f Banbury," have also been freely used. In order to avoid
burdening the pages with foot notes, a catalogue of works upon the subject
is printed as an appendix, and the letters and numbers throughout the text
refer thereto. The catalogue, it is hoped, may be of use to the future
student. The plans of the battle, based upon Nugent's account, must be
looked upon as merely diagrammatic, the scale being unavoidably distorted
for the purpose of showing the conjectured positions of the troops. In the
plans it may be worth note that the troops then known as "dragooners" are
classed with the infantry.

The "Notes on Banbury and Thereabouts" are in part reproduced from a small
pamphlet published in 1879. Much of the detail relating to the older
buildings has been derived from Skelton's "Antiquities of Oxfordshire" and
Parker's descriptions in Beesley's History.

To Mr. W. L. Whitehorn my thanks are due for aid in the revision of "Edge
Hill," and in the compilation of the "Notes."

EDWIN A. WALFORD.

_Banbury,

July 7th, 1886._

EDGE HILL: THE BATTLE AND BATTLEFIELD.

I.

To Edge Hill from Banbury a good road trends gradually up hill nearly the
whole way. It rises from the 300 foot level of the Cherwell Vale to 720 at
the highest ground of the ridge of the hill. At a distance of eight miles
to the North-West is the edge or escarpment of high ground bounded on the
East side by the vale of a tributary of the Cherwell, and on the North and
West by the plain drained by the tributaries of the Avon. From Warmington,
six miles from Banbury, North-Westwards to the point marked on the
Ordnance Map as Knowle End, and thence South-Westwards to the Sun Rising,
once the site of a hostelry on the Banbury and Stratford-on-Avon coach
road, the edge makes a right angle with the apex at Knowle End. The
nearest point of the hill range is at Warmington, where a fine fourteenth
century Church stands high above the rock of the roadway. There is the
first record of the battle--a simple headstone to the right of the path to
the South porch telling how one Captain Alexander Gourdin had died on
October 24th, 1642, the day after the fight. From the church-yard long
flights of steps lead to the roadway and village below, where the house
tops show through the foliage of the apple orchards in which they are
partly hidden. Across the vale, three miles to the North, is the range of
the Burton Dassett Hills, an outlier of the Edge Hill range. The