Some time in the year 1105 William the Conqueror's son King Henry 1st stayed briefly in Hanborough, when three Royal Charters were dated here. In June 1644 King Charles 1st passed through the parish at the end of his famous night march from Oxford, and drew up his army on Hanborough Heath (a large area of land that stretched from Abelwood to the Witney road near the Shepherds Hall) before continuing to Burford.
Just over three hundred years later on the 29th January 1965 the train carrying the body of Sir Winston Churchill, after the funeral service at Westminster Abbey, drew into Hanborough station. The cortege passed along the Woodstock road, lined by members of local volunteer services from Hanborough and other villages, to the final resting place in Bladon churchyard.

Thus infrequently have national events directly touched our parish. Hanborough is typical of most rural villages in having little but parish pump history. For the past nine centuries the 'Manor', the earliest unit of land ownership and law administration, has been in the hands of, first, the Crown, delegated to various tenants for a generation or two or attached to the royal park and palace of Woodstock, and forest of Wychwood; and second, when the Woodstock manors were granted by a grateful sovereign and nation to the conquering hero John Churchill in 1705, the Duke of Marlborough - whose descendant is still our Lord of the Manor. During the 18th and 19th centuries the ducal estate steadily built up its land-holding, until by 1863 it comprised 1270 out of the total 2270 acres making up the parish.
The second large land-owner is Corpus Christi college, Oxford, whose estate was accumulated in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The advowson of the church (the right to fill the incumbency when ever this falls vacant) has since the later 17th century belonged to St John's College, and from 1665 until 1854 the rectory was annexed to the presidency of the college, with the duties normally being undertaken by a curate.

Thus the parish has rarely had dominant resident land-owners or rectors. The vast proportion of its male population have until the 20th century worked on the land, as farm labourers, in local quarries or brick kilns, whilst in the 19th century the women and girls supplemented the meagre agricultural wages by gloving for the Woodstock glove trade.
There were quarries in the parish before 1100 AD because shortly after this the parish church is thought to have been built from stone from the quarry in Pinsley Wood. A quarry between Long Hanborough and the Evenlode (Southrah Quarry) provided the stone for the Oxford University Press building between 1826 and 1830, and for Eynsham Hall in 1904.
Brickmaking was another village industry, thanks to a good source of lime. The lime-burner Henry Wise in 1706 contracted to supply 500,000 bricks for the kitchen gardens at Blenheim. Brickmaking on Hanborough Heath at Brook Hill and Shepherds Hall was recorded from 1700 to 1911.

All villages have always had alehouses, though only in the past 250 years is there a good chance of finding their names. 'Walter the Vintner' was mentioned as early as 1279. The earliest records of victuallers in the parish are in 1533 and 1634, the first pubs named in 1661 were 'The Katherine Wheel', and 1686,'The Holly Bush'. The first comprehensive naming dates from 1775, with the familiar 'Hand and Shears', 'George(and Dragon)', 'The Bell', plus 'The Ball' the name soon being succeeded by 'The Swan'. 'Shepherds Hall' first appears in the 1851 census, and the 'Three Horseshoes' ten years later in 1861.

One of the earliest recorded features of the parish is Pinsley Wood, first named as Pins Wood in 1237 and was certainly part of the 7x6 furlongs of woodland catalogued in the Domesday Book of 1086 and shown on maps at Corpus Christi College dated 1605.
The parish church, dedicated to St Peter and St Paul, was in existence by c.1130 when it was granted to Reading Abbey, and its earliest architectural features bear this out. The Norman tympanum over the North door showing St Peter with a lion on his right, a lamb on his left, and a cock at his feet, after 900 years is still, in its primitive impact, the finest work of art in the parish. The church itself, with its soaring columns inside and its soaring spire piercing the horizon, is outstanding in a county of fine churches. A published guide is available, so its many features need no description here. However, it should be recorded that its six bells, three dating from 1602-23, have in 1994 been recast and rehung after an appeal raised the £53,000 required.

The fact that the church was built where it is inplies that the earliest centre for administration of the manor was in Church Hanborough, so possibly at that time it was the location of the manor house. The earliest records of spread of population suggests that from medieval times Long Hanborough has always been the major settlement. However, the first record which differentiates between the two villages appears to be 1609/10, when there were 52 dwellings in Long Hanborough and 16 in Church Hanborough, with a further 9 in the Little Blenheim area.
Long Hanborough was divided into two 'ends', Burleigh End/Green (that is the eastern end around the George and Dragon and Pug Lane (Park Lane) and Wood End (Millwood End). In 1662 in the whole parish there were only 59 householders assessed for the hearth tax, whilst there were 142 adults in 1676. By 1738 there were 110 houses in Long Hanborough and 20 in Church Hanborough. In 1801 there was a population of 655 but only 100 houses. The population rose steadily to a peak in 1851 of 1,153, including 60 itinerant railway labourers (the railway was in the course of construction), but then fell back to 816 by 1921. In the past 75 years Hanborough has developed apace, with several estates built in the 1960s and 1970s. The electoral roll taken in the autumn of 1993 shows there were 1,836 registered voters in the parish, of which about 1,700 live in Long Hanborough.

Until the late 18th century the parish church was the only centre for religious worship. By the 1890s it was realised that dwindling congregations at the parish church were partly due to the need to walk from Long Hanborough. To deal with this problem the resident rector of the parish had the 'mission church' of Christ Church built in Long Hanborough in 1893.

Methodism started in this area first using the delightful little chapel at Freeland, in use by 1805 (still there close to its successor).
The Primitive Methodists were active with a little chapel in Millwood End, built next to the row of cottages, from 1842. Their second chapel of 1904 was built on the Main road opposite the Millwood End turning. After the Methodists Union between the Primitive and Wesleyan Churches in 1943 this chapel was first used as a government wartime food store, then for meetings and occasionally as a kind of youth hostel for young methodists. It was then converted into a manse (house for the minister) in 1947, but sold in 1988 and converted into a private house. The Wesleyan Methodists had a chapel built in 1827 on the south side of the Main Road (Chapel Row) but because of its small size a new chapel just west of the old one was built in 1895. The original chapel was converted into the Parish Hall in 1912. This is also now a private house.

There is little evidence of any attempt at education in the parish before the early 19th century. The population of agricultural labours were desperately poor, and as soon as a child was old enough he or she was put to work on the land, be it only bird scaring or stone picking. Small private schools were appearing by the early 19th century in both villages, supported by the rector and the Duke. In 1832 a National Day and Sunday School, with 60 day and 120 Sunday pupils was opened in Church Hanborough. Within two years the day school had 48 boys and 46 girls all under 10 years old. The church had provided the school, so the children of Long Hanborough had to walk there rather than have the school in their own village. Only in 1879 was an Infant School opened in Long Hanborough.
There were various permutations of junior and senior pupils over the succeeding years, with Church Hanborough School eventually closing in 1960, replaced by the Long Hanborough Manor School.

Long Hanborough grew up along the Witney to Bicester road, an ancient route, turnpiked from 1751 to 1870. The bridge over the Evenlode existed as early as 1141. Rebuilt in 1798, it still stands,(Folly Bridge) two centuries later. Its own replacement, built in the early 1950s on a new road to replace the sharp bend, had to be reconstructed less than 40 years later!
One event that must have had repercussions in the early 1850s was the building of the railway: the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton (known, not unjustly, as 'Old Worse & Worse'). Frequently threatened with closure, it still remains open today.

An 1852 directory lists 6 shopkeepers, 3 bakers, a butcher, a tailor, a shoemaker and a blacksmith. Similar occupations were recorded in earlier centuries. There was a cycle repairer in 1907 and two garages by 1924. The Co-op, built in 1913, was demolished in 2006 and replaced by a much larger shop on the same site. Once we had 3 post offices but we are now down to one. Church Hanborough lost its only shop and post office in the 1970s.

Every parish that has no history, really has a mass of it. If you read the Hanborough Herald especially in 2007, you will read more history on this interesting parish.