Retirement Properties Spotlight in Dorchester-on-Thames

The village is mentioned in Domesday as Dorchestre with five mills and 51 sticks of eels. It was once a Saxon cathedral city but the present Abbey was begun by the Normans. Concerts sometimes take place in the Abbey; the guest house, the only monastic building to survive the dissolution, became a grammar school in 1652 and now houses a small museum and tea room.

A lychgate connects the Abbey grounds to the lovely winding High Street, lined with a variety of period and half-timbered and brick houses, thatched cottages and gabled coaching inns. The village lies at the confluence of the River Thames and Thame about eight miles south of Oxford. There are some excellent walks - across the river are the Wittenham Clumps, a fine viewpoint crowned by a hill fort.