COTTISFORD

Cottisford is known today for its association with the novelist Flora Thompson who attended the village school and church in the 19th century. Cottisford today has a dozen or so houses, two manor houses and a small parish church, St. Mary the Virgin.

Manor Farm is a 14th century manor house built of rubble masonry. Surviving 14th century details include two windows and an octagonal chimneystack. The house has a solar and originally had a mediaeval hall, but in the 16th century an intermediate floor was inserted to create upstairs rooms. The house is a Grade I listed building.

The other manor house is Cottisford House which was built before 1707. The house was altered and enlarged in about 1830. In its grounds is a square dovecote.

The parish church, the Grade II* listed St. Mary's, is a small building with only a nave, chancel and south porch. It has been suggested that parts of the building may be Saxon as it has proportions like those of a Saxon church: long and narrow, and taller than it is wide. The quoins at all four corners of the building are like Saxon quoins in many other buildings. But they are not laid in the strict long-and-short alternation diagnostic of Saxon work. The church was rebuilt in the 13th century. In the churchyard are the base and shaft of a mediaeval stone cross. Full details about St. Mary's Church can be found here.

Flora Thompson spent her childhood in the nearby hamlet of Juniper Hill and in Cottisford where she was at school. In her trilogy Lark Rise to Candleford she recalls her childhood in Juniper Hill (Lark Rise) and at school in Cottisford (Fordlow). There is a plaque commemorating Flora Thompson in the church.

Cottisford is close to the county boundary with Northamptonshire, about 3.5 miles south of Brackley.