The Municipal School buildings adjoin the Institute, and are also in part a gift to the town by the Right Hon. Sir Bernhard Samuelson (Parliamentary representative of Banbury for 30 years). It is also a School of Science and Art, with well equipped rooms for art study, and with good laboratories and class rooms. The School of Science and Art was a continuation of science and art classes which were among the earliest started in the kingdom (1861). It shows a good record of work. The buildings are well proportioned, and the doorways of the local (Hornton) stone are bold, and have good mouldings.

The Town Hall.—The old Hall stood on the open space in the Market Place in front of the Exchange Hall. It was a plain brick building, standing on arcading, forming a Market Hall on the ground floor, and it has been re-erected in Cherwell Street as a warehouse. The first Hall was built in Queen Mary’s reign, 1556. The Hall of to-day, built in 1853, was enlarged in 1892. Portraits of Mr. Tancred, the late High Steward (Lord Saye and Sele), and Aldermen Draper and Barford are hung in the Court Room. Formerly a good painting by Hayn had a place there.

The Horton Infirmary, presented to the town by the late Miss Horton, of Middleton Cheney, and her nephew, J. H. Horton, Esq., is on the Oxford Road. Two Corn Exchanges existed in the Corn Hill and Market Place; one has become an Inn with covered court yard, the other is used as a Theatre but is also used for corn sales on Thursdays; Christ Church, St. John’s Priory and Church, the Wesleyan Chapels, and the various other denominational places of worship, do not admit of full description.

BROUGHTON CASTLE, the old seat of Lord Saye and Sele, now the residence of Lord Algernon Gordon Lennox, is about two and a half miles to the westward of Banbury. The older parts are at the east end, and comprise a chapel, several small rooms and groined passages, and an embattled and loopholed tower, all of early decorated or 14th century work. The chapel contains a geometrical window and stone altar. Both north and south fronts, together with a wooden inner lobby at the entrance to the drawing room, are figured in Skelton’s “Antiquities of Oxfordshire.” The north front, of the date 1544, is best seen from the meadow adjoining the Broughton Road. In the hall, dining and drawing rooms, are rich plaster ceilings of a half century later. The moat, which still encircles the castle grounds, is spanned by a modern bridge with a turretted gatehouse of early 15th century work. The outbuildings on the east side of the gatehouse are of contemporaneous date. The embattled wall on the west side is part of the original castle, and belongs to an early part of the 14th century. In the hall are portraits of Charles I. and Cromwell, by Dobson, and in other parts of the building works by Westall, Dorcy, and Gainsborough. A large historical painting of Lord Saye before Jack Cade (Shakespeare’s King Henry VI., pt. 2, sc. 7) formerly hung at the end of the drawing room. After the Edge Hill fight, Banbury surrendered to the Royalists, who attacked Broughton on the following day. The Castle, with wool-sacked windows, stood siege for a day, and then it is said to have been taken by Prince Rupert. There is little or no evidence to show the phases of the fight, but when it is remembered that the Fiennes’ in the vale of the Red Horse were within an hour’s ride, and that Ramsay and some of his troops found a way to Banbury on the Sunday, it would point to the probability of fierce defence. Bretch Cave, on the Banbury Road, has the common repute of being a secret passage to the Castle, and perhaps some sally port of the kind may have a tale to tell.

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BROUGHTON CASTLE.

The two paper mills on the borders of the Broughton estate, the Woad Mill and the Fulling Mill, together with the settlements of the plush and other weavers near by, point to surroundings of industry connected, it must be believed, with the old house.

Broughton Church (St. Mary’s) is a beautiful church of good Early English work with a broach spire. The nave is on the north side of the church; the south aisle appears to end as a chapelry. As a place of sepulture of so many of the Fiennes’ family, it is enriched by their tombs and those of others of the house. The tomb of John de Broughton (circa 1306) is in a richly decorated and canopied niche in the south wall. The high corner tomb is that of Edward Fiennes (1528) and that near by with the effigy of the Knight is believed to be of the father, Richard Fiennes (1501). In the chancel are the rich alabaster effigies of Sir Thomas Wykham and wife (circa 1441), and also plain tombs of Wm. Viscount Saye and Sele and wife (dated 1642-1648).[7] The stone chancel screen with incised diaper ornament, and the exceedingly well proportioned windows, place the good work of the church amongst the typical gothic of the country side: especially to be noticed are the geometrical tracery of the east window of the south aisle; the south window with later perpendicular shafting; the south chancel window and the square-headed early English windows of the south wall. There is a finely crocketed ogee west door and plain south porch.