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The Thatched Cottage
Abbey Guesthouse and Museum
tomb of crusader knight
abbey porch
American Pilots' Memorial
abbey cloisters
west face of the abbey
Stephanie Bowditch memorial
abbey lychgate
George Hotel coach
The George Hotel at Dorchester
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corner of Magdalen Road
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Savage Nuneaton
carbuncle next to the jam factory
Norfolk Street October 2017
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Dorchester Abbey
Dorchester-on-Thames, Oxfordshire
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www.britainexpress.com/counties/oxfordshire/az/dorchester-on-thames.htm
12th century Dorchester Abbey stands on the site of a 7th century church. The pretty village of Dorchester-on-Thames (not to be confused with the county town of Dorchester in Dorset!) stands near the confluence of the rivers Thame and Thames. The area was settled at least as early as the Neolithic period, and on the outskirts of Dorchester are the remains of an Iron Age hillfort at Dyke Hills. Across the Thames, a Bronze Age hillfort tops one of the twin peaks known as the Wittenham Clumps.
The Romans were drawn to Dorchester for its strategic position near the Thames. they built a walled town here, defended by water on three sides and linked by road to the fort at Alchester.
The event that really put Dorchester on the map came in AD 634, when St Birinius arrived. on a mission to convert the pagan inhabitants of the Thames Valley to Christianity. Cynegils of Wessex granted lands at Dorchester to Birinius, who established a bishopric here. Tradition says that Birinius baptised the king in the Thames at Dorchester.
Dorchester then became not only the ecclesiastical centre but the administrative centre for Wessex, at least until the bishopric was transferred to Winchester.
The Bishop of Leicester transferred his seat to Dorchester in AD 875, and for two centuries the See of Dorchester stretched from the Humber to the Thames, a vast swath of territory. But the end would come in 1075 when the Norman Bishop Remegius moved the see once more, to Lincoln, and Dorchester dwindled in importance.
The church established by Birinius was rebuilt several times, and was completely rebuilt and enlarged in AD 1140 to serve a community of Augustinian canons. The scale of the church was at odds with the size of the village, which remained small. The abbey was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1536, but the abbey church was saved from destruction by a local man named Richard Beauforest, who bought the building from the crown for the princely sum of £140, and gave it to the village in his will.
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