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 buildings. Until 1922 Teffont Magna was a chapelry of Dinton,[2] and its modest church dates from the 13th century.[5] The church at Teffont Evias was rebuilt in the 1820s, when an imposing tower was added.[6]
The modern village is within the valley of a perennial spring at the north end of the village. A greensand 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.[7] The area crosses the boundary of the two Teffonts. This sacred landscape may have marked the western edge of the territory of the Durotriges, whose coins have been found in Teffont.[8]
Post-Roman status
The name Teffont has an Old English element (*tēo, boundary)[9] and Latin (*funta, from fontāna, spring). "Funta" and other Latin and British place-name elements in this area of south-west Wiltshire also suggest that British speech may have survived in the area to a late date.[8]
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.[10]
^Keynes, Simon (November 1994). "The West Saxon Charters of King Æthelwulf and his sons". English Historical Review. 109 (434): 1123. doi:10.1093/ehr/cix.434.1109. ISSN0013-8266.
Eagles, Bruce (2018). From Roman Civitas to Anglo-Saxon Shire: Topographical Studies on the Formation of Wessex. Oxbow Books. ISBN978-1-78570-984-5.
