Steeple Aston is a village and civil parish on the edge of the Cherwell Valley, in the Cherwell District of Oxfordshire, England, about north of Oxford, west of Bicester, and south of Banbury. The 2011 Census recorded the parish population as 947. The village is above sea level. The River Cherwell and Oxford Canal pass east of the village. The river forms part of the eastern boundary of the parish. The parish's southern boundary, south of the village, also forms part of Cherwell District's boundary with West Oxfordshire. History The earliest evidence of occupation in the area is an Iron Age burial site in the west of the parish near Hopcroft's Holt. The Domesday Book of 1086 records Steeple Aston as Estone, derived from East Tun meaning "east village". By 1220 it was Stipelestun, with the "steeple" prefix probably referring to the church tower. The Domesday Book of 1086 records that Odo, Bishop of Bayeux was overlord of the manor of Steeple Aston. The Holt Hotel at Hopcroft's Holt, about southwest of the village on the A4260 main road began as a coaching inn in 1475. It was frequented by the 17th century highwayman Claude Duval who is said to haunt it. In 1754 the licensee and his wife at Hopcroft's Holt were murdered. In 1774 the inn at Hopcroft's Holt was called the King's Arms. The village has several 17th-century buildings from the Great Rebuilding of England. The School formerly occupied a building in North Side built in 1640. Next to it are Radcliffe's Almshouses which Brasenose College founded in the 1660s. In South Side, Grange Cottage is early 17th century and Manor Farm House is late 17th century. Church and chapel The Church of England parish church of Saints Peter and Paul is 13th century, with subsequent Perpendicular Gothic alterations, and the architect John Plowman restored it in 1842. The parish church is the source of the Steeple Aston Cope, an important piece of 14th-century embroidery now on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The church tower has a ring of eight bells. Richard Keene of Burford cast the three oldest bells in 1674 and 1675. A further bell was cast in 1700 by one of the Chandler family of bell-founders from Drayton Parslow in Buckinghamshire. Two bells were added in the 19th century cast by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry: one cast by Thomas Mears