Watlington, Oxfordshire

Historical Description

Watlington, a small town and a parish in Oxfordshire. The town stands at the foot of the Chiltern Hills, 8 miles NE of Wallingford, and 42 from London by the G.W.R., with a post, money order, and telegraph office under Tetsworth. The town-hall is an ancient building dating from 1664, and there are a lecture-hall and a police station. The town is the head of a petty sessional division, and it has two statute and pleasure fairs which are held on the Saturday before and the Saturday after Old Michaelmas Day. Acreage of the civil parish, 3687; population, 1734; of the ecclesiastical, 1657. Watlington Park is a chief residence. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford; net value, £220 with residence. The church is a plain building of flint, chiefly in the Perpendicular style, consisting of chancel, nave, aisles, S porch, organ chamber, S chantry, vestry, and an embattled western tower. It was restored at a cost of over £4000 in 1877. There are Congregational, Primitive Methodist, and Wesleyan chapels, a cottage hospital, and a few small charities. Christmas Common is a small village in the parish. It has a small district church.

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.

Civil Registration

For general information about Civil Registration (births, marriages and deaths) see the Civil Registration page.

Directories & Gazetteers

We have transcribed the entry for Watlington from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Watlington (St. Leonard))

Land and Property

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

Maps

Online maps of Watlington 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.