Cuddesdon, Oxfordshire

Historical Description

Cuddesdon, a village and a parish in Oxfordshire. The village stands near the river Thame, 1½ mile S ot Wheatley station on the G.W.R., and 6 miles SE by E of Oxford, and has a post and money order office under Oxford; telegraph office. Wheatley. Acreage of the civil parish, 956; population, 295; of the ecclesiastical, 505. The parish includes also the hamlet. of Chippinghurst and the chapelry of Denton. Cuddesdon Palace is the seat of the Bisliops of Oxford; sprang from a timber structure erected in 1635 by Bishop Bancroft, and destroyed in 1644 by the Royalist governor of Oxford, to prevent it from being garrisoned by the Parliamentarians; and is a plain edifice built in 1679 by Bishop Fell. The chapel connected with it is in the Decorated English style, and was built in 1846 by Bishop Wilberforce. The t heological college, opposite the Palace, is also in the Decorated English style; was opened in 1854; and contains a common hall, a dining hall, a chapel, and rooms fora vice-principal, chaplain, and 22 students. A cottage house for 4 students was built in 1877. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford, and the vicar is principal of the college; net yearly value, £212 with residence. Patron, the Bishop of Oxford. The church is cruciform, with massive central tower; was built at the period of transition from Norman to Early English; shows fine features of that period; and contains the grave of Bishop Bancroft, and mural monuments of Bishops Moss and Jackson. The churchyard has a touching epitaph on a daughter of Bishop Lowth. A reading and recreation room was built in 1886. There is a Wesleyan chapel erected in 1887.

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 Cuddesdon from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Cuddesden (All Saints))

Land and Property

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

Maps

Online maps of Cuddesdon 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.