Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for THAME

THAME, a small town, a parish, a sub-district, a district, and a hundred, in Oxfordshire. The town stands on the river Thame, and on the Wycombe and Oxford railway, 13 miles E by S of Oxford; dates from the Roman times: was known to the Saxons as Thama; was the death-place 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 Cistertian abbey in 1138; went, after the dissolution of monasteries, to successively the Protector Somerset, the Williamses, and the Berties; was the death-place of John Hampden in 1643, and still contains the house in which he died; was the scene of one or two skirmishes in 1644; numbers among its natives Chief Justice Holt, who died in 1709, the physician Etherydge, who lived in the time of Leland, and the swordsman Figg, who figures in a plate of the "Rake's Progress;" had Dr. Fell, Antony Wood, Chief Justice Croke. John Wilkes, Ingoldsby, Bishop King, and the traveller Pococke as pupils at its grammar-school; consists chiefly of one long spacious street, with a market place in the centre; is a seat of county-courts; publishes a weekly newspaper; and has a head post-office,‡ a r. station with telegraph, two banking offices, a hotel, a town hall and market house, a large cruciform early English church with massive central tower, remains of the old abbey buildings and of an old prebendal house, four dissenting chapels, a grammar-school founded in 1558, an endowed charity school with £35 a year, national and British schools, alms houses with £160 a year, a workhouse with capacity for 450 inmates, a weekly market on Tuesday, and three annual fairs. Pop. in 1861, 2,917. Houses, 517.

The parish includes the town-hamlets of Old T., New T., and Priestend, and the rural hamlets of T. Park, Moreton, and North Weston. Acres, 5,310. Real property, £14,211. Pop., 3,245. Houses, 656. T. Park is the seat of the Baroness Wenman. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford. Value, £260.* Patrons, Trustees.—The sub-district contains 8 parishes, and an extra-parochial tract. Acres, 15,865. Pop., 5,958. Houses, 1,236.—The district includes Brilland Lewknor sub-districts, and comprises 54,997 acres. Poor rates in 1863, £11,621. Pop. in 1851, 15,640; in 1861, 15,305. Houses, 3,274. Marriages in 1863, 91; births, 516,-of which 46 were illegitimate; deaths, 328, -of which 111 were at ages under 5 years, and 11 at ages above 85. Marriages in the ten years 1851-60, 957; births, 5,143; deaths, 3,232. The places of worship, in 1851, were 28 of the Church of England, with 6,614 sittings; 7 of Independents, with 1,102 s.; 8 of Baptists, with 1,032 s.; 9 of Wesleyans, with 902 s.; 4 of Primitive Methodists, with 440 s.; and 1 of Latter Day Saints, with 35 s. The schools were 20 public day-schools, with 1,718 scholars; 23 private day-schools, with 435 s.; 28 Sunday schools, with 1,981 s.; and 1 evening school for adults, with 22 s.-The hundred contains 5 parishes, and a part. Acres, 10,580. Pop., 4,949. Houses, 1,025.


(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a small town, a parish, a sub-district, a district, and a hundred"   (ADL Feature Type: "cities")
Administrative units: Thame AP/CP       Thame Hundred       Thame SubD       Thame RegD/PLU       Oxfordshire AncC
Place names: THAMA     |     THAME
Place: Thame

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