Girish Mahajan (Editor)

Tockenham

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Population
  
238 (in 2011)

Unitary authority
  
Country
  
Dialling code
  
01793

Post town
  
Swindon

OS grid reference
  
SU039793

Region
  
Sovereign state
  
Ceremonial county
  
UK parliament constituency
  
North Wiltshire

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Tockenham is a village and civil parish in north Wiltshire, England. The village is about 1.2 miles (1.9 km) east of Lyneham and 3 miles (5 km) southwest of the town of Royal Wootton Bassett. The parish includes the hamlet of Tockenham Wick.

Contents

Map of Tockenham, Swindon, UK

Roman villa

A Roman villa a short distance north of the present village was excavated by the archaeological television programme Time Team in 1994. As a result of the geophysical survey, sample trenches, and environmental core samples, the site was subsequently scheduled to give it legal protection. Based on pottery finds, the site was occupied from the mid 2nd century to the late 4th century. Although no complete mosaic floors were found, tesserae and painted plaster were both found in some numbers, suggesting a major building phase in the 4th century.

Later history

The Domesday Book of 1086 recorded 17 households in the area.

At Tockenham Wick, in the north of the parish, is a substantial manor house dating from c. 1600, now Grade II* listed.

Meadow Court, Tockenham, is a country house of 1630 and 1730, the latter designed by the potter-architect Nathaniel Ireson (1685-1769).

The manor house at Tockenham is Queen Court Farmhouse in the northwest of the village. The present building is from the 18th and 19th centuries and stands on the site of an earlier moated house.

A Free School was built at Tockenham in 1844, and became a National School in the 1870s. Children of all ages were taught until 1926, when the school closed owing to falling numbers. The school was reopened for wartime reasons from December 1940 to the autumn of 1946; subsequently the building became a private house.

A detailed parish history was published by the Wiltshire Victoria County History as part of its volume IX, Kingsbridge hundred (1970).

Parish church

The Church of England parish church is dedicated to St Giles and was first recorded in 1276. The building was lightly restored in 1876 and 1908 and is Grade II* listed. Its registers survive for the following dates: christenings 1653-1991, marriages 1655-1999, burials 1653-1992. Built into the south wall of the church is a well-preserved Roman statue. At one time thought to be St Christopher, it was later claimed to be Aesculapius. In 1978 Jocelyn Toynbee identified it as a Genius loci statue, and as such is a pre-Christian Roman religious item, assumed to be from the nearby villa complex. The church walls contain a number of Roman dressed stones and tiles in amongst the medieval masonry.

References

Tockenham Wikipedia