For the hamlet in Kingston Lisle parish, see Fawler, Vale of White Horse.

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. Archived from the original on 29 June 2011. Retrieved 11 January 2011.
  2. ^ a b Sherwood & Pevsner 1974, p. 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