To today's boaters heading south along the Oxford Canal, Banbury is the last main town they pass through before they reach Oxford. But historically it was once served not by canal but (in a somewhat rudimentary way) by river; in the canal age it very nearly became a junction between canal and navigable river; and the river still has an influence on the Banbury to Oxford length of the canal today. The River Cherwell rises near Hellidon, south west of Daventry (incidentally very close to the sources of both the Nene and the Learn - their waters ending up in the Thames, the Wash and the Severn respectively). From there it meanders southwards and westwards to reach Cropredy, merging with other streams so that by the time it gets to Banbury it's become a decent sized watercourse for the rest of its route southwards via King's Sutton, Upper and Lower Heyford and Thrupp to join the Thames just downstream of the city centre in Oxford. Sufficiently 'decent sized' that by the 17th century, a good 100 years before the start of the Canal Age, it was being considered as a possible navigation.
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