Thame, Oxfordshire

Historical Description

Thame, a market-town and parish, head of a union and county court district, in Oxfordshire. The town stands on, the river Thame and on the G.W.R., on which it has a station, 13 miles E by S of Oxford, 10 SW from Aylesbury, and 45 from London. It dates from the Roman times; was known to the Saxons as Thama; was the deathplace of Archbishop Osketyl in 970; suffered devastation by the Danes in 1010; was given at the Norman Conquest to the Bishops of Lincoln; acquired a Cistercian Abbey in 1138; went after the dissolution of monasteries to successively the Protector Somerset, the Williamses, and the Berties. It was the deathplace of John Hampden in 1643, and was the scene of one or two skirmishes in 1644. It numbers among its natives Chief Justice Holt, who died in 1709, the physician Etherydge, who lived in the time of Leland, and had Dr Fell, Antony Wood, Chief Justice Croke, John Wilkes, Ingoldsby, Bishop King, and the traveller Pococks as pupils at its grammar school. The town consists chiefly of one long spacious street with a market-place in the centre. It is governed by an urban district council of fifteen members. There is a weekly market for cattle and corn, which is held on Tuesday, and there is a fair for horses, cattle, and pigs on Easter Tuesday, a market for fat cattle on the first Tuesday after 6 Dec., and a statute or hiring fair on 11 Oct., which is continued on the two following Tuesdays. The Town-hall, erected in 1887-88, is a building of pressed red brick and Bath stone, containing with other apartments a council chamber and a large hall. The Church of St Mary was erected in 1241 by Bishop Grosteste, and is a large and handsome cruciform building of stone in mixed styles, Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular, consisting of chancel, nave, aisies, S porch, transepts, and a massive embattled central tower. The S porch is of great beauty, with a groined ceiling and a canopied niche. It contains some very fine tombs, memorials, and brasses, the chief monument being a massive altar-tomb of marble to John Lord Williams of Thame and his first wife. The figures of the baron and his wife are richly carved in alabaster in the costume of the later years of Elizabeth. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford; net value, £220 with residence. There are Baptist, Congregational, two Primitive Methodist, and Wesleyan chapels. The free grammar school, founded in 1559, by Lord Williams of Thame, occupies some buildings in the Oxford Road, which were erected in 1879, and has an endowment of about £575 a year. The Oxford County School stands near the centre of the High Street, fronting towards the town-hall. The workhouse, at Priest End, is a large building of red brick capable of accommodating 370 inmates. There are some almshouses which are used as a ladies' gymnasium, the rent being given to the almspeople, and there are charities worth about £150 a year. The town has a head post office, and it publishes a weekly newspaper. Thame Park, the seat of the Wykeham Musgrave family, is a fine country mansion erected on the site of the Cistercian monastery, and standing in a deer park of 418 acres. The manor belongs to the Earl of Abingdon. The parish includes the town hamlets of Old Thame, New Thame, and Priest End, and the rural hamlets of Thame Park, Moreton, and North Weston. Acreage, 5229; population of the civil parish, 3334; of the ecclesiastical, 3359.

Administration

The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.

Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.

Church Records

Ancestry.co.uk, in association with Oxfordshire Family History Society and Oxfordshire History Centre, have images of the Parish Registers for Oxfordshire online.

Directories & Gazetteers

We have transcribed the entry for Thame from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Thame (St. Mary))

Land and Property

A full transcript of the Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Oxfordshire is available online

Maps

Online maps of Thame are available from a number of sites:

• Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
• Google Streetview.
• National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
• OpenStreetMap.
• old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
• Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
• A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)

Newspapers and Periodicals

The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Oxfordshire newspapers online:

• Oxford Journal
• Banbury Advertiser
• Banbury Guardian
• Oxford University and City Herald
• Oxford Chronicle and Reading Gazette
• Faringdon Advertiser and Vale of the White Horse Gazette
• Oxford Times
• Banbury Beacon
• Ossett Observer

Visitations Heraldic

The Visitations of Oxfordshire, 1566, 1574 &1634 are available on the Heraldry page.