Cuddesdon

Coordinates: 51°43′23″N 1°07′59″W / 51.723°N 1.133°W / 51.723; -1.133

Cuddesdon is a mainly rural village in South Oxfordshire centred 5.5 miles (9 km) ESE of Oxford. It has the largest Church of England clergy training centre, Ripon College Cuddesdon.

Residents number approximately 430 in Cuddesdon's nucleated village centre and about 70 in the hamlets of Denton and Chippinghurst (2001 census).

History

Cuddesdon's toponym is derived from the Old English Cuddes Dune meaning "Cudde's Hill" or the "Hill of Cuthwine". When Oxfordshire was administered in hundreds, Cuddesdon parish was in the hundred of Bullingdon.

Cuddesdon was an Anglo-Saxon linear village along what is now High Street, but since the 19th century Church of England additions on the northern edge of the village and 20th century residential developments (principally Bishop's Wood and Parkside), it has become a nuclear settlement centred on The Green.

Since the 1950s many facilities and businesses in Cuddesdon, as in similar English villages, have closed, and most have been converted into housing for an increasingly commuter population. These include the petrol station, the shop, the school, the mill, the second public house and various farm buildings. Thus, the village has turned from a compact community into what is largely a dormitory village.