Chipping Norton Heritage Open Day

One Day Inside the Building Chipping Norton Is Trying to Save

Chipping Norton Town Hall is a Grade II* listed building on Market Place, built in 1842 to a Palladian design by George Stanley Repton, son of the landscape designer Humphry Repton and a former assistant in John Nash's office. The Town Hall Restoration Group recently cleared the first stage of a National Lottery Heritage Fund bid for a £3 million restoration and is now developing the full application. Heritage Open Day is the one day visitors get to walk the whole building rather than just the room they've hired for a meeting.

Upper Hall runs two rounds of talks: Simon Townley on eight centuries of change in the Market Square at 10:15am and 11:45am, Simon Draper on the Bliss Mill business and its 1913-14 strike at 11am and 12:30pm. The Lower Hall becomes home to Chipping Norton Museum for the day, exhibitions and refreshments in a collection that started with agricultural tools donated by Tom Pitt of Chadlington. A self-guided Living History Trail runs three times through the afternoon, at 2pm, 2:30pm and 3pm, covering five sites in the town centre and ending with the stories of people once brought to trial there. Out on Middle Row, Claire Jarvis of The Fibreworks brings Cotswold sheep and live spinning demonstrations, and St Mary's Church opens the Trinity Room, a first-floor space converted in 2011 from a chamber that once held 2,400 organ pipes, with the church's oldest leaded glass in its windows. Richard Martin closes the day with a talk at Art & Talking at 7pm.

The building making the case for its own future is wide open for the day.

Saturday 12 September 2026 · Chipping Norton Town Hall, Market Place, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire OX7 5NQ · 10am–8pm