Burdrop


Burdrop is a village in Sibford Gower civil parish, about west of Banbury in Oxfordshire, England. Burdrop is contiguous with Sibford Gower and sometimes considered part of the village.
Burdrop's toponym means the "hamlet near the burh", which implies it was near a fortified settlement.

Parish church

Burdrop was part of the parish of Swalcliffe until 1841, when a new ecclesiastical parish of Sibford Gower, with Sibford Ferris and Burdrop was created. The Church of England parish church of the Holy Trinity was built in 1840 to plans by the architect H.J. Underwood. It is a cruciform Gothic Revival building that emulates an Early English Gothic style. The porch was designed by W.E. Mills and added in 1897.

Public houses

In 1782 Burdrop was recorded as having two pubs: the Old Inn and the Wykeham Arms. The earliest known record of the Bishop Blaize Inn dates from 1816. Its namesake is Saint Blaise, an early 4th-century Armenian bishop who is the patron saint of wool-combers.
By the 21st century the Bishop Blaize Inn was the only pub in Burdrop still trading as such. It changed hands in 2006 and has been closed since 2007. Its owners then applied seven times for planning permission to convert the pub into a house, but Cherwell District Council declined all the applications. In 2014 the owners were convicted of having used the pub solely as a house without planning permission for three months in 2013, and were ordered to pay £17,000 court costs.