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Marston history: Timeline

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Marston, Oxfordshire: Timeline


BC

There have been two palaeolithic finds in Marston, but the Romans do not appear to have had a settlement there

1086

Domesday Book: Marston (then a hamlet of Headington) was too small to be mentioned

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

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

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.
John de Molendino held a mill at Marston. (Hundred Rolls)

1349

An acre of the lot meadows of Marston was given to Oriel College

1451

The benefices of Headington and Marston were united by a papal bull, as the two parishes were too poor to maintain two vicars

1458

Marston’s King’s Mill Meadows (42 acres) passed from the Hospital of St John to the newly-founded Magdalen College

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

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

1529

Corpus Christi College acquired two half-yardlands and one quarter in Marston

1605

The amount of arable land in the parish of Marston amounted to c.600 acres, or nearly half the whole area

1637

A Vicar was instituted in Marston on the representation of the Crown, and Marston returned to being a separate parish from Headington

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

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)

1661

Marston was granted 90 acres of land in compensation for its lost rights resulting from the disafforestation of Shotover and Stow Wood

1730

About this time Marston became “a village where no one lived who pretended to the rank of gentleman” (Victoria County History)

1801

First census. Marston had 45 dwelling-houses and a population of 264. Six pauper families were accommodated in Unton Croke’s old house

1815

The undergraduate Jack Russell bought a bitch in Marston which he regarded as the perfect fox terrier, from which he bred the Jack Russell breed

1816

Evidence of a privately owned school for 20 children existing in Marston

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

1831

Population of Marston: 364

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 the National Society

1841

Population of Marston: 396

1868

Boundary of Oxford parliamentary boundary extended to include 24 acres of Marston

1870

Mark Rippington sold field on east side of the Marston Road for £1,300 to the Oxford Industrial and Provident Land and Building Society. The land was divided into 103 lots fronting Marston Road and a new street (William Street)

1871

Population of Marston 881.

1872

The Industrial and Provident Land and Building Society purchased a 67-acre field on the west side on the Marston Road providing another 70 lots with 24-foot frontages, and two roads which were later to become Ferry Road and Edgeway Road were run through them

1878/9

First evidence of nonconformity in the area, when John Chillingworth, a local farmer and devout non-conformist, gave a building in the village called the Workmen's Hall (later used as the British Legion Hall)

1885

Marston was added to the area supplied with water by Oxford Corporation

1888

A mission church (formerly two cottages) was opened on the Marston Road to serve the growing population of New Marston, which now had 82 houses

1911

A Chapel of ease of the Church of St Nicholas in Old Marston was built in Ferry Road

1920

Marston was connected to the city sewage system

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

1929

New Marston (216 acres) was taken into the Oxford city boundary

1932–5

Construction of Northern by-pass, cutting through Old Marston, bisecting Mill Lane and Hill Farm

1935

The original “musical” streets of New Marston (Croft Road, Heather Place, Taverner Road, and Stainer Place) were built

1938

Oxford City Corporation had built 165 homes in New Marston by this year

1939

Milham Ford School moved from Cowley Place to the Marston Road

1940

West Ham School was evacuated from London to New Marston

1940

Main Road, New Marston, was renamed Marston Road and renumbered to follow on with the numbering of Marston Road, St Clement’s

1948

New Marston Junior Mixed & Infant School opened in Copse Lane

1950

Another 70 council houses were built in New Marston from this year

1954

St Nicholas County Primary School opened in a new building, and the old church school of St Nicholas became the village hall

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

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

1970

Marston Flyover created

1971

Marston Ferry Road opened, running through Old Marston and providing the first road-bridge between Marston and North Oxford

1991

Old Marston was taken into the City of Oxford
Cycle track created from New Marston through the University Parks

2003

Completion of a return to a two-tier system of education: Marston Middle School and Milham Ford Girls’ School closed down

2005

Oxford Brookes University School of Health and Social Care opened on the former Milham Ford site on the Marston Road

2010

Russian Orthodox Church of St Nicholas the Wonderworker was consecrated in Ferry Road (9 October)

© Stephanie Jenkins

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