Dorton (or Dourton) is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

in the

Aylesbury Vale The Aylesbury Vale (or Vale of Aylesbury) is a geographical region in Buckinghamshire, England, which is bounded by the Borough of Milton Keynes and South Northamptonshire to the north, Central Bedfordshire and the Borough of Dacorum (Hertford ...

district of Buckinghamshire. It is in the western part of the county, about north of the Oxfordshire

market town A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regular market; this distinguished it from a village or city. In Britain, small rural ...

Thame Thame is a market town and civil parish in Oxfordshire, about east of the city of Oxford and southwest of Aylesbury. It derives its name from the River Thame which flows along the north side of the town and forms part of the county border wi ...

Manor

The village

toponym Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of '' toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of ...

is derived from the

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

for "farm at a narrow pass". The

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...

of 1086 records it as ''Dortone'', and in the 13th century it was ''Durtone''. Before the Norman conquest of England Alric, son of Goding, a

thegn In Anglo-Saxon England, thegns were aristocratic landowners of the second rank, below the ealdormen who governed large areas of England. The term was also used in early medieval Scandinavia for a class of retainers. In medieval Scotland, there ...

of Edward the Confessor, held the manor of Dorton. However, the Domesday Book records that by 1086 the Norman baron

Walter Giffard Walter Giffard (April 1279) was Lord Chancellor of England and Archbishop of York. Family Giffard was a son of Hugh Giffard of Boyton in Wiltshire,Greenway Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066–1300: Volume 6: York: Archbishops' a royal justice, ...

held it.

Dorton House Dorton House, formerly known as Wildernesse, is a Grade II listed Georgian mansion house in Seal, Kent, near Sevenoaks; until 2013 it was used as the headquarters for the Royal London Society for the Blind (RLSB) and as housing for the blind an ...

is a Grade I listed Jacobean mansion to the south of the village. It is now a preparatory school, Ashfold School.

Parish church

The Church of England parish church of Saint

John the Evangelist John the Evangelist ( grc-gre, Ἰωάννης, Iōánnēs; Aramaic: ܝܘܚܢܢ; Ge'ez: ዮሐንስ; ar, يوحنا الإنجيلي, la, Ioannes, he, יוחנן cop, ⲓⲱⲁⲛⲛⲏⲥ or ⲓⲱ̅ⲁ) is the name traditionally given ...

was originally a chapel of ease to nearby Chilton. St. John's has been a parish in its own right since at least 1590. The

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

and

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ov ...

of the church building may be 12th century, as is the bowl of the font. There is a 13th-century lancet window in the nave. The south porch was added in the 13th century, es evidenced by a blocked window of that date in its east wall. In the 14th century the

Decorated Gothic English Gothic is an architectural style that flourished from the late 12th until the mid-17th century. The style was most prominently used in the construction of cathedrals and churches. Gothic architecture's defining features are pointed ar ...

south

aisle An aisle is, in general, a space for walking with rows of non-walking spaces on both sides. Aisles with seating on both sides can be seen in airplanes, certain types of buildings, such as churches, cathedrals, synagogues, meeting halls, par ...

was added, the chancel arch was at least partly rebuilt and the present east window and

piscina A piscina is a shallow basin placed near the altar of a church, or else in the vestry or sacristy, used for washing the communion vessels. The sacrarium is the drain itself. Anglicans usually refer to the basin, calling it a piscina. For Roman Ca ...

were added. The present stained glass in the east window is 15th century. The present entrance arch to the porch was added in the 15th century, the base of the font is from the same century and the Perpendicular Gothic window in the south wall of the south aisle was added in about 1480. St. John's has three bells hung in a timber-framed

bell-cot A bellcote, bell-cote or bell-cot is a small framework and shelter for one or more bells. Bellcotes are most common in church architecture but are also seen on institutions such as schools. The bellcote may be carried on brackets projecting from ...

, plus a small Sanctus bell. Bartholomew Atton of Buckingham cast the tenor bell in 1604 and Robert Atton cast the second bell in 1626. John Taylor and Sons cast the treble bell in 1828, presumably at the bell-foundry they then had at Oxford.

Economic and social history

Dorton Spa, a chalybeate spring, is north of the village in Spa Wood. A large pump room and health spa were opened in about 1840 but due to lack of Royal patronage (unlike Royal Leamington Spa and

Royal Tunbridge Wells Royal Tunbridge Wells is a town in Kent, England, southeast of central London. It lies close to the border with East Sussex on the northern edge of the High Weald, whose sandstone geology is exemplified by the rock formation High Rocks. ...

) Dorton Spa declined. Little exists of it now. The Great Western Railway had the "

Bicester cut-off The Chiltern Main Line is a railway line which links London () and Birmingham (Birmingham Moor Street railway station, Moor Street and Birmingham Snow Hill railway station, Snow Hill), the United Kingdom's two largest cities, by a route via Hi ...

" railway built through the parish in 1910. The line passes within a few yards of the village, and in 1937 the GWR opened to serve it. British Railways closed the halt in 1963. The railway is now part of the

Chiltern Main Line The Chiltern Main Line is a railway line which links London () and Birmingham ( Moor Street and Snow Hill), the United Kingdom's two largest cities, by a route via High Wycombe, Bicester, Banbury, Leamington Spa and Solihull. It is one of t ...

. Dorton was noted in the 1960s and 1970s for the

tug-of-war Tug of war (also known as tug o' war, tug war, rope war, rope pulling, or tugging war) is a sport that pits two teams against each other in a test of strength: teams pull on opposite ends of a rope, with the goal being to bring the rope a certa ...

team the Dorton Dons.

References

Sources

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External links

{{authority control Villages in Buckinghamshire Civil parishes in Buckinghamshire