History
- See Bytham River for details of the postulated ice age watercourse that takes its name from the village.
The name Bytham is first recorded in 1067 (as a monastery that rapidly translated to Vaudey Abbey), and comes from the Old English word bythme meaning Valley bottom, broad valley. In the Domesday survey of 1086 the village was known as West Bytham as the castle had yet to be built. People have named the river that runs through the village the Tham or Am as a back-formation from the village name.
Morkery Wood housed a former bomb dump during the Second World War for the nearby airfields. In the early hours of 19 November 1942 Handley Page Halifax BB209 NP-G of 158 Sqn, from RAF Rufforth in North Yorkshire, crashed near Stocken Hall Farm (in the wood). It had been hit by flak south-east of Paris coming back from a raid on Turin (Torino). Half the aircrew were in the RCAF.
Read more about this topic: Castle Bytham
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