Fawler
Fawler is located in Oxfordshire
Fawler
Fawler
Location within Oxfordshire
Population86 (2001 census)[1]
OS grid referenceSP3717
Civil parish
  • Fawler
District
Shire county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post townChipping Norton
Postcode districtOX7
Dialling code01993
PoliceThames Valley
FireOxfordshire
AmbulanceSouth Central
UK Parliament
List of places
UK
England
Oxfordshire
51°51′22″N 1°27′58″W / 51.856°N 1.466°W / 51.856; -1.466

Fawler is a hamlet and civil parish in the valley of the River Evenlode, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) southeast of Charlbury in Oxfordshire, England. There are traces of a Roman villa at Oatlands Farm.[2] The manor house was built in 1660.[2] Finstock railway station on the Cotswold Line is closer to Fawler than to Finstock.

Place-name

A mosaic floor at North Leigh Roman Villa near Fawler, believed to have given its name to the settlement[3]

The place-name is recorded from 1205 as Fauflor, derived from Old English fāg flōr, "variegated floor".[4] Authorities including the philologist J. R. R. Tolkien take this to mean a tessellated pavement, identified as the mosaic floor of North Leigh Roman Villa nearby.[5][3]

References

  1. ^ "Area selected: West Oxfordshire (Non-Metropolitan District)". Neighbourhood Statistics: Full Dataset View. Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 11 January 2011.
  2. ^ a b Sherwood & Pevsner, 1974, page 605
  3. ^ a b Fimi, Dimitra (September 2016). Tolkien and the Art of Book Reviewing: A Circuitous Road to Middle-earth. Oxonmoot. Retrieved 2 September 2023.
  4. ^ Mills, A. D. (1993) [1991]. A Dictionary of English Place-Names. Oxford University Press. p. 129. ISBN 978-0-19-283131-6.
  5. ^ Tolkien, J. R. R. (1926). "[Review]: Introduction to the Survey of Place-Names". The Year's Work in English Studies (5): 64.

Sources

Categories