Marcham 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 authority ...
about west of
Abingdon,
Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the north west of South East England. It is a mainly rural county, with its largest settlement being the city of Oxford. The county is a centre of research and development, primarily ...
. The
2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 1,905. The parish includes the
hamlets
A hamlet is a human settlement that is smaller than a town or village. Its size relative to a parish can depend on the administration and region. A hamlet may be considered to be a smaller settlement or subdivision or satellite entity to a lar ...
of Cothill east-northeast of the village, and Gozzard's Ford northeast of the village.
Frilford
Frilford is a hamlet and civil parish about west of Abingdon, at the junction of the A415 and A338 roads. It lies in the traditional county of Berkshire, but since 1974 has been administered as part of Oxfordshire.
Archaeology
The parish o ...
and
Garford
Garford is a village and civil parish about west of Abingdon. It was part of Berkshire until the 1974 boundary changes transferred it to Oxfordshire. The parish is bounded by the River Ock to the north, by two tributaries of the Ock to the ...
used to be townships of Marcham parish, but are now separate civil parishes. All these parishes were part of
Berkshire
Berkshire ( ; in the 17th century sometimes spelt phonetically as Barkeshire; abbreviated Berks.) is a historic county in South East England. One of the home counties, Berkshire was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II as the Royal County of Berk ...
until the
1974 boundary changes transferred them to Oxfordshire.
Marcham parish extends about north–south and up to east–west. It is bounded to the south by the
River Ock
The River Ock is a small English river which is a tributary of the River Thames. It has as its catchment area the Vale of White Horse, a low-lying and wide valley in south Oxfordshire, and flows into the River Thames, at Abingdon on the reach ...
and to the east largely by Sandford Brook, a tributary of the Ock. To the west it is bounded largely by field boundaries. To the north the parish tapers almost to a point, bounded to the west by the
A338 road, to the north by the
A420 road
The A420 is a road between Bristol and Oxford in England. Between Swindon and Oxford it is a primary route.
Present route
Since the opening of the M4 motorway, the road has been in two sections. The first section begins on Old Market Stre ...
and to the east by field boundaries. The land is low-lying, rising from about above sea level by the Ock in the south to at Upwood Park in the north. Marcham village is on the
A415 road, which runs east–west through the parish. The A415 links Abingdon and
A34 Marcham interchange to the east with
Kingston Bagpuize
Kingston Bagpuize () is a village in the civil parish of Kingston Bagpuize with Southmoor, about west of Abingdon. It was part of Berkshire, England, until the 1974 boundary changes transferred it to Oxfordshire. The 2011 Census recorded the ...
on the A420 road to the west.
Archaeology
In Trendles Field behind the former Noah's Ark Inn, in the extreme south-west of the parish, the remains of an
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...
and
Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...
village have been excavated.
Evidence has been found of round huts and grain
storage pits, to which a
celtic religious shrine
A shrine ( la, scrinium "case or chest for books or papers"; Old French: ''escrin'' "box or case") is a sacred or holy sacred space, space dedicated to a specific deity, ancestor worship, ancestor, hero, martyr, saint, Daemon (mythology), daem ...
was later added.
[ At the end of the first century a stone-built ]Romano-British
The Romano-British culture arose in Britain under the Roman Empire following the Roman conquest in AD 43 and the creation of the province of Britannia. It arose as a fusion of the imported Roman culture with that of the indigenous Britons, a ...
temple was built on the site of one of the huts and a smaller stone building, possibly a shrine, was built on the site of the Iron Age shrine. The temple seems to have remained in use well into the 5th century.[ This site was subject to an excavation by ]Oxford University
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
and a research project, with excavations being made each July until the summer of 2011. In 2009 it was announced that the remains of a possible amphitheatre
An amphitheatre (British English) or amphitheater (American English; both ) is an open-air venue used for entertainment, performances, and sports. The term derives from the ancient Greek ('), from ('), meaning "on both sides" or "around" and ...
had been found. The amphitheatre is unusual in that it is round, unlike most Romano-British arenas which are oval.
Manor
The 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 ...
"Marcham" 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 settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
''Merceham'', in which ''ham'' is a homestead and ''merece'' is a place where wild celery grows. The earliest record of the manor of Marcham is from 965, when King Edgar the Peaceful
Edgar ( ang, Ēadgār ; 8 July 975), known as the Peaceful or the Peaceable, was King of the English from 959 until his death in 975. The younger son of King Edmund I and Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury, he came to the throne as a teenager following ...
granted to Abingdon Abbey
Abingdon Abbey ( '' " St Mary's Abbey " '' ) was a Benedictine monastery located in the centre of Abingdon-on-Thames beside the River Thames.
The abbey was founded c.675 AD in honour of The Virgin Mary.
The Domesday Book of 1086 informs ...
an estate of 50 hides that included Marcham. 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 manusc ...
of 1086 records that the abbey still held Marcham after the Norman Conquest of England
The Norman Conquest (or the Conquest) was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Normans, Norman, Duchy of Brittany, Breton, County of Flanders, Flemish, and Kingdom of France, French troops, ...
. The abbey was forced to surrender all of its estates to the Crown
The Crown is the state in all its aspects within the jurisprudence of the Commonwealth realms and their subdivisions (such as the Crown Dependencies, overseas territories, provinces, or states). Legally ill-defined, the term has different ...
in 1538 in the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Parish church
The oldest parts of the Church of England Parish Church
A parish church in the Church of England is the church which acts as the religious centre for the people within each Church of England parish (the smallest and most basic Church of England administrative unit; since the 19th century sometimes ca ...
of All Saints are 13th-century, including the west tower and probably the font
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design.
In mod ...
. The south doorway is Perpendicular Gothic
Perpendicular Gothic (also Perpendicular, Rectilinear, or Third Pointed) architecture was the third and final style of English Gothic architecture developed in the Kingdom of England during the Late Middle Ages, typified by large windows, four-c ...
from either the late 14th or early 15th century. Also Perpendicular are the timber roof of the nave and the 15th-century doorway to the west tower. The church was heavily rebuilt in 1837. It is a Grade II* listed building
In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...
. The tower has a ring
Ring may refer to:
* Ring (jewellery), a round band, usually made of metal, worn as ornamental jewelry
* To make a sound with a bell, and the sound made by a bell
:(hence) to initiate a telephone connection
Arts, entertainment and media Film and ...
of six bells. James Wells of Aldbourne
Aldbourne (pronounced "awld·bawn") is a village and civil parish about north-east of Marlborough, Wiltshire, England, in a valley on the south slope of the Lambourn Downs – part of the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. ...
, Wiltshire, cast the second, fourth, fifth and tenor bells in 1816. Charles and George Mears of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry
The Whitechapel Bell Foundry was a business in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. At the time of the closure of its Whitechapel premises, it was the oldest manufacturing company in Great Britain. The bell foundry primarily made church bells a ...
cast the treble bell in 1855. The Whitechapel Bell Foundry also cast or recast the third bell in 1988.
Economic and social history
Hyde Farmhouse on the eastern side of the village is late 13th- or early 14th-century. It was remodelled and extended in the middle of the 16th century and again in the middle of the 17th century. It is a Grade II* listed building. Just southwest of the village is a circular dovecote
A dovecote or dovecot , doocot ( Scots) or columbarium is a structure intended to house pigeons or doves. Dovecotes may be free-standing structures in a variety of shapes, or built into the end of a house or barn. They generally contain pige ...
. It is either late medieval or 16th-century. On the south side of the village is The Priory. It is mid-16th-century and a Grade II* listed building. Marcham has long had a watermill
A watermill or water mill is a mill that uses hydropower. It is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as milling (grinding), rolling, or hammering. Such processes are needed in the production of ...
on the Ock, about south of the village. The present mill building is 17th-century, with an 18th-century extension. An open field system
The open-field system was the prevalent agricultural system in much of Europe during the Middle Ages and lasted into the 20th century in Russia, Iran, and Turkey. Each manor or village had two or three large fields, usually several hundred acre ...
of farming continued in the parish until 1836, when the inclosure award for Marcham was made. The road east–west through Gozzard's Ford used to be a turnpike linking Abingdon in the east to Fyfield in the west. It was later disturnpiked, and in the 20th century the part between Gozzard's Ford and Shippon
Shippon is a village in Oxfordshire, England, 1 mile west of Abingdon. It is the largest village in the civil parish of St. Helen Without, in Vale of White Horse District. It was in Berkshire until it was transferred to Oxfordshire in 1974. ...
was closed and dismantled to make way for one of the runways at RAF Abingdon.
Air crash
On 11 February 1942 an Armstrong Whitworth Whitley V bomber aircraft, N1439 of No. 10 Operational Training Unit RAF, took off from RAF Abingdon
Royal Air Force Abingdon or more simply RAF Abingdon was a Royal Air Force station near Abingdon, Oxfordshire. It is now known as Dalton Barracks and is used by the Royal Logistic Corps.
History
The airfield was opened in 1932, initially as ...
for night circuit training. A minute later it crashed in Upwood Park in the north of Marcham parish and burst into flames. The crash was ascribed to an error by the trainee pilot. Three of the four crew were killed. The survivor, Sgt DE Hughes, was hospitalised in the Radcliffe Infirmary
The Radcliffe Infirmary was a hospital in central north Oxford, England, located at the southern end of Woodstock Road on the western side, backing onto Walton Street.
History
The initial proposals to build a hospital in Oxford were put forw ...
in Oxford and survived the rest of the War.[
]
Amenities
Marcham has a Church of England
The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britain ...
Primary School. Denman College
Denman, formally Denman College, was a residential adult education college centred on what was Marcham Park at Marcham in the English county of Oxfordshire (formerly Berkshire). Founded by the National Federation of Women’s Institutes (NFWI) ...
, the National Federation of Women's Institutes
The Women's Institute (WI) is a community-based organisation for women in the United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand. The movement was founded in Stoney Creek, Ontario, Canada, by Erland and Janet Lee with Adelaide Hoodless being th ...
' residential adult education college, is in Marcham, though in 2020 the NFWI announced plans for its closure. Marcham Football Club plays in North Berks Football League
The North Berks Football League is a football competition in England. The league was founded in 1908. It has a total of three divisions, with Division One sitting at level 12 of the English football league system. The vast majority of clubs are ...
Division Two. President and Life Member of the Berks & Bucks Football Association and North Berks Football League, W.J. Gosling, was born in the village in 1928. Marcham Cricket club plays in the Oxfordshire Cricket Association League. Marcham Centre was opened on 19 June 2020 providing Marcham with a village hall, Multi-Use Games Area (MUGA) and playing fields. Marcham has a village shop and post office called MVS.
Transport
Two bus routes serve Marcham: The X1, which is operated by Thames Travel
Thames Travel is a bus operator serving the southern part of the English county of Oxfordshire. It is based in Didcot and is a subsidiary of the Go-Ahead Group.
In May 2011 the Go-Ahead Group bought Thames Travel.
Branded routes River Rapids ...
, links Marcham with Abingdon, Oxford and Wantage, and route 15, which is operated by Pulhams Coaches, links Marcham with Abingdon and Witney.
References
Sources and further reading
*
* Kamash, Z, Gosden C, and Lock G. 2010. “Continuity and Religious Practices in Roman Britain: The Case of the Rural Religious Complex at Marcham/Frilford, Oxfordshire.” Britannia 41: 95–125.
*
*
External links
Marcham and District News
Archaeology at Marcham
Marcham Society
Marcham Parish Council
Marcham Centre
{{authority control
Civil parishes in Oxfordshire
Villages in Oxfordshire