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Rambles round the Edge hills and in the vale of the Red horse
Rambles round the Edge hills and in the vale of the Red horse Author:George Miller Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III RADWAY AND RADWAY TOWER THE accounts of the parishes are arranged in two divisions, the outer and the inner circle. The inner circle, starting ... more »from Radway Tower and village, proceeds eastward, and describes the parishes of Ratley, Shotteswell, Farn- borough, and Mollington, the Dassetts, Kine- ton, Tysoe, and Compton Wyniattes. The outer circle begins with Fenny Compton, and takes in Gaydon, Chadshunt, Compton Verney, Combroke, Butler's Marston, The Pillertons, Oxhill, Whatcote, Idlecote, and Shenington. THE INNER CIRCLE. The village of Radway, surmounted by the Radway Tower, which forms the most conspicuous feature in the surrounding landscape, demands our attention first among the townships in the neighbourhood. The name Radway, formerly spelt Radweii, Radweia, Rodeway, is probably derived from rad, a cart or chariot, and weia, a road, orfrom rod, red. In the times of the Saxons this village belonged to the church of Coventry and Earl Richard, the property of the latter, after the Norman Conquest, passing to Richard Forestarius. Earl Alberic, too, held lands herein. The value of the manor was before the Conquest ,£3, afterwards 95s. There were six hides of land in the parish, and the arable land was considerable, amounting to twelve ploughs—that is, as much as would employ twelve teams of oxen in the year. The meadow-land was reckoned at only twenty-five acres, the rest being open common and woodland. Three ploughs of land were in the hands of the landowners. The population consisted of twenty villeins, eight labourers, and five bondsmen, the thirty-three families forming a population of about 157 inhabitants. The population was in 1666, 206; in 1730, 204, with twenty teams kept in the parish. Those were the days of small farms, when there were a nu...« less