Thenford 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 ...

about northwest of the

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 ...

Brackley Brackley is a market town and civil parish in West Northamptonshire, England, bordering Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, from Oxford and from Northampton. Historically a market town based on the wool and lace trade, it was built on the inter ...

West Northamptonshire West Northamptonshire is a unitary authority area covering part of the ceremonial county of Northamptonshire, England, created in 2021. By far the largest settlement in West Northamptonshire is the county town of Northampton. Its other signific ...

, England, and east of

Banbury Banbury is a historic market town on the River Cherwell in Oxfordshire, South East England. It had a population of 54,335 at the 2021 Census. Banbury is a significant commercial and retail centre for the surrounding area of north Oxfordshir ...

in nearby Oxfordshire. The 2001 Census recorded the parish population as 74. At the 2011 Census the population of the village remained less than 100 and is included in the civil parish of

Middleton Cheney Middleton Cheney is a village and civil parish in West Northamptonshire, England. The village is about east of Banbury in Oxfordshire and about west-northwest of Brackley. The A422 road between Banbury and Brackley used to pass through Middle ...

Archaeology

Traces have been found of a

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several p ...

and

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...

settlement east of the village. Neolithic artefacts found include four flint arrowheads and a fragment of a polished stone axe southeast of the village. Bronze Age artefacts found include a middle Bronze Age palstave and a late Bronze Age hoard at Thenford Hill Farm north of the village that included two swords, four spearheads, two rings and other bronze objects. Traces have been found also 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 mostl ...

settlement in the north of the parish on Arbury or Arberry hill. It was a fortified farmstead with a circular rampart in diameter. Fragments of Iron Age and

Roman pottery Pottery was produced in enormous quantities in ancient Rome, mostly for utilitarian purposes. It is found all over the former Roman Empire and beyond. Monte Testaccio is a huge waste mound in Rome made almost entirely of broken amphorae used for ...

have been found in the eastern part of the site. East of the village are the remains of an Iron Age settlement and

Roman villa A Roman villa was typically a farmhouse or country house built in the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, sometimes reaching extravagant proportions. Typology and distribution Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) distinguished two kinds of villas n ...

dating from 1st to the 4th centuries AD. The site was developed in four phases, with the villa itself being built about AD 300. It had six rooms, one of which had a fine

Roman mosaic A Roman mosaic is a mosaic made during the Roman period, throughout the Roman Republic and later Empire. Mosaics were used in a variety of private and public buildings, on both floors and walls, though they competed with cheaper frescos for the ...

. Later extensions to the villa included a

bath house Public baths originated when most people in population centers did not have access to private bathing facilities. Though termed "public", they have often been restricted according to gender, religious affiliation, personal membership, and other cr ...

. In the 1820s coins from the reigns of Tetricus (271–274) to

Constans Flavius Julius Constans ( 323 – 350), sometimes called Constans I, was Roman emperor from 337 to 350. He held the imperial rank of '' caesar'' from 333, and was the youngest son of Constantine the Great. After his father's death, he was mad ...

(''circa'' 323) were found in the walled garden of Thenford House. A few years later skeletons were found in the same garden. The villa site was excavated from 1971 to 1973. and is now a

scheduled monument In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage and d ...

. The mosaic is preserved in Thenford House. Early in the 19th century a Roman funerary urn containing ashes was found in St Mary's parish churchyard. Nearby were found "a medal of Constans", plus

tessera A tessera (plural: tesserae, diminutive ''tessella'') is an individual tile, usually formed in the shape of a square, used in creating a mosaic. It is also known as an abaciscus or abaculus. Historical tesserae The oldest known tesserae ...

e suggesting that a building with a mosaic floor had been in the vicinity. Other

Roman era In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC ...

sites have been found in the parish. Before 1830 a Saxon cemetery was found west of the village. Seven skeletons and a number of earthenware vessels were found in a barrow. The site has since been quarried, leaving no trace of the barrow. The only artefacts known to survive are one blackware vessel and an iron knife.

History

Thenford House, Thenford (geograph 3402220)

Thenford's name 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 "Ford of the

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 ...

s". Thenford

Manor House A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were held the lord's manorial courts, communal meals w ...

was near the parish church. Its origin was

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

, and in the 18th century was described as party Elizabethan. It was demolished probably when the current Thenford House was built. Thenford House is a

Georgian Georgian may refer to: Common meanings * Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country) ** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group ** Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians **Georgian scripts, three scrip ...

country house built between 1761 and 1765 for Michael Wodhull. It is a

Grade I 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 ...

. It is currently the home of

Lord Heseltine Michael Ray Dibdin Heseltine, Baron Heseltine, (; born 21 March 1933) is a British politician and businessman. Having begun his career as a property developer, he became one of the founders of the publishing house Haymarket. Heseltine served ...

. In its grounds is a large arboretum that has become one of the most important private collections in the United Kingdom. It is open to the public four times a year. Thenford had a watermill west of the village and a windmill on a mound north of the village. The watermill was demolished in the 20th century but traces of its foundations,

leat A leat (; also lete or leet, or millstream) is the name, common in the south and west of England and in Wales, for an artificial watercourse or aqueduct dug into the ground, especially one supplying water to a watermill or its mill pond. Othe ...

and

mill pond A mill pond (or millpond) is a body of water used as a reservoir for a water-powered mill. Description Mill ponds were often created through the construction of a mill dam or weir (and mill stream) across a waterway. In many places, the c ...

survive. The windmill mound was about in diameter and still existed in 1947. It has since been destroyed. 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 acr ...

of farming prevailed in Thenford until the 18th century. Traces of

ridge and furrow Ridge and furrow is an archaeological pattern of ridges (Medieval Latin: ''sliones'') and troughs created by a system of ploughing used in Europe during the Middle Ages, typical of the open-field system. It is also known as rig (or rigg) and f ...

can be traced in much of the parish, and especially from the air.

Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. Th ...

passed an

Inclosure Act The Inclosure Acts, which use an archaic spelling of the word now usually spelt "enclosure", cover enclosure of open fields and common land in England and Wales, creating legal property rights to land previously held in common. Between 1604 and 1 ...

for the parish in 1766.

Parish church

The Church of England parish church of Saint Mary was built in about 1200, extensively rebuilt in about 1300 and has a Perpendicular Gothic west tower 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 ...

screen Screen or Screens may refer to: Arts * Screen printing (also called ''silkscreening''), a method of printing * Big screen, a nickname associated with the motion picture industry * Split screen (filmmaking), a film composition paradigm in which mul ...

. The south

arcade Arcade most often refers to: * Arcade game, a coin-operated game machine ** Arcade cabinet, housing which holds an arcade game's hardware ** Arcade system board, a standardized printed circuit board * Amusement arcade, a place with arcade games * ...

is of two bays. The north arcade is of three bays and was built about 1300. The east window of the north aisle has fragments of early 15th-century

Medieval stained glass Medieval stained glass is the coloured and painted glass of medieval Europe from the 10th century to the 16th century. For much of this period stained glass windows were the major pictorial art form, particularly in northern France, Germany and ...

representing St Christopher, and St Anne with St Mary. Also in the north aisle is an early 17th-century

monument A monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become relevant to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, due to its artistic, hist ...

to Fulk Woodhull, who died in 1613. He is represented by a recumbent stone effigy in a recess framed by

composite order The Composite order is a mixed order, combining the volutes of the Ionic order capital with the acanthus leaves of the Corinthian order.Henig, Martin (ed.), ''A Handbook of Roman Art'', p. 50, Phaidon, 1983, In many versions the composite or ...

columns. St Mary's north porch was rebuilt in 1885. The church is a Grade I listed building. St Mary's parish is a member of the Chenderit Benefice, which includes the parishes of

Chacombe Chacombe (sometimes Chalcombe in the past) is a village and civil parish in West Northamptonshire, England, about north-east of Banbury. It is bounded to the west by the River Cherwell, to the north by a tributary and to the south-east by the ...

, Greatworth, Marston St. Lawrence,

and Warkworth.

References

Sources

* *

External links

* {{Authority control Civil parishes in Northamptonshire Villages in Northamptonshire West Northamptonshire District