Enstone is a parish in the north-west of Oxfordshire, situated almost mid-way between Woodstock and Chipping Norton. It is unusual in that it is made up, not of one village, but of several hamlets, namely Church Enstone, Neat Enstone, Lidstone, Charlford, Broadstone, Gagingwell, Radford, Clevely and Ditchley (although this last hamlet is now also partly in Spelsbury). Since 1964, the parish of Enstone has been combined with Heythrop.
The parish records of Enstone have two unusual features, namely a especially thorough run of Poor Rate Books from the mid-19th century, and, more importantly, 22 medieval deeds concerning some church property in the hamley of Cleveley. Further details on the parish may be found in J. Jordan 'A Parochial History of Enstone' (London and Oxford 1857), of which a copy may be found in the searchroom.
The parish records of Enstone have been deposited at various times. The medieval deeds were purchased by the Bodleian library in 1956, and records were deposited there in 1957 and 1972, all of which items were transferred to Oxfordshire Archives in the 1980s. Deposits were made directly with Oxfordshire Archives in 1957, 1967, 1974, 1978, 1997 (two deposits in this year), and 2008, and assigned the Accession Numbers 316, 690, 1125, 1555, 4216, 4259 and 5771. Accs. 316 and 1125 were originally catalogued as Misc. En. and Misc. Enstone, but are now reunited with the rest of the collection. Two appendices list in detail the contents of each accession, and provide a table of old and new references.
Catalogued by Robin Darwall-Smith in August 1997, with additions made by Hannah Jones in October 2008