The Name Hinksey is Anglo-Saxon, dating from the thirteenth century. It probably derives from “Hengestesieg” meaning Hengist’s Island or Stallion’s Island.

685-688: First mention of settlement when land given to the Abbey at Abingdon by King Caedwalla of the West Saxons

1066: From the Eleventh Century the land was in the possession of the Earls of Abingdon. The Doomesday Book shows it as part of the Hundred of Hormer

13th Century: St Laurence Church built

15th Century: St Laurence church tower built

1536: Dissolution of the Monasteries. South Hinksey passes to the Crown

1537-38: Leased to Thomas Peers

1553: Passed to the Lord of the Manor of Cumnor

16th to 17th Century: Some of the oldest surviving cottages and farm buildings built

1814: Enclosure Act. South Hinksey is still part of Cumnor

1828: John Towle (1796-1883) married at South Hinksey Church. He was one of Oxford’s first two non-conformist aldermen, and elected Mayor of Oxford in 1856. At the time of his marriage he was a paper-maker at Weirs Mill in Grandpont. By 1851 he was living in South Hinksey. The 1861 Census shows him at Hinksey Paper Mill, South Hinksey

1853: The village features in Mathew Arnold’s The Scholar Gypsy

1870-72: John Marius Wilson’s Imperial Gazetteer of England an Wales described South Hinksey thus:

A village and a parish in Abingdon district, Berks. The village stands near the Oxford railway, 1 mile SW of Oxford. The parish comprises 550 acres. Real property, £2,390. Population in 1851, 300; in 1861, 636. Houses, 133. The increase of population was caused by the opening of the Oxford station on the Great Western railway. A new village, called New Hinksey, then arose, ½ a mile distant from the old one; and has a post office under Oxford. The property is subdivided. The Happy Valley, near the old village, affords a charming walk, and was much loved by Dr Arnold. The view of Oxford, by Turner, was taken from a hill between the villages of South Hinksey and North Hinksey. The conduit built by Otho Nicholson of Christ Church, in 1617, to supply Oxford with water, is in the hill fields above the villages. The living is a vicarage, united with the vicarage of Wootton, in the diocese of Oxford. Value, £183. Patron, the Earl of Abingdon. The church was repaired in 1860. John Piers, archbishop of York, was a native.

1871: Tom Besson, Mayor of Oxford, lived at 38 Post Office Street, South Hinksey

1938: A34 built, a 3-lane highway from Hinksey to Botley, nicknamed “the road from nowhere to nowhere”. During the War, it was closed at both ends and used for tank assembly

1939-45: Second World War

1955: Baptist Chapel bought by Parish as Village Hall

1973: A34 connected to Abingdon bypass, became dual carriageway. Southern access to the village closed and Parker Road constructed

1999: Current boundaries of Parish drawn