Banbury

views updated Jun 11 2018

Banbury an Oxfordshire town formerly noted for the number and fervour of its Puritan inhabitants, as for its cakes and cheese.
Banbury cake a flat pastry with a spicy currant filling, originally made in Banbury.
Banbury Cross a market cross in Banbury, referred to in the nursery rhyme, ‘Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross, To see a fine lady upon a white horse.’ The original Cross was in fact destroyed at the end of the 16th century.
thin as Banbury cheese very thin; in Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor (1597), Slender is addressed as ‘You Banbury cheese’.