Ewelme, Oxfordshire

Historical Description

Ewelme, a village and a parish in Oxfordshire. The village stands near Icknield Street under the Chiltern hills, 8½ miles SW from Watlington station on the G.W.R., and 4 NE from Wallingford. It was known at Domesday as Law-eime, and it is surrounded by fine scenery. It has a post and money order office under Wallingford; telegraph office, Benson. Acreage of the civil parish, 2487; population, 521; of the ecclesiastical, 540. The manor belonged, at Domesday, to the Gands. Nicholas de Eweime, probably lord of the manor, was Chancellor of the University of Oxford (1267). The manor passed through several families, the De Spencers (1275), Bacons (1295), and others, then went by marriage to Thomas Chaucer, and belongs now to the Earl of Macclesfield, to whom it gives the title of Viscount Parker of Eweime. A palace was built on it, in 1424, by the De la Poles; was the place where Henry VIII. held a court Aug. 25 and 26, 1540, in company with Queen Katherine Howard; was likewise the residence of Prince Rupert, during the time he spent in Oxfordshire, and is now represented by only slight remains. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Oxford, and was annexed to the Regius professorship of Divinity in Oxford University by James I., but was severed from it by Act of Parliament in 1871, and is now in the gift of the Crown, subject to the condition that the holder must be " a member of the Convocation of the University of Oxford " (which means that he must be a M.A. with his name still on the books). Gross value, £550 with residence. The church was built by William De la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, and by his duchess; is a very fine and curious edifice, chiefly in Perpendicular English; has an interesting wood screen, a curious roof, and a rich font-tabemaele; contains, together with many other interesting monuments, a surpassingly beautiful altar-tomb of the Duchess of Suffolk (died 1475), the grand-daughter of Geoffrey Chaucer, and contains also an altar-tomb with brasses of her father, Thomas Chaucer, and his lady. The churchyard has the remains of the son and grandchildren of Sir Matthew Hale. There are chapels for Wesleyans and Primitive Methodists. An almshouse or hospital for 2 priests and 13 poor men, called God's House, founded by the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk about 1440, adjoins the church, and is an interesting brick structure, with a cloister round a square court. Attached to this almshouse was a grammar school. The endowments are large, but the grammar school was from the time of James I. greatly neglected, and does not now exist; the building is used for the parish school. Roman coins have been found at Eweime Warren. Archbishops Potter and Howley, Bishops Prideaux, Randolph, Van Mildert, Lloyd, Hampden, and Jacobson, besides other eminent men, were rectors.

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 Ewelme from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Ewelme (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 Ewelme 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.