This is a replacemanet cache we have place in a slightly different location from our first North Leigh Common cache that unfortunately was muggled.
The cache is a medium sized lock box, with notebook, pen and room for trackable items etc. Some parts of the common can get very muddy after heavy rain but we have place this cache just to the edge of a main path so it should not suffer too badly.
Free parking is available at N51°49.194' W001°25.283'
The Common is all that remains of a much larger area of heathland that once covered the whole area between Hanborough, Freeland, New Yatt and North Leigh. It included Eynsham Park and the northern part of South Leigh parish and stretched as far as Cogges Wood to the west.
Until the enclosure of most of the open ladn in the eighteenth century, the heathland was used by people of the surrounding parishes, including Combe and Stonesfield on the far side of the River Evenlode, for grazing and cutting or wood, gorse and bracken.
After the enclosures, the Common is marked on early nineteenth century maps as ‘Remain of Common’, ‘Poors Land’ or ‘The Demesnes’, which means land belonging to the manor. These same maps also show several brock kilns in the Hanborough, Freeland and Eynsham area; one is shown on Cuckoo Lane opposite Eynsham Park Sawmill. Both sand and clay, needed for brick making, are found on the Common, and there are numerous old sand and clay pits from which these materials were dug, and which have now become overgrown.
Although there is now much woodland on the Common, especially alongside Eynsham Park, and to the west of Boddington Lane, this is in fact unlikely to be more that around 110 years old, as the Ordnance Survey map of 1900 still shows the Common as open land.