Spelsbury, Oxfordshire

Historical Description

Spelsbury, a parish, with a village and the four hamlets of Dean, Ditchley, Fulwell, and Taston, in Oxfordshire, 1½ mile NNW of Charlbury station on the Oxford and Worcester section of the G.W.R. It has a post office under Oxford; money order office, Chaddington; telegraph office, Oharlbury. Acreage, 4304; population, 501. There is a parish council consisting of seven members. The manor belongs to Viscount Dillon. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford; net value, £150 with residence. Patron, Christchurch, Oxford. The church is an ancient and interesting building, chiefly in the Early English style, and apparently a portion only of a much larger Norman cruciform building. It has some fine ancient tombs and monuments, and a modern altar-tomb with recumbent effigy to Charles Henry, 14th Viscount Dillon, who died 18 Nov. 1865. The hamlets of Dean, Ditchley, and Fulwell have already been noticed under their respective headings. Taston is about a mile NE of Spelsbury. It has a very ancient wayside cross of stone, and also a fountain to the memory of Henrietta Viscountess Dillon, who died in 1862. Near the stone cross is a large stone, believed to be that from which the hamlet derives its same, Taston, a corruption of " Thor's stan " or the stone of Thor.

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 Spelsbury from the following:

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