Welcome to South Leigh! We are a rural community of some 340 people and 140 houses just 2½ miles east of Witney and 10 miles west of Oxford.
South Leigh is a village and civil parish on Limb Brook, a small tributary of the River Thames, about 2+1⁄2 miles east of Witney in Oxfordshire.
There is lots going on here despite the description of an itinerant journalist from The Times who described us as the ‘sleepy village with a Bohemian pub’!
Our village buzzes with activity and community groups, mostly centred around the Village Hall that was built as a Victorian village school. Our Parish Council thrives and our Summer Fayre, cricket and bowls matches take their place in the calendar together with the myriad activities described in this website.
Set in rolling farm land, our recorded history starts in the 12th Century, as did our enchanting Parish church. Its extraordinary wall paintings are 15th Century and one of the bells is dated 1399. John Wesley preached here in 1771 and, in the 1800s, a small Methodist congregation was established with its own chapel, now a private house among others along Chapel Road.
There are two other clusters of houses – Station Road (the railway station closed in 1965) where the ‘eccentric and fun’ Grade II-listed Artist Residence, the thatched Mason Arms pub, resides. The oldest settlement is around the church of St. James the Great, at Church End.
As South Leigh residents, we are passionate about our village, its idyllic setting, its bucolic views and its future. This was underlined when, in 2019, we completed our Neighbourhood Plan in record time with over 90 percent voting in favour. It was formally adopted in January 2019 and will help us to protect our community, our way of life and our future.
Welcome again to the South Leigh website.