Datchet, Buckinghamshire
Historical Description
Datchet or Datchet St Helen's, a parish in Bucks, on the river Thames and on the Windsor branch of the L. & S.W.R., 2 miles E of Windsor. It has a station en the railway, and a post, money order, and telegraph office under Windsor. Acreage, 1387; population, 1582. Two bridges, called the Victoria and the Albert, the former a neat iron structure, give communication across the Thames. Datchet Mead was the scene of Falstaff's punishment in the " Merry Wives of Windsor." A fishing-house of Sir H. Wotton, called " Black Pots," yearly visited hy Isaak Walton, stood on the Thames at Datchet, and was succeeded by a summer-house of the painter Verrio. Anglers from old times till the present have loved to fish here, and Pope says respecting Charles II.-" Methinks I see our mighty monarch stand, The pliant rod now trembling in his hand; And see, he now doth up from Datchet come, Laden with spoils of slaughter'd gudgeons home." The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford; net yearly value, £288 with residence. Patrons, the Dean and Canons <9f Windsor. The church was rebuilt in 1860, and is in the Decorated style. There are a Baptist chapel, a working men's club, opened in 1881 and enlarged in 1888, and some useful charities.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
Ancient County | Buckinghamshire | |
Ecclesiastical parish | Datchet St. Mary | |
Hundred | Stoke | |
Poor Law union | Eton |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
The parish register dates from the year 1559.
Churches
Church of England
St. Mary (parish church)
The parish church of St. Mary is a building of stone in the Decorated style, and was rebuilt on an enlarged plan on the former site in 1857-60; it consists of chancel, nave of five bays, aisles, south porch, north transept (recently converted into the sanctuary of a side chapel) and an octagonal tower with spire on the east side of the north transept and containing a clock and 5 bells: all the windows are stained, three being memorials to H.R.H. the Prince Consort: there is a brass to Katherine Lady Berkeley, ob. 1559, and one to Richard Hanbery, 1593, and Ales, his wife, with kneeling effigies: an oak reredos was erected in 1906 as a memorial to the Rev. Canon J. H. Thompson, vicar 1868-1902: there are 650 sittings. In the churchyard is a Celtic cross erected by the women of this parish in memory of Datchet men who fell in the Great War, 1914-18.
Civil Registration
For general information about Civil Registration (births, marriages and deaths) see the Civil Registration page.
Datchet was in Eton Registration District from 1837 to 1974
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Datchet from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Datchet (St. Mary))
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Buckinghamshire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Datchet 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 Buckinghamshire papers online:
Visitations Heraldic
A full transcript of the Visitation of Buckinghamshire, 1634 is online