Timeline of Marston

Below is a brief timeline of the history of Marston courtesy of Stephanie Jenkins of headington.org.uk. You can also download a document of the information below by following this link.

BC		There have been two Palaeolithic finds in Marston, but the Romans do not appear to have had a settlement there
AD 1086		Domesday Book: Marston (then a hamlet of Headington) was too small to be mentioned
AD 1100		Until this time, all the low ground of Marston is believed to have been under water. Old Marston village was now an island in the Cherwell. It had its own chapel, which was dependent on Headington. It was part of the Royal Manor at Headington (which also owned Binsey and Osney).
AD 1122		First written occurrence of the name of Marston. Its chapel is referred to as a church for the first time, and by the end of the twelfth century it was dedicated to St Nicholas. Henry I gave the chapel of Marston to the canons of St. Frideswide’s. The chancel arch and seven arches of the nave survive which suggests a considerable community cultivating surrounding fields – workable by ditching and draining. The tenant had rights of commoning cattle and cutting furze, fern and dead wood.
AD 1279		In this year the population of Marston consisted of the Vicar, two freeholders (the miller and a man appearing to live at Court Place) and 46 unfree tenants. First mention of a Marston ferry. Hugh de Molendino held a mill at Marston. (Hundred Rolls). There was a mill at the end of Mill Lane near Sescut Farm which would disappear and re-appear in the records up to the 1400s. There was a three course system of husbandry: year one wheat, year two oats, beans, barley or peas and year three fallow.(Previously one year a crop and then one year fallow.) There were three fields: Sutton, Colterne and Marsh. Brookfield lay between the village and Headington Hill. Court Place was the demesne or home farm.
AD 1349		An acre of the lot meadows of Marston was given to Oriel College
AD 1451		The benefices of Headington and Marston were united by a papal bull, as the two parishes were too poor to maintain two vicars
AD 1458		Marston’s King’s Mill Meadows (42 acres) passed from the Hospital of St John to the newly-founded Magdalen College
AD 1520		Beginning of enclosure in Marston: Magdalen College began to buy out the common rights in its meadows from the other tenants of the Manor
AD 1520		Brasenose College acquired the land of the Hay family in Court Place, and its holding in Marston grew to over 100 acres by 1800
AD 1529		Corpus Christi College acquired two half-yardlands and one quarter in Marston
AD 1605		The amount of arable land in the parish of Marston amounted to c.600 acres, or nearly half the whole area
AD 1637		A Vicar was instituted in Marston on the representation of the Crown, and Marston returned to being a separate parish from Headington
AD 1645		Unton Croke (who had inherited land in Marston through his marriage to Anne Hore) had to make room in his house for Fairfax’s headquarters when the parliamentary forces laid siege to Oxford. Oliver Cromwell visited the house, and it was used for the meeting of the commissioners from the two sides when Oxford surrendered
AD 1653		The surviving registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials of the Church of St Nicholas in Marston date from this time (except for marriages between 1753 and 1814)
AD 1661		Marston was granted 90 acres of land in compensation for its lost rights resulting from the disafforestation of Shotover and Stow Wood, then gift of fuel and then money (Forest Coal), dispensed by church wardens until 1960s.
AD 1691		Hill Farm, Marston built
AD 1730		About this time Marston became “a village where no one lived who pretended to the rank of gentleman” (Victoria County History)
AD 1801		First census. Marston had 45 dwelling-houses and a population of 264. Six pauper families were accommodated in Unton Croke’s old house
AD 1815		The Revd Jack Russell bought a bitch in Marston which he regarded as the perfect fox terrier
AD 1816		Evidence of a privately owned school for 20 children existing in Marston
AD 1830		Marston village cross was taken down and the material used for mending the roads, and the churchyard cross was taken down and used to mend the church wall
AD 1831		Population of Marston: 364
AD 1851		St Nicholas’s Church School for 145 children of all ages opens in Marston, with running costs borne by the Vicar (Canon Gordon) and that National Society
AD 1841		Population of Marston: 396
AD 1868		Boundary of Oxford parliamentary boundary extended to include 24 acres of Marston
AD 1871		Population of Marston 881. First evidence of nonconformity in the area, when Congregationalists established a mission hall called the Workman’s Hall (later used as the British Legion Hall)
AD 1877		First house built in New Marston village (William Street)
AD 1885		Marston was added to the area supplied with water by Oxford Corporation
AD 1888		A mission church (formerly two cottages) was opened on the Marston Road to serve the growing population of New Marston
AD 1911		A Chapel of ease of the Church of St Nicholas in Old Marston was built in Ferry Road
AD 1920		Marston was connected to the city sewage system
AD 1927		New Marston Church of England Primary School opened in temporary premises, moving the following year to a permanent building on land presented by Mrs G.H. Morrell
AD 1929		New Marston (216 acres) was taken into the Oxford city boundary
AD 1932		Construction of Northern by-pass brings first road of importance to run through Marston
AD 1938		Oxford City Corporation had built 165 homes in New Marston by this year
AD 1939		Milham Ford School moved from Cowley Place to the Marston Road
AD 1940		West Ham School was evacuated from London to New Marston
AD 1940		Main Road, New Marston, was renamed Marston Road and renumbered to follow on with the numbering of Marston Road, St Clement’s
AD 1948		New Marston Junior Mixed & Infant School opened in Copse Lane
AD 1950		Another 70 council houses were built in New Marston from this year
AD 1954		St Nicholas County Primary School opened in a new building, and the old church school of St Nicholas became the village hall
AD 1955		The Church of St Michael and All Angels on the Marston Road was consecrated as a chapel of ease to St Andrew’s Church in Old Headington, and New Marston Church of England School was renamed St Michael’s.
AD 1956		Brasenose College sold Court Place 1956 and Colthorne (Grange) Farm when the Marston Ferry Road was built in 1972 as it was no longer economically viable. the also owned land behind Brasenose Cottages.
AD 1963		The Church of St Michael and All Angels became the centre of a new parish taken from the old parishes of Marston, Headington, and St Clement’s
AD 1971		Marston Ferry Road opened, providing the first road-bridge between Marston and North Oxford
AD 2003		Completion of a return to a two-tier system of education: Marston Middle School and Milham Ford Girls’ School closed down
AD 2005		Oxford Brookes University School of Health and Social Care opened on the former Milham Ford site on the Marston Road