Goosey was a Saxon village, known by the same name as it bears today, signifying “goose island”. It was a chapelry of Stanford in the Vale, Abingdon Hundred, although Goosey itself lies within Ock Hundred.
Today it consists of a few houses, cottages and farm buildings scattered around a green, about two miles south-east of Stanford in the Vale and three-and-a-half miles north by north-west of Wantage.
The river Ock flows nearby.
Size
968 acres (392 hectares)
Population
176 in 1851; 135 in 2011
Hundred
Ock
Poor law union
Wantage
Registration district
Wantage
Present-day local authority
Vale of the White Horse, Oxfordshire
Grid reference
SU 36 91
Adjoining parishes in 1851
Balking, Denchworth, Sparsholt, Stanford in the Vale, West Challow
Genealogical resources
See Berks FHS Books for coverage of this parish in the society’s range of CDs.
See also Berkshire Record Office holdings.
Berkshire Record Office has no registers for Goosey because they have not been deposited. Prior to 1850 the registers were incorporated within those of Stanford in the Vale.
Published local history
by Violet Mary Howse
- Photographs of the buildings and inhabitants of Goosey in Berkshire, 19th-20th century with a descriptive list (1969 ) in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
- Goosey: a parish record (1968) in Wantage public library
Anglican church and parochial organisation
All Saints’ Church dates from the early thirteenth century. Soon after the Dissolution of the Monasteries a new bay was added to the east end. It is an aisle-less nave, much admired for its simplicity by connoisseurs of church architecture.
Schools
A teacher was enumerated in the 1851 census, and the 1911 census cites The Schoolhouse as an address, but nothing has so far been traced of the school’s existence.
Pubs
An innkeeper was enumerated in the 1851 census, but the inn was not named.
Other local history
The monks of Abingdon Abbey had a farm at Goosey, and Abbey Farm is on the site of what was once a small stone house.
Blackacre Farm and Goosey Wick Farm are named in the 1851 census. Wick Farm is also in the 1881 census.
