Goosey | |
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All Saints' parish church |
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Goosey shown within Oxfordshire | |
Population | 135 (2011 Census) |
OS grid reference | SU3591 |
Civil parish |
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District | |
Shire county | |
Region | |
Country | England |
Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
Post town | Faringdon |
Postcode district | SN7 |
Dialling code | 01367 |
Police | Thames Valley |
Fire | Oxfordshire |
Ambulance | South Central |
EU Parliament | South East England |
UK Parliament | |
Website | Goosey Parish Meeting |
Goosey is a village and civil parish about 4.5 miles (7 km) northwest of Wantage in the Vale of White Horse. Goosey was part of Berkshire until 1974, when the Vale of White Horse was transferred to Oxfordshire.
Goosey's toponym has evolved from the forms Gosie, Gosi and Goseig used in the 11th century, through Goseya in the 12th century and Gossehay in the 16th century before reaching its current form.
King Offa of Mercia is recorded as having given the Manor of Goosey to Abingdon Abbey in the 8th century AD in exchange for Andresey, an island adjacent to the abbey. In the 11th century the manor was assessed during reign of King Edward the Confessor (1042–66) as being 17 hides and worth £9; and then in the Domesday Book of 1086 as being 11 hides and worth £10. The abbey continued to hold the manor until 1538, when in the Dissolution of the Monasteries it was forced to surrender all its estates to the Crown.
In 1544 Henry Norris of Rycote and his wife Margery obtained a grant of the manor in fee. Goosey remained in the Norris family until Henry Norris' grandson Francis Norris, 1st Earl of Berkshire sold it in 1608. Goosey then passed through the Tawyer, Matthews and Saxton families until the early 19th century, when Sir Charles Saxton left it to his niece Mary, the wife of Admiral Robert Dudley Oliver. The Oliver family still held the manor in the 1920s.