Place:Ockham, Surrey, England

Watchers
NameOckham
TypeParish (ancient), Civil parish
Coordinates51.283°N 0.45°W
Located inSurrey, England
See alsoWoking Hundred, Surrey, Englandancient county division in which it was located
Guildford Rural, Surrey, Englandrural district in which it was located 1894-1974
Guildford District, Surrey, Englanddistrict municipality covering the area since 1974
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog
the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Ockham is a rural and semi-rural village and civil parish in the Guildford District of Surrey. The village starts immediately east of the A3 road but the lands extend to the River Wey in the west where it has a large mill-house. Ockham is between Cobham (near Leatherhead) and East Horsley (near Guildford).

Through the Middle Ages in the many records nationally (such as Assize Rolls and feet of fines), Ockham features no high nobles among its owners. However it is the birthplace of William of Ockham—famous Mediaeval philosopher and the proponent of Occam's razor.

Byron's daughter and trendsetter Ada Lovelace had a brief home at Ockham Park before settling at Horsley Towers, which her husband the 1st Earl of Lovelace built in the village to the south, East Horsley. His forefather Sir Peter King bought the manor using an Act of Parliament to cement the deal from the long-standing lords of the manor the Weston family of Albury, Send in Surrey, and of Sussex, who had acquired the manor from distant cousins who since their late Tudor period forebear (Francis Weston) owned it along with Sutton Place, Surrey in the extreme south of the parish of Woking.

Surrey Research Tips

Government

Administrative boundaries of the county of Surrey (Surrey History Centre. The centre has a website with a number of useful indexes--titheholders in various parishes, deaths at the county gaol, etc.)

Registration Districts

  • Registration Districts in Surrey from their introduction in 1837 to the present. By drilling down through the links you can follow any parish through the registration districts to which it was attached.

GENUKI provisions

The website GENUKI provides a very comprehensive list of reference sources for the County of Surrey. It includes:

  • Archives and Libraries
  • Church record availability for both Surrey and the former Surrey part of Greater London
  • 19th century descriptions of the ecclesiastical parishes
  • Lists of cemeteries
  • Local family history societies
  • A list of historic maps online

History

  • The Victoria History of the County of Surrey is a series of three volumes available online through British History Online. The volumes were written over the past hundred or so years by a number of authors and cover various sections of Surrey. A list of the volumes and what each contains can be found under the source Victoria History of the County of Surrey. Both volumes 3 and 4 contain areas which are part of Greater London and parts of modern Surrey.

Maps

  • The National Library of Scotland has a website which provides maps taken from the Ordnance Survey England & Wales One-Inch to the Mile series of 1892-1908 as well as equivalent maps for Scotland itself. The immediate presentation is a "help" screen and a place selection screen prompting the entry of a location down to town, village or parish level. These screens can be removed by a click of the "X". The map is very clear and shows parish and county boundaries and many large buildings and estates that existed at the turn of the 20th century. Magnification can be adjusted and an "overlay feature" allows inspection of the area today along with that of 1900. The specific map from the series can be viewed as a whole ("View this map") and this allows the inspection of the map legend (found in the left hand bottom corner. Becoming familiar with the various facilities of these maps is well worth the trouble.
  • Victoria County History chapter on Ockham
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Ockham, Surrey. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.