COXWELL (GREAT), a parish in the hundred of FARRINGDON, county of BERKS, If mile (S. W.) from Great Farringdon, containing 306 inhabitants. The living is a discharged vicarage, in the archdeaconry of Berks, and diocese of Salisbury, rated in the king's books at £7. 7.. 11., endowed with £400 private benefaction, and £400 royal bounty, and in the patronage of the Bishop of Salisbury. The church is dedicated to St. Giles. Limestone and fossil remains are met with here. There are the remains of a religious establishment in this parish, formerly built by the abbots of Beaulieu, to whom the manor was granted by King John in 1204, now used as a barn: the adjoining.farmhouse was occupied by the monks. On Badbury hill is an ancient circular encampment, supposed to be Danish. The 'Rev. David Collier, in 1724, imposed a charge of eight bushels of barley on lands in Little Coxwell, for teaching two poor children; and the sum of £3. 10. is paid to a schoolmaster for instructing three children; besides which, the Rev. John Pynsent, in 1705, bequeathed land, producing about £20 per annum, for apprenticing the children of labourers of this parish and Coleshill: there is likewise a curious bequest from the Earl of Radnor, in 1771, charging his lands with an annuity of £45, to be applied to the apprenticing of the children of poor persons of Coleshill and this parish, so often as the vicar of Coleshill shall be absent from the parish more than sixty days in any one year, and shall accept, any other preferment with cure of souls.