BANBURY, a market-town, municipaland parliamentary borough, and railway junction, in the county of Oxford, 71 miles from London, and a little to the west of the River Cherwell and the Oxford and Birmingham canal. It is well built, and has two or three foundries, several breweries, and some other manufactures, but is chiefly dependent on the neighbouring villages which send their agricultural produce to its market. It was formerly famous for its cheese, and gives its name to a kind of cake of considerable repute. Its ancient cross, now destroyed, is celebrated in the well-known nursery rhyme. During the 17th century the inhabitants of Banbury seem to have been zealous Puritans, and are frequently satirized by contemporary dramatists (Chambers’s Book of Days, vol. ii. p. 316). At a somewhat earlier period the grammar school, which is now defunct, was of such repute as to be chosen as the model for the constitution of the school of St Paul’s. A school of science was erected in 1861. Banbury returns one member to parliament, and the borough (which is partly in Northamptonshire) had, in 1872, a population of 11,726, of whom 4122 were in the town.