Prescote's toponym probably means "priest's cottage", referring to a cottage either owned by a priest or more likely inhabited by one.[2] Legend associates Prescote with Saint Fremund, a Mercian prince held to have been martyred in the 9th century AD.[2]
The manor of Prescote is not listed in the Domesday Book of 1086, but had appeared by 1208-09, when the Bishop of Lincoln was the feudal overlord.[2] Prescote comprised two manors that were held separately until 1417-1419, when John Danvers (died 1449) of Calthorpe, Oxfordshire, acquired both of them.[2] In 1796, his descendant Sir Michael Danvers, 5th Baronet (1738–1776) died without a male heir and left Prescote to his son-in-law Augustus Richard Butler.[2] In 1798, Butler sold the estate to the Pares family, who in 1867 sold it to Samuel Jones-Loyd, 1st Baron Overstone.[2] In 1883, Baron Overstone died without a male heir and left his estates to his daughter, Harriet, Lady Wantage.[2] On her death in 1920, Prescote was sold to A.P. McDougall,[2] whose Midland Marts company opened a cattle stockyard in 1921 beside Banbury Merton Street railway station. By 1964, Prescote belonged to Anne Crossman, the wife of Richard Crossman M.P., a descendant of the Danvers family.[2]
Prescote manor house has traces of a mediaeval moat, but a date-stone over the door of the present house indicates that it was built in 1691 by Sir Pope Danvers, 2nd Baronet (1644–1712).[3] The house was extended early in the 19th century.[2] The house at Prescote Manor Farm, about 0.5 miles (800 m) northeast of the Manor House, is dated 1693.[3]
Prescote had a mill on the River Cherwell, called Boltysmylle in 1482 and Boltes Mill in 1613.[2] By 1654, there was a "Prescote Mill", which may be the same as the earlier Boltes Mill.[2] By 1703, the mill was in disrepair but its remains were still recorded as extant in 1797-98 and 1823.[2] Today only its mill stream survives.[2] The mill's decline may be linked with the manor's transition from arable to sheep farming. In 1547, a Danvers leased land at Prescote to a shepherd, and in 1797 it was reported that most of the 385 acres (156 ha) of the farm attached to Prescote Manor was "old inclosed" pasture.[2]
Colvin, Christina; Cooper, Janet; Cooper, N.H.; Harvey, P.D.A.; Hollings, Marjory; Hook, Judith; Jessup, Mary; Lobel, Mary D.; Mason, J.F.A.; Trinder, B.S.; Turner, Hilary (1972). Crossley, Alan (ed.). A History of the County of Oxford, Volume 10: Banbury Hundred. Victoria County History. pp. 206–210. ISBN978-0-19-722728-2.
