Shirburn is a village to the south-east of Oxfordshire, not far from Watlington. In 1939, Shirburn was united with the neighbouring parish of Pyrton, and these two parishes were in turn united with Watlington in 1981. In the early 1990s the church at Shirburn was declared redundant.
Shirburn is unusual among Oxfordshire parishes in that a significant quantitiy of its parish records are still kept at the Bodleian. These records were deposited there in 1904-1910 by the then vicar of Shirburn and historian of Oxfordshire, H.E. Salter, and included in the MS Top. Oxon. collection. They include the earliest parish registers, Overseers' and Constables papers, and some Churchwardens' Accounts. A list of these documents, with their references, is given here:
Overseers of the Poor's Accounts, 1819-1835 (MS.Top.Oxon. b.73)
Poor Rate book, 1835-1848 (MS.Top.Oxon. c.158) Poor Rate book, 1844-1848 (MS.Top.Oxon.d.86)
Six Highway Account books, 1855/6, 1856/7, 1859/60, 1860/1, 1861/2 and 1862/3 (MS.Top.Oxon. f.28/1-3 & d.87/1-3)
Highway rate book, 1862-1864 (MS.Top.Oxon. f.29)
Constables Accounts, 1724(?)-1789, 1792-1794 & 1798-1805 (MS.Top.Oxon f.30)
Papers relating to the tithes and tithe-collecting of the vicar of Shirburn, including terrier of the glebe, aggrements to pay tithe, etc 1635-1808 (MS.Top.Oxon. c.161)
Register of services, 1878-1887 (MS.Top.Oxon. e.120)
Churchwardens Accounts, 1808-1846 (MS.Top.Oxon. e.121)
The parish registers: 1587-1679 (MS.Top.Oxon.c.142), and 1680-1780 (MS.Top.Oxon. b.46) were deposited with Oxfordshire History Centre in 2019.
Of the records here at Oxfordshire Archives, most were deposited originally with the Bodleian in 1968 and 1981, and transferred here in the 1980s. Further deposits were made as Acc 3764 in 1994 and as part of Acc 6801 in October 2019.
A concordance of old and new references is provided at the end of the catalogue listing. Catalogued by Robin Darwall-Smith in August 1996, with additions by Alison Smith in January 2020.