•  North Hinksey, Berkshire

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In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described North Hinksey like this:

HINKSEY (NORTH), or Ferry-Hinksey, a village and a parish in Abingdon district, Berks. The village stands on the river Isis, at the boundary with Oxfordshire, ½ a mile SW of Oxford r. station; is reached, from Oxford, by a ferry; and was anciently called Hengestesigge. A visitor to it says, respecting it, but might have said more suitably respecting South Hinksey:- "Down the woodlands on the left yon descend into old, old, dry walled, tottering, time worn Hinksey. ...

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This most Arcadian village, as secluded as a wood pigeon's nest, as tranquil as the grotto of Silence, the home of none but simplest peasantry, is scarce the flit of a butterfly from Oxford, that great laboratory of mind:- ' Not a bow shot from the college, Half the globe from sense and knowledge, ' Happy Hinksey !-the tree of knowledge is still fatal; and whoever tastes of its fruit his state of paradisiacal simplicity expires. Once more then happy Hinksey ! Up and down its stony lanes, and by its limpid, lightfooted stream, the only babbler to be heard in the place, along its grey, mossy bearded, mouldering walls, I wander for hours through a solitude as deep as that of a savannah., , -The parish contains also the hamlet of Botley. Post town, Oxford. Acres, 900. Real property, £2, 520. Pop., 438. Houses, 92. The property is much subdivided. The manor was given, in 955, to Abingdon abbey; and belongs now to the Earl of Abingdin. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford. Value, £97. Patron, alternately the Earl of Abingdon and the Rev. W. G. V. Harcourt. The church has a fine Norman doorway, and a good font of the decorated period; was reported, in 1859, as not good, but has since been repaired with red and black tiles, and with oaken substantial seats; and contains the tomb of Thomas Willis, who fell in the siege of Oxford in 1643, and a monument to W. Finmore, Fellow of St. John's in 1646. The churchyard has remains of a decorated cross with fluted shaft. There is a national school.

North Hinksey through time

North Hinksey is now part of Vale of White Horse district. Click here for graphs and data of how Vale of White Horse has changed over two centuries. For statistics about North Hinksey itself, go to Units and Statistics.

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