Centurie de Silvaticum
Marcham is a village and civil parish about 2 miles (3 km) west of Abingdon, Oxfordshire. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 1,905.[1] The parish includes the hamlets of Cothill 1+3⁄4 miles (2.8 km) east-northeast of the village, and Gozzard's Ford 1+1⁄2 miles (2.4 km) northeast of the village. Frilford and Garford used to be townships of Marcham parish,[2] but are now separate civil parishes. All these parishes were part of Berkshire until the 1974 boundary changes transferred them to Oxfordshire.
Marcham parish extends about 3+1⁄2 miles (5.6 km) north–south and up to 1+1⁄2 miles (2.4 km) east–west. It is bounded to the south by the River Ock 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 and to the east by field boundaries. The land is low-lying, rising from about 177 feet (54 m) above sea level by the Ock in the south to 312 feet (95 m) at Upwood Park in the north.
In Trendles Field behind the former Noah's Ark Inn, in the extreme south-west of the parish, the remains of an Iron Age and Roman village have been excavated.[3] Evidence has been found of round huts and grain storage pits, to which a celtic religious shrine was later added.[3] At the end of the first century a stone-built Romano-British 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.[4] The temple seems to have remained in use well into the 5th century.[3] This site was subject to an excavation by Oxford University 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 had been found.[5] The amphitheatre is unusual in that it is round, unlike most Romano-British arenas which are oval.[citation needed]
The toponym "Marcham" is derived from the Old English Merceham, in which ham is a homestead and merece is a place where wild celery grows.[6][7] The earliest record of the manor of Marcham is from 965, when King Edgar the Peaceful granted to Abingdon Abbey an estate of 50 hides that included Marcham. The Domesday Book of 1086 records that the abbey still held Marcham after the Norman Conquest of England. The abbey was forced to surrender all of its estates to the Crown in 1538 in the Dissolution of the Monasteries.[2]
Manoirs Domesday
Name Households [East] Hanney 56 Fyfield 40 Kingston [Bagpuize] 40 Marcham 34 Frilford 26 Garford 26 Appleton 23 Lyford 22 Draycott [Moor] 20 Tubney 20 Goosey 17 Eaton 16 [Bessels] Leigh 12
Lieu situé sous
Titre du Gouverneur / Posseseur
Organisation Propriétaire