Teffont is a

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 south of

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

, England, consisting of the

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred ...

s of Teffont Magna and

Teffont Evias Teffont Evias is a small village and former civil parish in the Nadder valley in the south of Wiltshire, England. Edric Holmes described the village as "most delightfully situated", and Maurice Hewlett included Teffont in his list of the half ...

. It is in the Nadder valley, north of the river, about west of

Salisbury Salisbury ( ) is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Nadder and Bourne. The city is approximately from Southampton and from Bath. Salisbury is in the southeast of ...

. The parish was created in 1934 by combining the two Teffonts. The population taken at the 2011 census was 248.

Description

Teffont has a parish council and is in the area of the

Wiltshire Council Wiltshire Council is a council for the unitary authority of Wiltshire (excluding the separate unitary authority of Swindon) in South West England, created in 2009. It is the successor authority to Wiltshire County Council (1889–2009) and the ...

unitary authority A unitary authority is a local authority responsible for all local government functions within its area or performing additional functions that elsewhere are usually performed by a higher level of sub-national government or the national governmen ...

, which is responsible for almost all significant local government functions. The two former parishes each had a church, and both continue in use, although they are only about three-quarters of a mile apart; they are both Grade II* listed buildings. Until 1922 Teffont Magna was a chapelry of Dinton, and its modest church dates from the 13th century. The church at Teffont Evias was rebuilt in the 1820s, when an imposing tower was added. Part of

Chilmark Quarries Chilmark Quarries () is a 9.65 hectare biological and geological Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), in the ravine south of the village of Chilmark in Wiltshire, England. The SSSI was first notified in 1977. Its importance as a home ...

, a former stone quarry and now a Site of Special Scientific Interest, is in the far southwest of the parish.

Roman sacred site

The modern village is within the valley of a perennial spring at the north end of the village. A

greensand Greensand or green sand is a sand or sandstone which has a greenish color. This term is specifically applied to shallow marine sediment that contains noticeable quantities of rounded greenish grains. These grains are called ''glauconies'' and co ...

ridge overlooks the valley from the west, and here the Teffont Archaeology Project has since 2008 investigated the site of a large Roman-period temple complex. The area crosses the boundary of the two Teffonts. This sacred landscape may have marked the western edge of the territory of the

Durotriges The Durotriges were one of the Celtic tribes living in Britain prior to the Roman invasion. The tribe lived in modern Dorset, south Wiltshire, south Somerset and Devon east of the River Axe and the discovery of an Iron Age hoard in 2009 at Shalfl ...

, whose coins have been found in Teffont.

Post-Roman status

The name Teffont has an Old English element (*tēo, boundary) and Latin (*funta, from fontāna, spring). "Funta" and other Latin and British place-name elements in this area of south-west Wiltshire also suggest that British speech may have survived in the area to a late date. Teffont may have continued to mark a boundary, this time between British and Saxons, for decades after the departure of Roman authority and the fall of the neighbouring civitas Belgarum to the Saxons. To the east there are many sixth-century Saxon cemeteries, but to the west the graves all belong to the second quarter of the seventh century and are of a different character, with weapons and other grave goods which may make a political statement following the conquest of new territory.

Later Saxon history

In 860

Æthelbald, King of Wessex Æthelbald (died 860) was King of Wessex from 855 or 858 to 860. He was the second of five sons of King Æthelwulf. In 850, Æthelbald's elder brother Æthelstan defeated the Vikings in the first recorded sea battle in English history, but he ...

granted 14 hides at Teffont to his thegn, Osmund.

References

External links

Parish website
{{Authority control Civil parishes in Wiltshire