Charlbury, Oxfordshire

Historical Description

Charlbury, a small town and a parish in Oxfordshire. The town stands on an eminence, adjacent to the river Evenlode, and to the Oxford and Worcester section of the G.W.R., near Cornbury Park and Wychwood Forest, 7 miles SE of Chipping Norton, and has a station on the railway, a post, money order, and telegraph office (S.O.), a bank, a church, Baptist and Wesleyan chapels, a Friends' meetinghouse, and an endowed grammar school. The church is variously Norman, Early English, and Decorated, has a tower of the 13th century, and contains monuments of the Jenkin-sons of Walcot. The grammar-school has £40 a year from endowment, with two exhibitions at Brasenose College. A weekly market is held on Friday; fairs are held on 1 January, and there is also a cattle fair on the first Monday in each month. The parish contains also the hamlets of Walcot, Chadlington, Chilson or Shorthampton.andPudlicot. Acreage, 2572; population of the civil parish, 1478; of the ecclesiastical, 2361. The manor belonged to the Mercian kings; was given by them to the Bishops of Lincoln; passed to the Abbey of Ensham; and went after the dissolution to St John's College, Oxford, with whom it remained until by exchange it became the property of Lord Churchill. The living is a vicarage, united to the perpetual curacies of Shorthampton and Chadlington, in the diocese of Oxford; joint net yearly value, £500 with residence. Patron, St John's College, Oxford. The vicarage of Finstock is a separate benefice.

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.

Civil Registration

For general information about Civil Registration (births, marriages and deaths) see the Civil Registration page.

Directories & Gazetteers

We have transcribed the entry for Charlbury from the following:

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

Land and Property

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

Maps

Online maps of Charlbury 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.