Lady Day is celebrated on the 25 March each year – exactly nine months before Christmas Day, to commemorate the Feast of the Annunciation when the Angel Gabriel visited Mary to tell her she had been blessed and chosen by God to conceive and give birth to His Son. 

Lady Day was also the traditional day on which year-long caontracts between landownersd and tenant farmers would begin and end in England (although there were regional variations). Farmers’ time of “entry” into new farms and onto new fields was often on this day and farming families who were changing farms would travel from the old farm to the new one on Lady Day. Prior to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar by Britain in 1752 it was also known as the beginning of each New Year. Lady Day was the first of the Quarter Days when rent became due to their landlords by tenant farmers, servants were hired and school terms started. The Quarter Days were approximately 3 months apart and were close to the two solstices and equinoxes. Accounts had to be settled and unresolved law suits and debts were not allowed to linger on. 

In medieval times the Cistercian Monks at Holwell Grange in Swalcliffe (now known as The Old Grange) held land adjacent to that owned by the Knights Templar in Sibford. Frequent disputes arose between the two Orders as to the cultivation of their lands. On Lady Day in 1242 an agreement was signed between the Abbot and convent of Bruern and the brothers of the Knights of the Temple at Jerusalem. The monks stated that they would either cultivate their land between Holwell Grange and the eastern field at Sibford or let it lie fallow simultaneously with the Templars. This agreement ended the often-aggressive disputes between the two Orders.