the east. The life of the large residential area is centred upon London Road, the main road between London and Oxford. The site of Headington shows evidence of continued occupation from the Stone Age, as the 2001 field excavations in Barton Lane found, suggesting a date in the 11th century BC. Pottery was found on the Manor Ground, suggesting an Iron Age settlement there in the 7th century BC. Roman kilns from about 300 have been found, including one now on display at the Museum of Oxford. Anglo-Saxon burial remains from about 500 have also been discovered. Headington's toponym is derived from the Old English Hedena's dun, meaning "Hedena's hill", when it was the site of a palace or hunting lodge of the Kings of Mercia. In a charter of 1004, Æthelred the Unready, "written at the royal ville called Headan dune", gave land in Headington to St Frideswide's Priory, which included the quarry and the area around it. Henry I granted a chapel at Headington to the Augustinian canons regular of St Frideswide's Priory, when the priory was founded in 1122. The parish church of Saint Andrew was built in the middle of the 12th century and enlarged in the 13th century. The bell tower was started in the 13th or 14th century and completed in about 1500. St. Andrew's was repaired in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Gothic Revival architect J.C. Buckler restored the building and lengthened the nave in 1862–1864. Headington developed rapidly in the early 20th century, significant amounts of housing developing around the medieval village, now known as Old Headington, around the original parish church of St Andrew. In 1927, it became an urban district separate from the Headington Rural District and in 1929 it was added to the city of Oxford. New Headington refers to some of the area on the south side of the London Road, originating as a late 19th-century suburb.