Dorchester On Thames - History

History

The area has been inhabited since at least the Neolithic. In the north of the parish there was a Neolithic sacred site, now largely destroyed by gravel pits. On one of the Sinodun hills on the opposite side of the River Thames, a ramparted settlement was inhabited during the Bronze Age and Iron Age. Two of the Sinodun hills bear distinctive landmarks of mature trees called Wittenham Clumps. Adjacent to the village are Dyke Hills which are also the remains of an Iron Age hill fort.

Dorchester's position on the navigable Thames and bounded on three sides by water made it strategic for both communications and defence. The Romans built a vicus here, with a road linking the town to a military camp at Alchester, 16 miles (25 km) to the north. The settlement's Roman name is unclear; back-formations from Bede's Dorcic are unsupported.

In 634 Pope Honorius I sent a bishop called Birinus to convert the Saxons of the Thames Valley to Christianity. King Cynegils of Wessex gave Dorchester to Birinus as the seat of a new Diocese of Dorchester under a Bishop of Dorchester; the diocese was extremely large, and covered most of Wessex and Mercia. The settled nature of the bishopric made Dorchester in a broad sense the de facto capital of Wessex, which was later to become the dominant kingdom in England; eventually Winchester displaced it.

In the 12th century the church was enlarged to serve a community of Augustinian canons. King Henry VIII dissolved the Abbey in 1536, leaving the small village with a huge parish church.