Deddington

Deddington is a civil parish and small town in Oxfordshire about south of Banbury. The parish includes two hamlets: Clifton and Hempton. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 2,146. Deddington is a small settlement but has a commercial centre including a market place, which hosts a popular monthly farmer’s market. It has been a market town probably since the 12th century. One of the Hundred Rolls of King Edward I from 1275–76 records Deddington as a borough. It has a deli, coffee shop, restaurant, three pubs and a town hall (see below). Its football team is called Deddington Town FC. The parish is about wide east–west, about wide north–south and has an area of about . Watercourses bound it on three sides: The River Cherwell to the east, its tributary the River Swere to the north and the Sowbrook (i.e. "South Brook") to the south. Here the Cherwell also forms the county boundary with Northamptonshire. To the west the parish is bounded by field boundaries. In the southwest of the parish, about south of Hempton, is Ilbury Iron Age hill fort, atop a hill high. Near the fort is the site of a deserted medieval village, also called Ilbury. In 1980 the village site was rediscovered and Medieval pottery from the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries was found. Clifton, Deddington and Hempton stand on a ridge of Jurassic ferruginous marlstone hills between the three watercourses. Clifton is about east of Deddington, at the eastern end of the ridge where it slopes down to the Cherwell. The ridges rises westward. Deddington is about above sea level. Hempton is about west of Deddington and about above sea level. The highest point of the ridge is on the western boundary of the parish, more than above sea level. The parish's topography is alluded to in a local rhyme: Aynho on the Hill Clifton in the Clay Dirty, drunken Deddington And Hempton high way — The toponym is derived from the Old English for "place of the people of Dæda". "Dæda" was short for Anglo-Saxon names such as Dædhēah.