4 miles south-east of Banbury

People for miles around can see the graceful spire of the Church of St Peter and St Paul, in the heart of this large, ironstone village. The late-14th-century spire is 198 ft high and is the finest of its kind in the county. It is the church’s main attraction, and overshadows the churchyard and the village green with its stocks.

King’s Sutton was a fashionable watering-place in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the sick and the crippled came for the mineral water. The spa was situated in nearby Astrop Park, where the water was drawn from St Rumbold’s well. St Rumbold, the shortest-lived of all saints, was said to have been born in Walton Grounds, just south of the village, about the middle of the 7th century. His mother was married to a pagan prince of Northumbria, and was on a journey when she suddenly gave birth to a son. Her baby died three days later - but not before he had spoken aloud. He stated he was a Christian, declared his belief in the Trinity, and also gave a sermon.

Today, his legend is perpetuated in a replica of the well, standing at a roadside near the park, and in a stone font in the village church in which he was supposedly baptised. Blacklands, the site of an extensive Roman settlement, is also situated near King’s Sutton - which was a royal estate in Saxon times.