Beedon, Berkshire
Historical Description
Beedon or Beedon Hill, a village and a parish in Berks, 3 miles NW from Hampstead Norris station on the G.W.R. The parish includes the tithing of Stanmore, and has a post office of the name of Beedon Hill, under Newbury; money order and telegraph office, East Ilsley. Acreage, 2012; population, 272. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford; gross yearly value, £190 with residence, in the gift of Lord Wantage. The church, a building of flint and rubble erected in 1220, was restored in 1882. Some interesting antiquities of the Romano-British period were discovered in this parish in 1888.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
| Ancient County | Berkshire | |
| Ecclesiastical parish | Beedon St. Nicholas | |
| Hundred | Faircross | |
| Poor Law union | Wantage |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
The register dates from the year 1732.
Churches
Church of England
St. Nicholas (parish church)
The church of St. Nicholas is a small building of flint and rubble in the Transition Norman style, and consists of chancel and nave, south porch and a western bell-cote, containing 5 bells; the east end has three Transition Norman windows, with dog-tooth ornament and banded shafts between the lights; the chancel arch, with its corbel shafts, as well as the north doorway, belong to the same period; the south doorway is Early English; the church was restored in 1882, at a cost of £800, under the direction of Mr. Edwin Dolby, architect, of Abingdon, and was re-opened 22nd July, 1882, the cost of the repair of the chancel having been entirely defrayed by Lord and Lady Wantage; there are 125 sittings.
Civil Registration
For general information about Civil Registration (births, marriages and deaths) see the Civil Registration page.
Beedon was in Wantage Registration District from 1837 to 1974
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Beedon from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Beedon (St. Nicholas))
- Kelly's Directory of Berkshire, 1915
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Berkshire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Beedon are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Berkshire papers online:
Visitations Heraldic
The Visitations of Berkshire 1532, 1566, and 1665-6 is available online.