There has been settlement in the area since before Anglo-Saxon times, the pre-Saxon Aves ditch marking the Eastern boundary of Lower Heyford parish. The village is known in Saxon chronicles and the later Domesday Book as Hegford or Haiforde. The village is also sometimes known as Heyford Bridge. It is thought the village has been continually inhabited since the sixth century at least.
After the Norman conquest Lower Heyford was given to Geoffery de Montbray, a senior and trusted adviser of William and the bishop of Coutances. In later times (the sixteenth century) the manor was sold to Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Corpus Christi still owned the estate in the 1950s.
Economically Lower Heyford had always been a rural backwater and the local economy was mostly agricultural. The village had a couple of watermills on the Cherwell, the arrival of the Oxford Canal in the 1790 meant that coal could be easily bought from coal fields elsewhere in the Midlands and unloaded at Heyford Wharf.
[1] "Parishes: Lower Heyford." A History of the County of Oxford: Volume 6. Ed. Mary D Lobel. London: Victoria County History, 1959. 182-195. British History Online. Web. 2 March 2019. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol6/pp182-195.
