Rousham, Oxfordshire
Historical Description
Rousham, a parish, with a small village in a valley, in Oxfordshire, on the Oxford Canal and the river Cherwell, near Hayford station on the G.W.R., and 5 miles NNE of Woodstock. Post town and money order and telegraph office, Lower Heyford. Acreage, 1068; population of the civil parish, 167; of the ecclesiastical, 577. The manor and all the land belong to the Cottrell-Dormer family. Rousham Hall was built in the time of James I. by Sir E. Dormer, contains a fine library, especially rich in MSS., and a rich collection of pictures, was visited by Pope and H. Walpole, and stands in grounds laid out by Kent and containing a number of statues brought from Italy. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Oxford; net value, £208 with residence. The church, which is a plain building of stone in mixed styles, includes some good Late Norman and Decorated English portions.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
Ancient County | Oxfordshire | |
Ecclesiastical parish | Rousham St. Mary | |
Hundred | Wooton | |
Poor Law union | Woodstock |
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 Rousham from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Rousham (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 Rousham 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.