Yarnton is a village and civil parish in Oxfordshire about 1 mile (1.6 km) southwest of Kidlington and 4 miles (6 km) northwest of Oxford. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 2,545.

Early Bronze Age decorated beakers have been found in the parish. These suggest human activity in the area somewhere between 2700 and 1700 BC. A series of irregular late Iron Age to early Roman enclosures in the parish are known from cropmarks. Two are 10–12 metres (33–39 ft) across.

The toponym has evolved from Erdington in Old English to Eyrynten in 1495–96, Yardington in the 16th century but also Yarnton from 1517. The form "Yarnton" eventually prevailed. Erdington may have originally meant either "dwelling place" or "Earda's farm". Most of the land at Yarnton was granted to Eynsham Abbey in 1005 but Remigius de Fécamp, a supporter of William the Conqueror, took it during the Norman conquest of England in 1066. In 1226 King Henry III gave it to Richard, 1st Earl of Cornwall, and in 1281 Edmund, 2nd Earl of Cornwall gave it to Rewley Abbey. In the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536 Rewley Abbey was dissolved and King Henry VIII sold Yarnton to his physician, George Owen.

Yarnton Manor is a Grade II* listed Jacobean manor house with Grade II listed gardens. The foundation of the Manor dates from the Norman Conquest and was held by the Spencer family from 1580 to 1712.

Sir Thomas Spencer had the present manor house, a large Jacobean country mansion, built in 1611. During the English Civil War the house seems to have served as a Royalist military hospital: in 1643–1645 about 40 Royalist soldiers were buried in St Bartholomew's churchyard.

In about 1670 Sir Thomas Spencer, 3rd Baronet had the interior of the house remodelled. In 1695, a decade after his death, most of the manor's land was sold to Sir Robert Dashwood, who removed most of the stone of the house to build his own home at Kirtlington Park. In 1718 Yarnton manor house was reported to be in a "ruinated condition". The north and south wings were demolished, possibly in about 1756 by Sir Robert's successor Sir James Dashwood.

In 1897 the new owner, HR Franklin, engaged the Gothic Revival architect Thomas Garner who restored the remaining part of the house. In the 1930s the property belonged to George Alfred Kolkhorst, Reader in Spanish at Oxford University. More recently the house has been in institutional use. In about 1960 Cokethorpe School used it as a dormitory. Between 1975 and 2014 it was the headquarters of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies as well as the JDC International Centre for Community Development. In 2014 OCHJS decided to move closer to Oxford city centre. The house spent a number of years as the international study centre of the Oxford Royale Academy, but in the summer of 2021, the Manor sold at a price of £9 million to The Lanier Theological Education Foundation.

The Church of England parish church of Saint Bartholomew was in existence by 1161 as a chapel attached to Eynsham Abbey. The Norman building from that period was completely rebuilt in the 13th century in the Early English Gothic style. The Perpendicular Gothic windows in the nave were added much later, followed by the clerestory in about 1600. Sir Thomas Spencer added the Spencer chapel, also Perpendicular Gothic, in 1611. The chapel houses monuments including Sir William Spencer (died 1609), Sir Thomas Spencer, 3rd Baronet (died 1684) and Charlotte Spencer-Churchill (died 1850). The chapel's windows contain heraldic stained glass representing branches of the Spencer family and are the largest collection of early 17th-century heraldic glass in Oxfordshire. The remains of 15th-century wall paintings including a Nativity are visible over the chancel arch. Above it are what may be remnants of a Massacre of the Innocents. Other paintings may survive under the current limewash, including what may be a large Saint Christopher over the north doorway.