These documents were deposited with us in 1992 and were then assigned the accession number 3529.
They relate to the Kirtlington School Endowment Trust. The origin of this trust dates back to1583 when a John Phillips by his will bequeathed a tenement in Woodstock to John Arderne late of Kirtlington, gent. and his heirs towards the finding of a school in Kirtlington, 'if it shall fortune any schole to be built or erected there. If no lawful schole be built or erected there hereafter then to the uses and maintenance of the parish church of Kirtlington forever'. In 1702 an enquiry revealed that there was aschool house at Kirtlington but the rent of the Woodstock property was misemployed. In 1702 the Commissioners ordered the trustees to convey the property to 13 new trustees headed by Sir Robert Dashwood in trust for the schoolmaster of Kirtlington. However by 1759 the school had closed as theWoodstock property was too decayed to yield any rent. The first legal basis of the school was in 1766 when Sir James Dashwood and Ashton Thorpe vicar of Kirtlington (as trustees) leased to the Duke of Marlborough for 70 years from 1765, 2 houses in the Borough of Woodstock. Between 1774 and 1778 the school reopened with Sir James Dashwood and the vicar as its governors and was supported by the Dashwoods as well as by the endowment. The actual property was situated in the High Street and Park Lane Woodstock. It was sold under the authority of an order of the Board of Education in 1921 and the net proceeds of the sale were invested by the trustees. The income of the foundation is applicable by the managers of the Kirtlington Church of England Voluntary aided primary school towards the discharge of theirobligations in respect of the maintenance of the school. No records of the school appear to have survived but there as an earlier minute book of the endowment trust and other associated records amongst the Kirtlington Parish Council records which are held here, reference Kirtlington PC V11/1-17.
Catalogued by Jeanette Grisold, July 1993.