Enstone, Oxfordshire

Description
Enstone, a parish in Oxfordshire, on an affluent of the river Isis, 3 1/2 miles N from the Charlbury station on the G.W.R., and 4 1/2 ESE from Chipping-Norton. It contains the hamlets of Church-Enstone, Neat-Enstone, Lidstone, Cleveley, Chalford, Radford, and Gagingwell, and has a head post office. Acreage, 6245; population, 1144. The name Enstone alludes to the Entastan or Giant's stone, an upright block nearly 11 feet high, now commonly called the Hoarstone, formerly part of a cromlech, other stones of which are still near. Lidstone hamlet takes its name from a similar stone. Celebrated waterworks were established at Neat-Enstone by Thomas Bushell, secretary to Lord Bacon, were visited in 1636 in a pompous manner by Charles I., and are noticed as follows by Evelyn in 1644 : - " I went to see the famous wells, artificial and natural grotto, and fountains, or Bushell's Wells. It is an extraordinary solitude. There be here two mummies and a grotto, where he lay in a ham-mocklikean Indian." The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford; net value, £209 with residence, in the gift of Viscount Dillon. The church was formerly attached to Winchcombe Abbey, is traditionally associated with the memory of St Kenelm, son of Kenulphus, king of Mercia, and has some good transition Norman arches. There is a Baptist chapel at Cleveley, a Primitive Methodist chapel at Lidstone, a Wesleyan chapel at Neat-Enstone, and a Roman Catholic chapel with an orphanage at Radford.