Nuneham Courtenay is a village just to the south of Oxford. It is very unusual in that it has had no less then three separate buildings which have done duty as its parish church. The first, medieval, church, was pulled down in the 1760s as part of the complete transformation of the village by Lord Harcourt, and the second church was built in its stead in 1764, although it was at quite some distance from the new village. In the 1870s a third church was built in the middle of the village, and in 1880 this took over as the new parish church of Nuneham Courtenay (although the second church still survives). In 1972, Nuneham Courtenay was united with Marsh Baldon and Toot Baldon, and the church itself declared redundant in 1973. These parishes now form part of the Dorchester Area Team Ministry, which also includes Dorchester itself, Berinsfield, Clifton Hampden, Culham, Drayton St. Leonard, Long Wittenham and Little Wittenham, Stadhampton with Chislehampton and Warborough.
The parish records of Nuneham Courtenay have been deposited at various times: deposits were made with the Bodleian Library in 1969, 1977 and 1981, and directly with Oxfordshire Archives in 1987 and 1996 (these last two deposits received the Accession Numbers 2670 and 4116). Appendices list the contents of each deposit, and provide a concordance of old and new references.
Catalogued by Robin Darwall-Smith in August 1996.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
G. Hannah (ed.): The Deserted Village: The Diary of an Oxfordshire Rector, James Newton of Nuneham Courtenay 1736-1786 (Alan Sutton 1992), especially pp.xvi-xix. J. Sherwood and N. Pevsner: Oxfordshire (Penguin 1974).