Place:Shiplake, Oxfordshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Shiplake is a rural village and civil parish on the River Thames situated 2.3 miles (3.7 km) south of Henley on Thames in Oxfordshire, England. The main road from Henley to Reading, Berkshire, 4 miles (6.4 km) to the south-west, passes the edge of the village. Since 1974 the civil parish has been part of the South Oxfordshire District. The UK census of 2011 reported the population as 1,954.

The parish church is dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul.

In 1773 the Thames Navigation Commission built Shiplake Lock on the River Thames about half a mile (800 m) downriver from the main village. In 1857 the Great Western Railway opened a branch line between Twyford and Henley-on-Thames, crossing the Thames on Shiplake Railway Bridge, about 300 yards (270 m) downstream from Shiplake Lock. The GWR built Shiplake railway station at Lower Shiplake, 1 mile (1.6 km) northwest of the main village. Lower Shiplake has since grown into the largest settlement within the parish.

In 1889 the author Jerome K. Jerome featured the village in his novel Three Men in a Boat.

Shiplake Court is former a country house rebuilt in 1894 overlooking the Thames. In 1959 became Shiplake College, an independent boarding school.

In 2003 the village of Binfield Heath and hamlet of Crowsley, both originally in the parish of Shiplake, separated from it to form the newly-created civil parish of "Binfield Heath".

Research Tips

• A map illustrating the parishes of southeast Oxfordshire as of 1900 will be found under Binfield Hundred
• Oxfordshire History Centre, St Luke's Church, Temple Road, Oxford, OX4 2HT
• Oxfordshire FHS covers the whole county. The Family History Society provides an interactive map to assist in locating individual parishes and also relates the society's progress in transcribing parish registers and gravestone information for that particular parish. Browse the website to see what else the society can provide.
• Further information from GENUKI
• Ordnance Survey map of Oxfordshire 1900 provided by A Vision of Britain through Time
• Ordnance Survey map of Oxfordshire 1944 provided by A Vision of Britain through Time
• English Jurisdictions 1851, a parish finding aid provided by FamilySearch, particularly helpful in large towns and cities.
• Shiplake was not covered in the Victoria County History of Oxfordshire as provided online in early 2016. Volume 16 is a recent volume and deals with the Henley vicinity rather than the Binfield Hundred. There are 7 references to Shiplake in the introductory chapter and no doubt more in the ten further chapters dealing with Henley. Earlier volumes in the series covered the county under the historical divisions of "hundreds". It is planned to deal with the missing parishes in a later volume.