England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Thame St Mary

The Parish

The parish of Thame lies in the extreme southeast of Oxfordshire, indeed it forms a substantial part of the border with neighbouring Buckinghamshire. Thame is a small market town located about 13 miles east of city of Oxford. Thame sits at a significant junction of major road where the A418 (Aylesbury to Oxford) meets the A329 (coming from Wallingford) and the A4129 (from Princes Risborough). Thame developed at this point as the principal crossing of its eponymous river, the Thame (not to be confused with the Thames). Thame has an ancient tradition of being founded by the Roman and it was already a market town at the time of the Conquest. Thame was also graced by a significant Cistercian Abbey between the 12th century and the dissolution. The town is largely built along its main street which runs for almost a mile in a northwest to southeasterly direction, modern developments and bypasses have expanded the town to its present size. The local area would have been one devoted to farming with a mixed economy of both pastoral and arable farming; Thame as the local centre for marketing such goods would have earned its keep from ancillary services as well as from minor industries. The Thames drains the parish westwards to meet its larger cousin, the Thames, at Dorchester on Thames and thence onwards to the North Sea through the Thames Estuary. Thame is sited at around 70 metres above sea level and sits on the Oxfordshire plains which gently roll some 30 metres or so either side of that height for some distance; albeit the ridge of the Chiltern Hills is visible from the town. Thame was one of the larger parishes of Oxfordshire and significantly large for a southern parish; it covered over 5,200 acres and would have supported a population of just over 3,000 parishioners. In Domesday times Thame was held by the Bishop of Lincoln and could offer an impressive 44 ploughs as well as a mill.

The Church

ST Mary's church sits at the northwestern end of the town almost at the end of the Thame bridge. The church is an ancient structure which has been much modified over the years. Pevsner dates the chancel as one of the earliest parts and gives a date of 1220, he also is confident that the crossing tower and transepts are also early 13th century. The age of the aisles is obscured by their apparent widening in the 14th century at which point the building acquired a southern porch. In the 15th century the upper two storeys of the tower were added and the transepts much modified. A more extensive restoration of 1889 to 1897 is somewhat criticised by Pevsner stating that it gives the church a somewhat "bleak" appearance. Church Road leads off the end of the main street to end at the metal church gates, a brick wall surrounds the churchyard but access is via a pedestrian gap alongside the gates alternate access is from Priest End. The churchyard is broad and extensive but the church is somewhat hemmed in from the west by trees restricting photographic angles somewhat.