[1] It is at the top of Headington Hill overlooking the city in the Thames valley below, and bordering Marston to the north-west, Cowley to the south, and Barton and Risinghurst to the east.

The site of Headington shows evidence of continued occupation from the Stone Age, as the 2001 field excavations in Barton Lane found, suggesting a date in the 11th century BC.

Pottery was found on the Manor Ground, suggesting an Iron Age settlement there in the 7th century BC.

In a charter of 1004, Æthelred the Unready, "written at the royal ville called Headan dune", gave land in Headington to St Frideswide's Priory, which included the quarry and the area around it.

New Headington refers to some of the area on the south side of the London Road, originating as a late 19th-century suburb.

The area also includes the main campus of Oxford Brookes University, Ruskin College (which moved in its entirety from central Oxford to its Headington site in 2012), and the city's main hospitals, including the John Radcliffe, Nuffield and Churchill.

Close by is Shotover Hill, a heath and woodland area with views over Oxfordshire, and listed as a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

They include Lord Krebs, David Marquand, Anthony Kenny, Sir Isaiah Berlin, the historian A.

B. Emden, the chemist Dalziel Hammick, Lord Elton, Michael Ernest Sadler, Cyril Bailey, his daughter Mary Creighton Bailey who was born there, and John Johnson (the University Printer).