Thread by @DrSueOosthuizen

#FunWithLandscapeHistory we paused briefly in Thame’s High Street (here, looking E) at the weekend to buy a small something to take to a friend’s for tea. Hmm... the street’s very wide which suggests a planned market, most likely medieval and (if so) 12/13thC... /1

2. Oh, look! An angled entry on one of the properties on the S side. Is it an aberration or one of a pattern?

3. And another angled entry...

4. And another! (No idea why life-size plastic models of livestock are a thing, but they are fun. Specially a pig on a roof.)

5. The OS confirms that this is a pattern not an accident - these are the properties of a medieval town laid out over strips in one of Thame’s medieval open fields, with their characteristic backward-S curve (like these at Mursley, Glos).

6. Some of the the properties on the N side of the street show the same curve, though they are shorter, and the pattern less extensive. It suggests the possibility that the High Street runs along a headland between two fur,ones in the medieval open fields.

6a. Furlongs, darn it, furlongs, you ridiculous spellchecker

6. And then I got home and found Thame’s excellent local history site thamehistory.net/maps/Davis1797… with this terrific map of 1797 and ...

7. also the @VCH_London’s excellent volume on Thame which confirms a market in place by the 12thC and the establishment of a new town around it british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol7/… with lots more exciting detail besides

8. And this is why I love #landscape #history - there’s always something to look at even when everything else is as mundane as trying to find an offering to take to tea with a friend 😝

9. PS Beresford & St Joseph’s wonderful book - available at ridiculously low prices 2nd hand - is a brilliant introduction to new towns, markets, ridge and furrow, & lots more #swoon . And then there’s a Gazetteer of medieval market grants via archives.history.ac.uk/gazetteer/gazw… END😇