Brackley is a town in south Northamptonshire, England. It is about 19 miles from Oxford and about 22 miles from Northampton. Historically a market town based on the wool and lace trade, it was built on the intersecting trade routes between London, Birmingham and the English Midlands and between Cambridge and Oxford. Brackley has connections with Formula 1 as it is close to Silverstone and home to the Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team.
Brackley, originally also known as Brachelai or Brackele, was held in 1086 by Earl Alberic. After this it passed to the Earl of Leicester, and to the families of De Quincy and Roland. In the 11th and 12th centuries Brackley was in the Hundred of Odboldistow and in the Manor of Halse. Richard I (The Lionheart) named five official sites for jousting tournaments so that such events could not be used as local wars, and Brackley was one of these. The tournament site is believed to be to the south of the castle where the A422 now passes.
Brackley used the poor house at Culworth until 1834, when Parliament passed the Poor Law Amendment Act and as a result Brackley Poor Law Union was founded.[5] A workhouse for 250 people was built in 1836, southwest of the town on Banbury Road. It was demolished in the 1930s.
Brackley Castle was built soon after 1086. Its earthwork remains lie between Hinton Road and Tesco. It comprised a motte mound 10 feet (3.0 m) high and approximately 44 yards (40 m) in diameter with an outer bailey to the east. Archaeological excavation has revealed evidence of a ditch defining the perimeter of the bailey. Two fishponds originally lay outside the ditch but have subsequently been infilled – however south of St. James Lake may have formed a part of this. Brackley Castle may have gone out of use in 1147. It was destroyed in 1173.
The almshouses were founded in 1633 by Sir Thomas Crewe of Steane. They have one storey plus attic dormers. They were originally six houses but by 1973 they had been converted into four apartments. Brackley Manor House was also a 17th-century Jacobean building that also originally had one storey plus attic dormers. In 1875–78 the Earl of Ellesmere had it rebuilt on a larger scale, in the same style but retaining only the doorway and one window of the original building. It is now Winchester House School, a coeducational preparatory school for children aged from 3–13. It used to be a Woodard School.
Brackley is close to the A43 road, which now bypasses the town, linking it to Towcester and Northampton to the north-east and the M40 motorway to the west. The A422 links it to Banbury and Buckingham. The nearest railway station is Kings Sutton, about 6 miles (10 km) west of the town. Brackley had two railway stations of its own that were closed in the 1960s. Brackley's first station, known in its latter years as Brackley Town, opened in May 1850 as part of the Buckinghamshire Railway's Buckingham and Brackley Junction line between Verney Junction and Banbury Merton Street via Buckingham.
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