19 Facts About Thaxted

Thaxted is a town and civil parish in the Uttlesford district of north-west Essex, England.

The first documented record of Thaxted, including a church, is in the Liber Eliensis, describes a gift of land in "Thacstede" by a woman named Æthelgifu at some time between 881 and 1016.

Why a town like Thaxted, lacking in the natural resources required for the large-scale manufacturing metal products, should have developed this industry is unclear.

Thaxted Surgery, situated in Margaret Street, provides general practice healthcare to the community.

Between 2007 and 2009, a village design statement was produced for Thaxted to describe the character of the town and parish and to inform any future development.

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Thaxted Society is a conservation charity founded in 1963 to safeguard and promote Thaxted's legacy.

Thaxted Morris Men is a morris side, which was founded in 1911 under the instigation of Conrad Noel, Vicar of Thaxted, as a response to a renewed interest in morris dancing.

Since 2001, Thaxted has been twinned with Saint-Vrain in the French department of Essonne.

Thaxted once lay on the busy A130 trunk road from Chelmsford to Cambridge which brought large trucks through the centre of the town past the Guildhall and Church.

Thaxted is connected to the local towns and villages, as well as to Stansted Airport, by local bus services, operated by Stephensons of Essex.

From 1913 to 1952, Thaxted was served by a light railway branch line from Elsenham which ran to a terminus station located about one mile south of the town.

Thaxted Parish Church is a fine example of English Perpendicular church architecture built between 1340 and 1510 and a testament to the prosperity of the town in the Middle Ages.

Thaxted Guildhall is a Grade I listed timber-framed medieval moot hall in the main high street.

Thaxted is the name given to a hymn tune, a setting for "I Vow to Thee, My Country", which Holst composed, based on the theme of "Jupiter" in his orchestral Planets suite.

The final dance of the evening is always the evocative Abbots Bromley Horn Dance, performed by the host side from Thaxted, winding their way from the churchyard, down Stoney Lane and past the Guildhall, accompanied by a solitary fiddler.

Part of Passolini's The Canterbury Tales was filmed in Thaxted: the unrestored Windmill, with the church spire in the distance, formed the backdrop to the scene depicting the Summoner, the Devil and the Old Woman in The Friar's Tale, somewhat anachronistically since the tower mill is a nineteenth century structure of the Industrial Revolution that would have been unknown in Chaucerian times.

Prosperity of Thaxted was once built on the cutlery and wool trades but by the seventeenth century these had wained.

When Thaxted was a borough, it acquired the right to hold a weekly market on Fridays.

Thaxted once possessed a copious number of public houses, but many have been lost.