Aynho (St. Michael)

AYNHO (St. Michael), a parish, and formerly a market-town, in the union of Brackley, hundred of King's Sutton, S. division of the county of Northampton, 2¾ miles (E. by N.) from Deddington; containing 662 inhabitants. The parish occupies the southwestern extremity of the county, on the borders of Oxfordshire, which bounds it on the west and south; it comprises 2219a. 1r. of rich and highly productive land. The road from Buckingham to Deddington, as well as the Oxford canal, intersects it. The village, which is of considerable extent, is situated on a rocky eminence, from whose base issues a copious spring called the "Town Well." A charter was obtained in the 17th of Edward II., for a weekly market and a fair annually at Michaelmas; but both have long since been discontinued. The living is a rectory, valued in the king's books at £25. 5. 5.; net income, £500; patron, W. R. Cartwright, Esq. The church has a fine tower of the 14th century: the body of the building was taken down in 1723, and rebuilt in the tasteless manner of the period. A free school was founded by Mrs. Mary Cartwright, in 1671, and endowed with a rent-charge of £20. Here was anciently an hospital dedicated to St. John and St. James, founded about the time of Henry II., and in 1484 united to Magdalene College, Oxford, by gift of the patron, William Fitz-Alan. The Roman Portway, a vicinal road, ran through the parish, and is visible at the eastern end of the village. Shakerley Marmion, a dramatic writer, was born at the manor-house in 1602; and Robert Wild, a Presbyterian minister, and a poet and satirist, held the living during the Commonwealth.