Banbury · Oxfordshire · England
Banbury, Oxfordshire
The Oxfordshire market town nearest the Eesleys' last English parish at Hanwell — the town the family would have known as the market and trade center of their corner of the county before John Eesley moved the household across into Old Stratford. Photographed by Chuck and Lijie on the 2018 England research trip alongside the Stratford and Hanwell stops.
Why this place matters
Banbury is the practical anchor of the Hanwell side of the Eesley line. Hanwell parish — the source the Oxford library volunteer recovered the line back to Joseph Eesley and Frances Ayris from — sits four miles west of Banbury. Any market the Hanwell Eesleys traded at, any goods that came in, the parish business they had with the wider county all converged here. The 2018 photographs document Banbury Cross, the equestrian *Fine Lady upon a White Horse* statue from the nursery rhyme, St Mary's Banbury, and the historic Church House — the town as it stands now, in the same county landscape the family left from in the 19th century.
Across generations
 and the [Old Stratford Rother Street](/places/old-stratford-rother-street/) photograph. Banbury was the family's nearest market town to the Hanwell parish where Joseph Eesley and Frances Ayris had founded the documented line two centuries earlier.](/_astro/IMG_3556.BSkRNjoE_Z1LfAp1.webp)
 and the [Old Stratford Rother Street](/places/old-stratford-rother-street/) photograph. Banbury was the family's nearest market town to the Hanwell parish where Joseph Eesley and Frances Ayris had founded the documented line two centuries earlier.](/_astro/IMG_3557.DKALzzW4_ZqSfDP.webp)
 and the [Old Stratford Rother Street](/places/old-stratford-rother-street/) photograph. Banbury was the family's nearest market town to the Hanwell parish where Joseph Eesley and Frances Ayris had founded the documented line two centuries earlier.](/_astro/IMG_3559.Br5B5rCk_1tBJ5b.webp)
 and the [Old Stratford Rother Street](/places/old-stratford-rother-street/) photograph. Banbury was the family's nearest market town to the Hanwell parish where Joseph Eesley and Frances Ayris had founded the documented line two centuries earlier.](/_astro/IMG_3560.CIfkYKmG_Z2h8S0.webp)
 and the [Old Stratford Rother Street](/places/old-stratford-rother-street/) photograph. Banbury was the family's nearest market town to the Hanwell parish where Joseph Eesley and Frances Ayris had founded the documented line two centuries earlier.](/_astro/IMG_3565.D8yMW53v_Zj4Ss7.webp)
 and the [Old Stratford Rother Street](/places/old-stratford-rother-street/) photograph. Banbury was the family's nearest market town to the Hanwell parish where Joseph Eesley and Frances Ayris had founded the documented line two centuries earlier.](/_astro/IMG_3571.BcA1SMm3_Z233Rqo.webp)
 and the [Old Stratford Rother Street](/places/old-stratford-rother-street/) photograph. Banbury was the family's nearest market town to the Hanwell parish where Joseph Eesley and Frances Ayris had founded the documented line two centuries earlier.](/_astro/IMG_3572.BtgZKB4S_V5KTb.webp)
Chuck and Lijie at Banbury on the same England research trip that produced the [Oxford library line back to Joseph Eesley](/docs/eesley-line-research-notes/) and the [Old Stratford Rother Street](/places/old-stratford-rother-street/) photograph. Banbury was the family's nearest market town to the Hanwell parish where Joseph Eesley and Frances Ayris had founded the documented line two centuries earlier.
Alignment: No earlier family photographs of Banbury are in the archive; Chuck and Lijie's 2018 frames are the first.
Banbury sits in northern Oxfordshire, about four miles east of Hanwell — the parish from which the volunteer at the Oxford public library worked back the Eesley line to Joseph Eesley and Frances Ayris in the early 18th century. For the Eesleys at Hanwell, Banbury would have been the obvious market town: where you took grain, sold flour, bought what the household couldn’t grow, attended the wider parish and county business. By the time John Eesley (b. 1800) moved the family across the county line into Old Stratford some time before the 1851 census, Banbury had been the family’s center of trade for generations.
The frames Chuck and Lijie made
On the 2018 trip the two of them did the photographic walk through Banbury that the present-day family had not yet done:
- The famous Banbury Cross — the Victorian replacement (1859) for the original medieval and 17th-century crosses long demolished — with the equestrian Fine Lady upon a White Horse statue (added 2005) directly beside it. The cross is the rhyme: “Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross / To see a fine lady upon a white horse.” Three of Chuck and Lijie’s frames are of the cross and the statue.
- St Mary’s Banbury — the early-19th-century parish church on Horse Fair, with its distinctive cylindrical Georgian tower; rebuilt 1790–1797 to a design by S. P. Cockerell after the medieval church was demolished. Three of the frames are of the church tower and the porch.
- The “A Brief History of the Church House” historical sign on the Banbury Civic Society’s plaque, which Chuck framed as evidence of the same family research context the Old Stratford photograph was made in.
- A frame at the People’s Park signpost in the town center.
Further reading
- Banbury (Wikipedia) — town history, the Cross, the rhyme, St Mary’s.
- St Mary’s Church, Banbury (Wikipedia) — the cylindrical Georgian tower and Cockerell’s 1797 rebuild.
- Hanwell, Oxfordshire (Wikipedia) — the Eesley parish four miles west of Banbury.
- The Eesley line research notes (Oxford library, 2018) — the document set this Banbury visit was the field-photography for.