Home

About Ramsden

The Oxfordshire village of Ramsden lies on the north-eastern fringes of the Cotswolds, four miles north of Witney and fifteen miles north-west of Oxford.

It is thought that people may have lived here continuously over twenty centuries or more.  For eighteen of those centuries, Ramsden was nothing more than a tiny settlement of less than one hundred people at a remote cross-roads deep within the Royal hunting forest of Wychwood.  

The settlement grew up adjacent to Akeman Street – The Roman road linking Cirencester with St. Albans – and was probably among the first parts of Wychwood Forest to be cleared for the purposes of settlement.

Ramsden lies in a shallow valley - Its hidden setting provides a sense of tranquillity and self-containment that has characterised the village for centuries.

The ‘den’ of Ramsden is a corruption of ‘dene’, meaning wooded valley, while the ‘Ram’ prefix may derive from ‘hramsu’, or wild garlic: hence ‘wild garlic valley’.

The Ramsden Village Website is maintained on a voluntary basis and is funded by the Ramsden Parish Council and Memorial Hall Committee

Email contributions to webmaster@ramsdenvillage.co.uk

Visitors : :