Pyrton, Oxfordshire

Historical Description

Pyrton, a village and a parish in Oxfordshire. The village stands near the Chiltern Hills, 1 mile N of Watlington½ half a mile W of Watlington station on the Princes Risborough and Watlington branch of the G.W.R., and 7 miles NE of Wallingford, and was anciently called Peritone. The parish contains also the hamlets of Clare, Assendon, Golder, Portways, and Standhill. Post town, Tetworth. Acreage, 4847; population of the civil parish, 557; of the ecclesiastical, 337. For parish council purposes the civil parish is divided mto two wards-Assendon returning two and Lower Pyrton four members. The manor was held at Domesday by Hugh Lupus, and belongs now to Lord Camoys, the Earl of Macclesfield, and the Hamersley family. Stonor Park, the property of Lord Camoys, is an ancient Tudor mansion of red brick standing in a beautiful deer park of from 200 to 300 acres. The Warren is a small modern mansion of red brick, and the manor house, situate in Lower Pyrton, is an ancient Tudor mansion which was built in the reign of Elizabeth. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford; net value, £234 with residence. Patron, Christchurch, Oxford. The church was rebuilt in 1856, and is in the Early English style. There is a Roman Catholic chapel at Assendon. John Hampden was married in the old church to Miss Symeon, whose father then occupied the manor house; and Rose, the author of an " Essay on Universal Language," was a native. The hamlet of Upper Assendon is noticed separately.

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.

Land and Property

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

Maps

Online maps of Pyrton 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.