Headington area Family History
For pages of Oxford History including house biographies and lists
of people in directories, please go to www.headington.org.uk/oxon
Warning about "Headington Registration District"
Church baptisms and weddings take place in a small local parish, and if the person you are researching was baptised or married in a church in Headington itself, you are now in the right place.
Civil registration, however, covers a huge district, so if you have a General Register Office (GRO) reference to Headington, the chances are that you will not find the person living in Headington. The Headington Registration District covered many parishes in Oxfordshire and even spread into Buckinghamshire, so a GRO reference to Headington means that the person could have lived in any of the following parishes, all of which orginally all came under the Headington Union:
Beckley (from 1844); Chippinghurst; Cowley; Cuddesdon; Denton; Elsfield; Forest Hill; Garsington; Holton; Horspath; Horton cum Studley; Iffley; Littlemore (from 1879); Marston; Oxford: St. Clement; Oxford: St. Giles; Oxford: St. John the Baptist; Shotover; Shotover Hill Place; Stanton St. John; Stowood; Studley (from 1844); Wheatley; Woodeaton
Headington censuses
1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901
The Headington area in this period included the three villages of Old Headington, New Headington, and Headington Quarry, as well as Headington Hill, the Marston Road area, Barton, and Sandhills. By the time of the 1891 census, there are over 3000 people listed under Headington, and over 5,300 in 1901. The Headington webmaster has typed up all the censuses, from 1841 to 1901
- 1841 census for Headington – on line in its entirety!
- 1851 & 1861 censuses for Headington – free searchable database link right at the top of Ray Bellis’s genealogy page
- 1891 Headington census (index only, PDF format)
Headington Rate Book, 1850
An Act of Parliament in 1850 (13 & 14 Vict. cap. 19) enabled the Parish Vestry to order that rates should be charged on the owners of property below the rateable value of £6, rather than the occupiers. As a result, a rate-book was sent to all Headington rate-payers. You can gauge the kind of house your Headington ancestors lived in, and see who owned it.
- See Headington Rate Book for 1850
Headington parish registers
- Details here of which registers are available, and where
- Headington people who strayed elsewhere (under construction)
Headington directories
Early directories only list the principal inhabitants of an area, that is the gentry and farmers, plus a trade list including the kind of people to be found in the Yellow Pages today (shopkeepers, blacksmiths, carpenters, innkeepers etc.). This means that almost all the women and about four-fifths of the men (the labourers) will be missing. It is not until the 1930s that Kelly’s Directory started to include every householder. Here are the entries from two early directories of Headington:
Log books of Headington schools
School log books became compulsory in 1864, and are a valuable source of information. Most of the Headington logbooks have survived:
Detailed Headington maps: 1876, 1898, 1921, 1939
Copies of the above large-scale Ordnance Survey maps of Headington (which show every house) are available in Oxfordshire Studies. They also have more OS modern maps, but only the above four maps are copyright-free.
Diaries
Finally, although it’s a bit of a long shot, don't forget published diaries!
Top twenty Headington surnames in 1891
In 1891, the three Headington villages had a total population of 3005. Here are the top twenty names (number of people with the name given in brackets):
Morris[s] (117); Coppock (107); Taylor (85); Cooper (70); Jacob[s] (68); Smith (65); Jones (58); Horwood (47); Kimber (45); Webb (44); Gard[e]ner (43); Bushnell (42); Adams (41); Trafford (40); Tolley (36); Bateman (35); Goodgame (33); Ward (31); Clark[e] (28); Louch (27)
Specific Headington surnames
- Coppock: Dave Coppock is an expert on genealogy of the Coppock family of Headington Quarry, and is very happy to answer any questions about them.
- Goodgame: see the Goodgame section on Thomas Robinson’s site (also has Coppocks and Traffords)
- Hedges is a name often found in Headington: see the Hedges One-Name Study site
- Louch: here are some family photographs waiting to be identified
- Morris: Here is a brief Morris pedigree, drawn up for William Morris (Lord Nuffield), but as his father came from Witney, he was not related to the Headington Morrises. You are more likely to be related if you have his mother’s surname, Pether
- Tolley: Contact the Webmaster, who has created a family tree linking every member of the Tolley family of Headington
- Trafford: Keith Milne in Canada keeps a small E-mail list up to date on the family history of Headington and Oxfordshire Traffords
