Asthall, Oxfordshire

Historical Description

Asthall, a village and a parish in Oxfordshire. The village stands on the Windrush river, and on Akeman Street, at the SW end of Wychwood forest, 2½ miles ESE of Burford, and 4 N of Bampton station on the G.W.R. It was known to the Saxons as Esthale, and belonged to Roger d'Ivri. The parish includes also the hamlets of Asthall-Leigh, Worsham, Fordwells, Field Assarts, and Stonelands. Post town, Burford (R.S.O.), which is the money order and telegraph office. Acreage, 2259; population, 351. A large barrow, believed to be the sepulchre of some person of note, is on Akeman Street. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford; value, £130. Patron, Eton College. The church is ancient, and a new one, at Asthall-Leigh, was built in 1861 as a chapel of ease to the parish church.

Administration

The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.

Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.

Church Records

Ancestry.co.uk, in association with Oxfordshire Family History Society and Oxfordshire History Centre, have images of the Parish Registers for Oxfordshire online.

Directories & Gazetteers

We have transcribed the entry for Asthall from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Asthall (St. Nicholas))

Land and Property

A full transcript of the Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Oxfordshire is available online

Maps

Online maps of Asthall 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 Oxfordshire newspapers online:

• Oxford Journal
• Banbury Advertiser
• Banbury Guardian
• Oxford University and City Herald
• Oxford Chronicle and Reading Gazette
• Faringdon Advertiser and Vale of the White Horse Gazette
• Oxford Times
• Banbury Beacon
• Ossett Observer

Visitations Heraldic

The Visitations of Oxfordshire, 1566, 1574 &1634 are available on the Heraldry page.