COWLEY, a parish in Headington district, Oxfordshire: adjacent to the river Thames and the Oxford railway, 2¼ miles SSE of Oxford. Post town, Oxford. Acres, 940. Real property, £4, 227. Pop., 1, 404. Houses, 256. The property is much subdivided. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford. Value, £64. Patron, Christ Church, Oxford. The church was recently restored. The p. curacy of St. John, contiguous to Oxford, is a separate benefice; and a new church for it, in memory of Archbishop Langley, at a cost of about £17, 500, was proposed, in 1869, to be erected in the vicinity of Magdalen bridge. There are a Wesleyan chapel, the diocesan school, and two other public schools.

(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))