The Bampton WI Drama Group under Hilda Pickard put on many plays and pantomimes which were always brilliantly done and greatly enjoyed.

This obituary was in The Guardian newspaper January 13th 2009. Francis was born on January 31st 1919 and died on November 27th 2009. The article was written by Derek Schofield.

Photograph showing the service and crowds taking part in the inauguration of the War Memorial in 1920

Sam Bennett born (1865-1951) from Ilmington, a frequent dancer and musician in Bampton, this photo dated 1920
Sam had the distinction of being called “a rotter” by Cecil Sharp. He was responsible for reviving the Morris tradition in the Warwickshire village of Ilmington. Although a fiddle player himself, he learned the tunes from a local pipe and tabor player, Tom Foster, who “no longer had enough teeth to hold the pipe in place” In the process of reviving the dances, Bennett did some improving and inventing along the way. To Sharp, this was inexcusable meddling; what he most treasured about traditional dance was that is was supposedly not the work of individual creativity, but of centuries of continuous evolution by the common, preferably uneducated people. Bennett was recorded in 1933 by a Harvard academic, James Madison Carpenter. Being a self-taught fiddler, and having learned his tunes directly from a piper, it is little wonder that his playing, though very rhythmic, was plain and unadorned except with frequent open-string drones.

Photo of Billy Dewe with another Morris Dancer possibly standing outside a cottage in Lavender Square

Grace Glanville talks about her time working as a maid at Weald Manor in the 1920s

The map was produced in 1921. The first map is has been reused to show where council houses were to be built on the south side of New Road and where the sewerage pipes were to be laid to the sewerage works along the Buckland Road.

Mains sewerage came to Bampton in 1958 after a long struggle and at a cost of £105,000. Miss Marjorie Pollard was the driving force but in the end, it was the death of Horace Morse who emptied the 'night soil' buckets twice a week which made it imperative. Jack Bellinger was the first manager of the sewerage works.

3 Large ordnance Survey Maps used by Hadgood and Mammatt Auctioneers and Estate Agents from Witney. Published in 1921 price £5/- and £6/8d. Points of interest are Highmoor Brook, Plantation, Ham Court, Deanery Farm, Churchgate, Vicarage, Manor House, and Weald Manor House, old gravel pit and Beam Cottage, Calais Farm, Primrose Cottages, Fisher's Bridge

Newspaper cutting 'Anglers News' June 1921

This map of 1921 covers the area from Plantation south to Cowleaze Corner and east as far as the Elephant and Castle.

What was a watercourse off the Highmoor Brook to land with The Deanery can be clearly seen and was used for fish farming.

Cobb House is the only vicarage by now, the other two houses of the three-portion being in private hands, one Churchgate house the other now called Kilmore House.

Glebelands houses were not yet built, they didn't come until the 1960s.

The lake with Weald Manor House to its left used to freeze over and the owners of the Manor House used to invite locals to skate on it. Mr & Mrs Colvile lent the field to the west of the lake to the local football club but as it wasn't large enough for the side to play in a certain league, they had to find a new home and for a while used a field at the east end of New Road.