The name Wolford, perhaps unexpectedly, apparently derives from the old English word “Wulf” with “Weard,” meaning place protected against wolves. This unusual, possibly even unique name is thought to suggest that the settlement had some kind of physical arrangement to protect themselves and their livestock from packs of lupine marauders.

The village lies at the junction of two roads, one from Moreton in Marsh to Chipping Norton, and the other from Barton on the Heath, and it’s possible to see some of the original earthworks by which it was surrounded. Presumably the remnants of the wolf protection. The houses are mostly of the local Cotswold Stone which, in this area, is very yellow compared with some. We have come across this mineral induced colour many times before.

In the 13th century there were mills in this village, one a fulling mill and one a corn mill. They were almost certainly situated on the Nethercote Brook which bisects the valley. Neither shows any signs of their presence today.

There was a church here from 1177 at the latest, but in 1835 it was completely demolished, for reasons I am unable to determine, and rebuilt to the design of a famous architect James Trubshaw.

Trubshaw had built what at the time was the largest single span stone bridge in the whole world, over the river Dee at Chester, called the Grosvenor Bridge. It is thought that he was in the vicinity building a big house at Weston Park for one Sir George Philips, and took on the church as a kind of sideline.