Place:Oxhey, Hertfordshire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Oxhey is now a suburb of the borough of Watford in the Three Rivers District of the county of Hertfordshire, England. It forms part of the modern civil parish of Watford Rural and of Watford post town. It is located southwest of central Watford and in the western part of what was Bushey parish before 1906.

Bushey Parish was renamed Oxhey in 1906, while the name Bushey was retained for the separate parish of Bushey Rural Parish which had been formed in 1894. (See Wikipedia on Bushey, section entitled "Local government".) This is confirmed by the Victoria County History of Hertfordshire in the chapter, "The parish of Bushey".

It is interesting to compare the following description of Oxhey from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 from with the quotation from the same publication found under Bushey:

"OXHEY, a hamlet and a chapelry in Watford parish, Herts. The hamlet lies on the Northwestern railway, at the boundary with Middlesex, 2½ miles S by E of Watford. Population: 733. Houses: 153. The chapelry has no defined limits, but may be regarded as co-extensive with the hamlet; and its post town is Watford. The living is a donative in the diocese of Rochester. Value: not reported. Patron: T. H. S. Estcourt, Esq."

Oxhey grew as a village during the first half of the 19th century with the coming of the London and Birmingham Railway from London Euston to Boxmoor station at Hemel Hempstead in 1837. The settlement was developed to house railway workers. The line was completed to Birmingham in 1838.

Oxhey's parish church is St Matthew's, a Grade II listed building dating from 1880 in Gothic Revival style with some elements of early Art Nouveau decoration. The church also features a Karl Parsons window in the Lady Chapel."

Oxhey Grange in Oxhey Lane was built in 1876 by architect William Young (1843-1900) in the High Victorian Gothic style. It is a Grade II listed building.

The wider locations which comprise the modern Oxhey area are Oxhey Village (the area around Bushey station and between Pinner Road and London Road), Oxhey Hall (the area along Hampermill Lane towards Moor Park) and South Oxhey although this is really a suburb in itself which is adjacent to Oxhey.

Research Tips

• Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, Register Office Block CHR002, County Hall, Hertford SG13 8EJ. Indexes and Catalog
• Hertfordshire Family History Society
• Ordnance Survey map of Hertfordshire 1900 provided by A Vision of Britain through Time
• Ordnance Survey map of Hertfordshire 1944 provided by A Vision of Britain through Time
• GENUKI outlines information for genealogists for the county. It is also a doorway to pages covering individual parishes.
• Joiner's Marriage Index is available for Hertfordshire on GENUKI. Individual parishes are covered separately.
• Wikimedia Commons has a variety of maps of Hertfordshire, and parts of Hertfordshire, past and present.
• A Vision of Britain through Time is a website produced by the Department of Geography of the University of Portsmouth. It outlines all parishes as they were in the 19th century.
• The FamilySearch Wiki lists its collections of church records and vital records along with those provided by other organizations, both commercial and voluntary.
• The commercial website FindMyPast also has a collection of wills and newspaper transcriptions, as well as the "1939 Register" (an equivalent to the census gathered at the beginning of World War 2).
• The hundred of Dacorum: Introduction as provided by British History Online in the Victoria County History of Hertfordshire, volume 2, pp 141-142
• The parish of Bushey ibid, volume 2, pp 179-186