By the side of this Trackway, in the parish of Sulgrave, and seven miles and a half N.E. by E. from Banbury, is a Tumulus or Barrow still called Barrow Hill, the use of which as an exploratory mount may be correctly conceived from Morton’s description of it. Here, he says, “no fewer than nine counties do present themselves to one view, that is, the counties of Northampton, Warwick, Worcester, Oxford, Gloucester, Berks, Bucks, Bedford, and Hertford; and ‘tis thought that a part of Wiltshire or Hampshire is likewise to be seen from thence.“*
*Morton’s Northamp., 1712, p22
The base of this Tumulus is 25 yards by 19, and the summit 12 yards by 10. Upon it grows a great Ash tree, now going to decay, which is considered to be four centuries old.
There is a tradition respecting this mount and the Ash tree, that the spot was the scene of the revels of witches, and that when the Sulgrave people went to cut the tree down, they saw their village in the vale beneath apparently wrapped in flames, and therefore returned home. While they were absent from the tree on this false alarm, the witches made good the injury that had been done to the tree, and thus it was preserved.
p16 in ‘The History of Banbury’ by Alfred Beesley [1841?] (online at the Internet Archive).
