Islip () is a village and civil parish on the River Ray, just above its confluence with the River Cherwell in Oxfordshire, England. It is about east of Kidlington and about north of Oxford. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 652.

Archaeology

The remains of a Romano-British villa have been found about southwest of the village. Attempts to locate the royal residence that served as the birth place of Edward the Confessor have so far proved unsuccessful.

Parish church

Edward the Confessor (born circa 1004, died 1066) was born in Islip and was baptised in a church here, with the font now residing in Middleton Stoney. Parts of the present church date from about 1200. The chancel was rebuilt in 1780 and the church was restored in 1861. The church is Islip's only Grade I Listed Building. The belltower has a fine ring of eight bells, with the tenor weighing 8-1-7 in G. There is little information about the bells before 1859, when they were recast as a 9cwt ring of 6 by George Mears, with an additional treble and second being added in 1952 by Mears and Stainbank to complete the octave. They were re-tuned by Whitechapel and re-hung by Whites of Appleton in 1992. They are rung by a wonderful and highly skilled band both for Tuesday practices and Sunday services. Since 1987 the Church of England parish has been part of the Ray Valley Benefice. A chapel associated with Edward the Confessor existed north of the church. The chapel was damaged in April 1645 in a military engagement in the English Civil War, and in the 1780s it was demolished. The former rectory was built in 1689 for Robert South and enlarged in 1807 for William Vincent. It is one of several Grade II* Listed Buildings in Islip.

Economic and social history

thumb|279px|View of Islip from the south, published in 1823 in [[John Dunkin's Oxfordshire. The History & Antiquities of the Hundreds of Bullington & Ploughley. It shows the four-arch bridge over the River Ray that in 1878 was demolished and replaced by the present three-arched one.]]

The Domesday Book of 1086 recorded a watermill at Islip. When the Domesday Book was compiled, Islip's common fields system was on the north side of the River Ray. At some time before 1300, Islip's villagers assarted (cleared) about of uncultivated land south of the River Ray and east of the River Cherwell This system had been reinstated by the harvest of 1357 and was probably stopped in Islip in 1386. Sir William Fermor was Steward of the Manor of Islip in March 1540. His brother Richard Fermor was a wool merchant. The Fermor family had its seat at Somerton, Oxfordshire and had a number of estates in the northern part of the county.

The medieval road linking London and Worcester crossed the Ray at Islip. The original crossing was a ford but was later supplemented by a bridge.

A number of houses in the village bear the names of its numerous coaching inns. The Plume of Feathers, also called the Prince's Arms, was built around 1780 reputedly from materials from the demolished Confessor's Chapel.

Culture

A mummers play, dating from 1780, has been linked to Islip. Mummery continued in Islip until at least 1894 with a play depicting a girl called Molly who fell ill with toothache only to find, on extraction, that a nail was causing her the pain. There is another play featuring Fat Jack, a comic servant. The Shakespearean scholar and collector of English nursery rhymes and fairy tales James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps lived in Islip in the 1840s. Early in the 1920s Robert Graves and Nancy Nicholson lived here, and Graves describes their life in the village in Goodbye to All That. In 2014 the Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Board unveiled a blue plaque to Graves on the house that he and Nicholson shared in Collice Street. The rock band the Candyskins had its origins in Islip in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Amenities

Islip has one public house, The Swan; the other pub, the Red Lion, closed in February 2024. It also has a community shop and a village hall.

thumb|Charlton Services bus on route 94 at its terminus outside [[Balliol College, Oxford]]

Buses

Charlton-on-Otmoor Services bus route 94 links Islip with Oxford via Gosford. There is a limited service from Monday to Friday only. Stagecoach in Oxfordshire route H5 links Islip with the John Radcliffe Hospital via Barton, and with Bicester via Ambrosden. Buses run hourly from Monday to Saturday. Islip has no bus service on Sunday or on public holidays.

Notable residents

  • Edward the Confessor, King of England, was born in Islip about 1004.
  • William Buckland (1784–1856), an English theologian, geologist and palaeontologist who was the first scientist to name and describe a dinosaur species in 1824 (Megalosaurus) and who had been Dean of Westminster as of 1845, died in Islip on 14 August 1856.
  • James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps (1820–1889), English Shakespearean scholar, antiquarian, and a collector of English nursery rhymes and fairy tales, lived in Islip in the 1840s.
  • Gilbert Ryle, a British philosopher (1900–76) lived in Islip with his twin sister Mary and her daughter Janet.
  • Karl Leyser (1920–1992) and his wife Henrietta Leyser, historians at Oxford university, made their home in Islip.

Climate

This area has a maritime temperate climate ("Cfb" by the Köppen system). Precipitation is uniformly distributed throughout the year and is provided mostly by weather systems that arrive from the Atlantic. The lowest temperature ever recorded was in January 1982. The highest temperature ever recorded in Oxford is in August 2003 during the 2003 European heat wave. The average conditions below are from the Radcliffe Meteorological Station. It has the longest series of temperature and rainfall records for one site in Britain. These records are continuous from January 1815. Irregular observations of rainfall, cloud and temperature exist from 1767.

References

Bibliography

  • Islip Village Oxfordshire
  • – 30-minute video history of Islip