North Stoke is a village in the south-east corner of Oxfordshire, not far from the River Thames. Originally, it had a chapelry in the neighbouring village of Ipsden (see PAR146), which held a subordinate place, but during the 16th and 17th centuries, these positions were reversed, so that the vicar of the parish lived at Ipsden, and North Stoke became much more like the chapelry (see the introduction to PAR146 for more information on this). The parish also included the village of Newnham Murren (whose records are kept in Berkshire Record Office) as another chapelry to North Stoke, but in 1907 it became an independant parish. In 1923, North Stoke was united with Ipsden and Mongewell, but this was not effected until 1927. North Stoke is now part of the Langtree group of parishes, which includes Checkendon, Stoke Row, Woodcote and Ipsden.
The records of North Stoke have been deposited at various times: PAR253/1/R1/1 and PAR253/1/R3/1 were originally deposited with the Bodleian Library in 1975 and 1982 respectively, and PAR253/16/H1/1 was deposited with Oxfordshire Archives as Acc 2720 in 1987. Further accessions were deposited as Acc 4475 in March 1999, Acc4648 in October 1999, Acc 6487 in August 2016, Acc 6760 in June 2019 and Acc 7145 in July 2024 An appendix provides a concordance for old and new references.
Recatalogued by Robin Darwall-Smith in July 1996, with additions made by Hannah Jones in December 2003 and August 2016, Alison Smith in January 2020 and Katherine Kinrade in 2024.