Leafield is located approximately five miles north-west of Witney. Until 1745 it was a chapelry of Shipton-under-Wychwood, and it is the Shipton registers that should be consulted for earlier entries.
These records were originally held by the Bodleian Library until being transferred to Oxfordshire Record Office in the early 1980s. The collection has since been augmented by accessions 2752, 2893 and 5831. The whole collection was recatalogued in June 2006 by Hannah Jones, with further additions in March 2009. A conspectus of old and new reference numbers is given at the end of this catalogue.