Little Wittenham

Little Wittenham

St. Peter's parish church
Little Wittenham
Little Wittenham shown within Oxfordshire
Population 87 (2001 census)[1]
OS grid reference SU564932
Civil parish
  • Little Wittenham
District
Shire county
Region
Country England
Sovereign state United Kingdom
Post town Abingdon
Postcode district OX14
Dialling code 01865
Police Thames Valley
Fire Oxfordshire
Ambulance South Central
EU Parliament South East England
UK Parliament

Little Wittenham is a village and civil parish on the south bank of the River Thames, northeast of Didcot in South Oxfordshire. In 1974 it was transferred from Berkshire to the county of Oxfordshire and from Wallingford Rural District to the district of South Oxfordshire.

Parish church

The Church of England parish church of Saint Peter has a 14th-century west bell tower,[2] of which the lower stages are Decorated Gothic and the upper stages are Perpendicular Gothic.[3] In 1863 the nave and chancel in the Early English Gothic were rebuilt to designs by the Gothic Revival architect Charles Buckeridge.

Alabaster memorial to Sir William and Lady Dunche

St. Peter's has a number of monuments to members of the Dunche family who lived in Little Wittennham. The most notable is a large monument to Sir William Dunche (died 1611) and his wife.[3] The monument is missing a canopy and supports, but it retains alabaster effigies of Sir William and Lady Dunche,[3] a pair of obelisks[3] that would have surmounted the canopy and a pair of tablets commemorating the couple's children.

Several Dunches were MPs for Wallingford. They include Edmund Dunch (1657–1719), a Whig who was Queen Anne's Master of the Household and a member of the Kit-Kat Club.

Sites of interest

Little Wittenham has one of only 220 habitats across Europe which is designated as a Special Area of Conservation under European Union Council Directive 92/43/EEC on the conservation of natural habitats and of wild fauna and flora.

Day's Lock is north-east of the village. On the opposite bank to the north-east, a little distance from the river itself, is the town of Dorchester-on-Thames which can be reached on foot via Little Wittenham Bridge.

South of the village are the hills of Wittenham Clumps and to the south-east is Little Wittenham Wood bordering on the river. From Round Hill, one of the Clumps, there is a view of the village to the north.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Area selected: South Oxfordshire (Non-Metropolitan District)". Neighbourhood Statistics: Full Dataset View. Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 30 March 2010.
  2. ↑ Page & Ditchfield 1924, pp. 380–384.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Pevsner 1966, p. 169

Sources

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