Lower Course, Somerton, Heyford, Rousham and Shipton
From Aynho, the River Cherwell meanders in its valley overlooked by hilltop villages. Somerton and Heyford are the only villages adjacent to the river itself and both once had water mills. The mill at Lower Heyford was last rebuilt in the early 19th century and worked as a mill as recently as 1946. However, there was a mill here before the Norman Conquest and this fact is mentioned in the Domesday Book.
At Rousham, the River Cherwell passes a famous landscape garden designed by William Kent. It features many statues and a temple which overlooks the River Cherwell. The terrace by the river is named the Praeneste after the ancient temple in Palestrina near Rome.
Two miles south of Rousham the river is crossed by a medieval packhorse bridge at Northbrook and a further mile south the course of Akeman Street, a Roman road, crosses the river. South of here, the Cherwell valley narrows and becomes more wooded.
The River Cherwell passes under the Woodstock to Bicester road and shortly after the Oxford Canal flows into it from the east. The next mile of the river is used by boats as part of the canal route. The canal and river pass a now-derelict cement works which was once supplied by canal narrowboats and which used water extracted from the river.
After sharing their course for about one mile (1.6 km), the Oxford Canal and River Cherwell diverge at Shipton Weir Lock (a similar lozenge-shaped structure to the lock at Aynho Weir). To the west of the lock is the village of Shipton on Cherwell. The bridge carrying the railway over the canal was the site of a major train crash in December 1874 in which more than 30 people died (Shipton-on-Cherwell train crash).
East of Shipton, the deserted village of Hampton Gay stands on the bank of the River Cherwell. The most substantial remnant is the church which stands in lonely isolation in the watermeadows but there are ruins of a manor house too. Beyond here, the river reaches Thrupp where the Oxford Canal finally leaves the Cherwell valley.
There was a Romano-British settlement not far from the River Cherwell near Kidlington and a substantial Romano-British villa across the river at Islip. To the east of Islip is a wide plain called Otmoor drained by the River Ray and its small tributaries. The Ray flows into the River Cherwell at the weir in Islip, known as The Stank.
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