Charney Bassett
| Charney Bassett | |
|---|---|
 St. Peter's parish church |
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 Charney Bassett
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| Charney Bassett shown within Oxfordshire | |
| Population | 271 (2001 census) |
| OS grid reference | SU3794 |
| Civil parish |
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| District | |
| Shire county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | Wantage |
| Postcode district | OX12 |
| Dialling code | 01235 |
| Police | Thames Valley |
| Fire | Oxfordshire |
| Ambulance | South Central |
| EU Parliament | South East England |
| UK Parliament | |
| Website | Charney Bassett Parish Council |
Charney Bassett is a village and civil parish about 4.5 miles (7 km) north of Wantage and 6 miles (10 km) east of Faringdon in the Vale of White Horse. It was part of Berkshire until the 1974 boundary changes transferred it to Oxfordshire.
In 1978 Thames Water dredged a prehistoric flint axe-head from the River Ock in the parish.
About 1 mile (1.6 km) north of the village, between Charney and Pusey is Cherbury Camp, an Iron Age earthwork. It looks like the nearby hill forts on the Berkshire Downs but is unusual in being built on more or less level ground, away from any hill. Cherbury means "fort beside the River Cearn". It is larger than Uffington Castle hill fort.
Charney Bassett has been settled since Anglo-Saxon era. The earliest known records of the locality's history records a grant of land to the Abbot of Abingdon Abbey in AD 811. The surrounding area was largely marshland and the meaning of Charney is "island in the River Cearn". This was an alternative name for the River Ock, that runs close by and which supplies the mill stream.
In about 1630 the future Quaker evangelist Joan Vokins was born to Thomas Bunce of Charney.
The Church of England parish church of Saint Peter is Grade I listed. It has some 12th-century parts and a turret with two medieval chiming bells. Noteworthy is the tympanum of the church, with a Romanesque relief depicting the ascension of Alexander the Great to the sky, a legendary episode from a version of the so called Pseudo-Callisthenes (the Alexander Romance).
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Wikipedia