Sibford Gower and Sibford Ferris, Oxfordshire

Historical Description

Sibford Gower and Sibford Ferris are townships forming a parish which was constituted in 1841 out of the civil parish of Swalcliffe, in Oxfordshire, on the borders of Warwickshire, 3 miles N from Hook Norton station on the Banbury and Cheltenham branch of the G.W.R., and 7½ WSW from Banbury. Area of Sibford Gower, 1758 acres; population, 420; of Sibford Ferris, 1008 acres; population, 276. Population of the ecclesiastical parish of Sibford Gower, 696. There is a parish council for Sibford Gower consisting of five members. Sibford Ferris has only a parish meeting. Sibford Gower has a post and money order office under Banbury; telegraph office, Swalcliffe. Sibford Ferris has a post office under Banbury; money order office, Sibford Gower; telegraph office, Swalcliffe. Burdrop is a hamlet in the parish of Sibford Gower. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford; net value, £211 with residence, in the gift of New College, Oxford. The church, erected in 1840, is an edifice of stone in the Early English style. There are also a Wesleyan chapel and a Friends' meeting-house. There is a good elementary school at Sibford Gower, maintained out of an endowment left by some unknown benefactor in the latter part of the 16th or beginning of the 17th century. An important school for boarding and educating boys and girls connected with the Society of Friends has existed for forty years at Sibford Ferris, and is in a flourishing condition.

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 Sibford Gower and Sibford Ferris from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Sibford-Gower)

Land and Property

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

Maps

Online maps of Sibford Gower and Sibford Ferris 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.