Early History

An ancient trackway linked south-western England with the region around Lincoln and York. It avoided the swamps and forests of the great Midland plain by running along the ridge of high ground of which the Cotswolds form the middle part. Four miles south of Sibford, close to Hook Norton, it divided. One branch went north-east passing just south of the Sibford parishes, by way of Tadmarton Camp (Wigginton Heath) to cross the Cherwell near Banbury. The other struck north, over Oatley Hill, through Traitor’s Ford, continuing up from there along the farm-track which is now the Oxfordshire-Warwickshire county boundary and Sibford Gower’s eastern boundary, and along the top of the Edgehill scarp.

The two Sibfords, and the hamlet of Burdrop, stand on hill tops, close to the line of springs which feed into the River Stour and ultimately the River Severn. This was natural siting in times when men and women lived behind barricades, fearful of wild beasts and marauding tribes emerging from the surrounding forests. Flint arrow-heads have been found south-west of Sibford Grounds Farm and near The Colony at Sibford Gower.