Teffont is a

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

in the south of

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated to Wilts) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It borders Gloucestershire to the north, Oxfordshire to the north-east, Berkshire to the east, Hampshire to the south-east, Dorset to the south, and Somerset to ...

, England, consisting of the

village A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...

s of Teffont Magna and

Teffont Evias Teffont Evias is a small village and former Civil parishes in England, civil parish, now in the parish of Teffont, on the River Nadder, Nadder valley in the south of Wiltshire, England. Edric Holmes described the village as "most delightfully si ...

. It is in the Nadder valley, north of the river, about west of

Salisbury Salisbury ( , ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and civil parish in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers River Avon, Hampshire, Avon, River Nadder, Nadder and River Bourne, Wi ...

. The parish was created in 1934 by combining the two Teffonts. The population taken at the 2011 census was 248.

Description

Teffont has a parish council and is in the area of the

Wiltshire Council Wiltshire Council, known between 1889 and 2009 as Wiltshire County Council, is the Local government in England, local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Wiltshire (district), Wiltshire in South West England, and has its headquarters a ...

, a

unitary authority A unitary authority is a type of local government, local authority in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Unitary authorities are responsible for all local government functions within its area or performing additional functions that elsewhere are ...

which is responsible for almost all significant local government functions. The two former parishes each had a church, and both continue in use, although they are only about three-quarters of a mile apart; they are both

Grade II* listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...

buildings. Until 1922 Teffont Magna was a

chapelry A chapelry was a subdivision of an ecclesiastical parish in England and parts of Lowland Scotland up to the mid 19th century. Status A chapelry had a similar status to a Township (England), township, but was so named as it had a chapel of ease ...

of Dinton, and its modest church dates from the 13th century. The church at Teffont Evias was rebuilt in the 1820s, when an imposing tower was added. Part of Chilmark Quarries, a former stone quarry and now a

Site of Special Scientific Interest A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain, or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland, is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle ...

, is in the far southwest of the parish.

Roman sacred site

The modern village is within the valley of a perennial spring at the north end of the village. A

greensand Greensand or green sand is a sand or sandstone which has a greenish color. This term is specifically applied to shallow marine sediment that contains noticeable quantities of rounded greenish grains. These grains are called ''glauconies'' and co ...

ridge overlooks the valley from the west, and here the Teffont Archaeology Project has since 2008 investigated the site of a large Roman-period temple complex. The area crosses the boundary of the two Teffonts. This sacred landscape may have marked the western edge of the territory of the

Durotriges The Durotriges were one of the Celtic tribes living in British Iron Age, Britain prior to the Roman invasion of Britain, Roman invasion. The tribe lived in modern Dorset, south Wiltshire, south Somerset and Devon east of the River Axe (Lyme Bay), ...

, whose coins have been found in Teffont.

Post-Roman status

The name Teffont has an Old English element (*''tēo'', boundary), though it has also been said to derive from an unattested personal name ''*Teōwa''. The second element is from Latin (*''funta'', from ''fontāna'', spring). *Funta sites usually lay between areas occupied by

Britons British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits, are the citizens of the United Kingdom, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies.: British nationality law governs modern British citizenship and nationality, w ...

and those of early

Anglo-Saxons The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...

, and the name may have been applied to a spring where people met to agree boundaries. "Funta" and other Latin and British place-name elements in this area of south-west Wiltshire suggest that Brittonic speech may have survived in the area to a late date. Teffont may have continued to mark a boundary, this time between British and Saxons, for decades after the departure of Roman authority and the fall of the neighbouring civitas Belgarum to the Saxons. To the east there are many sixth-century Saxon cemeteries, but to the west the graves all belong to the second quarter of the seventh century and are of a different character, with weapons and other grave goods which may make a political statement following the conquest of new territory.

Later Saxon history

In 860

Æthelbald, King of Wessex Æthelbald (died 860) was King of Wessex from 855 or 858 to 860. He was the second of five sons of King Æthelwulf. In 850, Æthelbald's elder brother Æthelstan defeated the Vikings in the first recorded sea battle in English history, but he ...

granted 14 hides at Teffont to his thegn, Osmund.

References

External links

Parish website
{{Authority control Civil parishes in Wiltshire