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More than a hundred years before the Norman Conquest, Tadmarton is recorded as a
royal estate belonging to the Saxon king, Edwy. Go back another 1,300 years and
there is evidence of human habitation at the Iron Age camp on Tadmarton Heath.
Situated at 641 ft above sea level on quick draining sandy soil, near to the
ironstone which they needed for their tools, the camp must have been a place of
refuge for people and their livestock in times of danger. The two barrows which
are known to have been nearby have disappeared, but golfers enjoying a game at
Tadmarton Heath Golf Club still have to skirt around the spring fed pool near
the site of the Holy Well.
The road over Tadmarton Heath, which bisects the Iron Age camp, follows a
prehistoric way which was used by Welsh drovers up until the 19th century. As
the motorist speeds along the tarmac he can distinctly feel the bumps as he goes
over the banks and ditches engineered before 300 BC. Roman coins, a spearhead
and human remains have also been found in this area.
It is likely that the hamlet of Lower Tadmarton, with its favourable location by
a ford over the Sor brook, was an earlier settlement than Upper Tadmarton. It
may be that the name derives from the place by the frog pool there still are
quantities of frogs in a pool at Lower Tadmarton.
Some of the parish boundaries can be recognised as being the same as the
boundaries of an estate granted to Abingdon Abbey in the 10th century and which
the abbey held, throughout many legal disputes over the payment of rent, for the
next 500 years. The parish church of St Nicholas in Upper Tadmarton was built
and added to during these centuries, also the manor tithe barn. These two
buildings still stand in a good state of repair and are in constant use.
During the 19th century, three generations of MacDermots held the manor. The
Manor Farm and house were let to tenants for most of this period. In the 1890s
John Charles MacDermot reduced his family to penury through his gambling.
However, the MacDermot family are remembered with gratitude by the older people
in the village who receive benefits each year from a charity set up by the
family in 1864.
Another landowner of the 19th century was Capt W. L. Lampet who built The
Highlands, an imposing mansion on a hill between Lower Tadmarton and Bloxham.
This also was let as the Captain certainly did not want to live surrounded by
all those sheep. He gave his family name to the pub, the Lampet Arms, which he
may have built as a railway hotel when it was thought that the line would run
along the Sor brook valley. The name of The Highlands was later changed to
Tadmarton House.
Another large house in Tadmarton is the old rectory, now called the Grange,
mostly rebuilt in gracious early-Victorian style in 1842.
The village and its hamlet still have many of the 26 stone, thatched houses
built in the prosperous farming years of the 16th and 17th centuries, which were
registered for the Hearth Tax of 1665. The population reached the high number of
450 in the census of 1851; the number of people registered to pay the Community
Charge in 1990 was 326.
But there are now far more houses: council houses each end of the village spread
out along the B4035, and a housing estate has been built on the last of the
glebe land. This makes for a lively community, no longer dependent on the ups
and downs in farming. The village shop and post office provide an excellent
service as well as a cheerful meeting place; and the 19th century building which
was once the village school has been transformed into a lovely village hall.
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