Thame's story is the story of England. It would seem to begin in Saxon times with a settlement down by the 'dark flowing' river from which the town takes its name. 'Old Thame' was the area know as Priestend where the road to Crendon crossed the river and the Aylesbury to Oxford road used to pass between the Church and Vicarage. Aerial photographs reveal a possible Saxon settlement by the River Thame and there have been stray finds of jewellery and pottery.

Thame, before the Norman conquest, was in the diocese of Dorchester and it would, therefore, seem possible Thame was converted to Christianity by missionaries from Dorchester who could have rowed up the River Thame.

The conquest of 1066 saw the transference of the See to Lincoln. Thame remained in the above diocese until the early nineteenth century as a 'peculiar' (a parish outside the area of the diocese proper). The church was a prebend of Lincoln and the prebend was built to house his reeve or representative. It resembled a secular manor with its great hall and chapel.

The church, (pictured right), dedicated to St Mary the Virgin, dates in its present form from c1240 when it was rebuilt by Bishop Grossteste of Lincoln. The church contains work from every century since. The Tudor Chancel stalls and screen; the Jacobean alter table; Lord Williams's central chancel tomb (uniquely positioned with feet towards the west); and the collection of monumental brasses (including a rare one to the first headmaster of the Grammar School) are especially noteworthy. The wealth of the church can also be gauged from the size of the neighbouring large tithe barn.

The original town developed around the church, but in the early thirteenth century the liberty of New Thame was 'planted' by the then Bishop of Lincoln on land formerly under plough. This can be seen by the passageways which follow the reverse 'S' curve. This is easily visible by the Old Saracen's Head in the Buttermarket.

The market place has the typical boat shaped appearance of a planted town with narrow entrances at both ends. The market has been held on Tuesdays since 1230, the original site being the Buttermarket and Cornmarket areas. The Buttermarket is traditionally sited on the cooler north side, the Cornmarket on the south. The area of Middle Row, which separates the two, originally consisted of booths which were taken down and put up each week.

They were gradually replaced by permanent structures, one of these being the Birdcage, (pictured left), which is first mentioned in the early sixteenth century as belonging to the Guild of St Christopher, although parts of the building may be older than this. It also housed the Napoleonic Wars prisoners of other rank; the officers being housed in the Spread Eagle.

The Bishop of Lincoln did his utmost to ensure that all travellers patronised his market by diverting the road from Aylesbury so that it passed directly through it. Some of the oldest buildings extant in Thame are, therefore, to be found in North Street and the High Street. Walker's in North Street and Lancastrian Cottage in the lower part of the High Street are early examples of prefabricated buildings in that the frames were made on the Chilterns, then brought down and assembled in situ to the individual owners' specifications.

The town was troubled little by the Reformation. There is, though, the unsubstantiated legend of a heretic being burned at Priest End. The major effect of the Reformation was the suppression of the Cistercian monastery at Thame Park, where it had been since the mid twelfth century after its removal from Oddington-on-Otmoor. The last abbot of Thame, Robert King, became the first Bishop of Oxford.

The Grammar School in Church Road was founded in 1559 by Lord William's of Thame who had received preferment from four of the five Tudor Monarchs, including Elizabeth I whose gaoler had been at Rycote for a time. He also refounded the jettied Almshouses on the corner of Church Road which had originally been founded by Richard Quartermain for six old men and one woman. Follow this link to find a book about Lord Williams

Many of the inns in the town date from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Some of these inns, such as the Swan, with its late sixteenth century paintings, and Nags Head, still fulfil the same function today while the Kings Head is now Rafferty Buckland, Estate Agents. The Civil War of the 1640's saw Thame as a kind of no-mans land, occupied in turn by parliamentary and royalist forces.

John Hampden, a former pupil of the Grammar School, died of wounds received in the battle of Chalgrove Field in June 1643 at the Grayhound Inn, now Hampden House. Anthony Wood, the first historian of Oxford University, boarded at the vicarage and recorded in his diary a skirmish between the forces on the old Crendon Road.

The eighteenth century was a quiet time for Thame. Many of the houses in the High Street and Upper High Street were built in the Georgian manner or at least refaced with the attractive local saltglazed brick. The century saw the growth of coach travel and four important inns were functioning by the end of it - the Greyhound, the Red Lion (now Lightfoot's Solicitors), the Swan, and the Spread Eagle Hotel, then just the Eagle. (The latter two still function in the same capacity today).

It was also in the latter part of the century that John Wesley preached in Thame, in an upper room of a cottage on the site of Coral's bookmakers, to such a crowd that the floor gave way and the congregation enjoyed a sudden descent to the lower regions.

The town in the nineteenth century was very poor because of extremely low agricultural wages, agriculture being the main industry and there were hardly any large landowners to defray the expense of the poor law. This aspect of the history of Thame is reflected visibly in the large Victorian Workhouse on the Oxford Road, now the home of Rycotewood College.

The early part of the century saw the building of the Countess of Huntingdon Chapel in the middle of Upper High Street. This sect is best described as Yuppy Methodists. The building is now the only one of its kind in existence and is now occupied by the Tourist Information Centre and Citizens Advice Bureau. The area that is Park Street, then Brickiln Lane, also developed in the first four decades of the century when the John Hampden School, then the British School, was opened in 1837.

The town expanded in the latter part of the nineteenth century. An area which saw building was Chinnor Road where cottages and the Tin Church of All Saints were built for the navvies who worked on the railway line which connected Thame with Oxford and London via High Wycombe. Croft and Queens road and Nelson Street were also built and Wellington Street, previously known as Pound Lane, was made into a through road which connected North Street with the Risborough Road.

The Grammar School was re-housed in 1879 in buildings on the Oxford road. The present Town Hall, (pictured right), was built in 1887/88 to commemorate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. The William and Mary Market Hall was taken down to make way for it.

The Diamond Jubilee of 1887 was marked by the building of the Victoria Cottage Hospital and a day centre was opened next to it in 1987 by Princess Margaret after a large local fund-raising appeal. The magistrates' court - a one storeyed building surmounted by the Royal coat of arms - was built in the lower High Street. The Police Station was built at the junction of Chinnor and Thame Parks roads in the 1860's and was the oldest in the country in use until 1992 when it moved to new premises in Greyhound Lane.

During the last saw Thame grow from a population of 3,000 in 1901 to 10,000+ today. This has meant that Thame has, over the last 40 years, ceased to become a predominantly agricultural town, although Pearces, a woolstaplers since at least the fifteenth century, remains. There is a large industrial estate on the outskirts with factories and offices. The weekly Tuesday market is still held in the Upper High Street car park. The cattle market though, was moved to North Street in 1951 and is now held on Wednesdays and Fridays. The War Memorial in the Upper High Street is a reminder of the two world wars. Next to the war memorial are the Pearce (local woolstaplers) Memorial Gardens with a fountain and a statue of a boy. The original statue was erected in 1926 by Ernest Pearce of Australia as a monument to the memory of his parents Philip Henry Pearce and his wife Elizabeth. The bronze fountain statue was stolen in September 1985 and was never recovered. In the summer of 1992, a replica of the original statue was commissioned by the Town Council. The blue plaque on the front of the Spread Eagle remembers the time when John Fothergill, the renowned and innovative hotelier, was then its owner.

Thame lost its railway station in 1964, but the Haddenham and Thame Parkway was re-established in 1987 just over the Buckinghamshire border, as a passenger only station. This suggests that Thame is no longer agricultural but is a centre needing rail as well as road links.

Every Autumn, the town still stages the largest one day agricultural show in the country on the third Thursday of September and a three day fair is held in the High Street and Upper High Street. A smaller two-day charter fair is held in mid-October and these, together with the weekly Tuesday market, maintain continuity with the town's history and together form a link between the past and present.

Other pages in this section: | Places to Visit | About Thame | Old Pictures Of Thame

Links with the Past

The John Hampden Society

John Hampden was descended from an ancient Buckinghamshire family of great wealth with a long tradition of service to the Crown. Born in 1594, probably in London, he was educated at Lord Williams's Grammar School, Thame, and Magdalen College, Oxford. By the time of his death in Thame John Hampden had received the title by which he has ever since been known - 'The Patriot'. Click on the title bar to discover more about John Hampden and his fascinating links with Thame.