Crawley is a village to the west of Oxfordshire, very near Witney. When a chapel was first built there in the 1840s, it was only a chapelry of Witney, but in 1854, it was united with the chapel at Hailey to become the parish of Hailey with Crawley. In 1982, Hailey with Crawley were united with Witney
again.
Because Crawley spent so many years as the 'junior partner', so to speak, in a united parish, its records need some explanation. Originally, separate baptism and burial registers were kept for both Hailey and Crawley, but when one register was used up, the other them was used for both places. However, there was only ever one sequence of marriage registers. Likewise, there was only one Vestry and PCC, and the like. It was decided therefore that this catalogue should only include material solely connected with Crawley, and anything relatingto both parishes is catalogued under PAR117 (Hailey with Crawley). Searchers should therefore cross-refer between both catalogues for
information on Crawley.
Records on Crawley were deposited with the Bodleian Library in 1980, 1982 and 1983. Two appendices list the contents of each deposit, and provide a concordance for old and new references.
Recatalogued by Robin Darwall-Smith in May 1996.