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Thame Local History
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Moreton
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Moreton is a small village community just to the south of Thame.
Whilst modern day traffic access to Moreton is via the main road towards Milton Common,
it is still possible to walk from Thame to Moreton along public footpaths,
and then from Moreton on to Tetsworth. This is because the road from Thame to Tetsworth used to go through Moreton, before the turnpike roads from Thame to Milton Common and from Milton Common to Tetsworth were built in the eighteenth century. In fact the Tetsworth - Moreton - Thame route is part of a very ancient trackway dating back to Anglo Saxon times. The name Moreton is Anglo Saxon, meaning a township on the moor, where a moor is an area of marshy ground. It has echoes in the name of Moreton-in-the-Marsh. Over the centuries, land drainage and changes to water levels have made the ground around Moreton a lot less marshy. Moreton does not appear in the Domesday Book, but it did exist at that time, as its Anglo Saxon name testifies. It was part of the Domesday manorial lands of Thame. It was one of a number of small communities that existed close to Thame, along the main roadways going in and out of Thame, in the middle to late Anglo Saxon period, or before. The inhabitants of Moreton have always been closely integrated into the commercial and social life of Thame, and yet at the same time the village has retained its own distinct identity. This is as much true today as it has ever been. |
Do you live in a village near Thame?
Old maps of Thame and the villages |