The name and its meaning

The name Leafield comes from "La Felde", French for "the field", though it was usually called Feld or Field Town until the nineteenth century. It was probably given this name because the site was a natural clearing within the forest. Although the present day village is rather dispersed, with houses strung out along all the main routes out of the village, the ancient core of the village centres round the Greens to the south of Leafield Barrow colloquially known as "Barry Tump". This core area is a small island of very infertile gravelly soil, which, in contrast to the surrounding areas of clay, sand, cornbrash and limestone, is probably incapable of supporting fully developed woodland and so would have been a relatively open area within the forest. This would have made it attractive to settlers and, together with the presence of water from ponds and wells in the Kellaways and Forest Marble Clays around Leafield, no doubt explains the site of the village.

Early settlement

When Leafield was first settled is an open question. The first references to it by name are in the 1199 Pipe Rolls and a Sarum Charter of 1200-8, but the settlement was almost certainly in existence at least 150 years before then.

Neolithic flints have been found in the village, the earthwork at Lowborough has been described as prehistoric (though the name, if derived from "luve's burg", suggests a Saxon fortified settlement), Roman finds have been made at Lowborough and Brizes Lodge and the barrow is probably 7th century. None of these necessarily point to established and continuous settlement at Leafield.

Leafield was not mentioned by name in the Domesday Book, but, like nearby Ramsden, it evidently formed part of one of the Shipton manors, probably the Royal Manor. There is good evidence for the Leafield settlement existing before the Norman Conquest. A Witney charter of 1044 refers to headlands (the area where ploughs turn between one strip and the next in medieval open field systems) beyond the Witney boundary where Greenwich Lane Farm now is. Headlands in such a position mean that the fields must have been cultivated by people living at Leafield. So the village dates back to at least the early 11th century. In which particular field the headlands were is uncertain. Studley Assart is ruled out because the French origin of the noun "assart" indicates that this field was cleared after the Norman Conquest. Fields to the west of this, which probably formed part of West Field, one of the original open fields of Leafield, is the more likely.

Early topography

The earliest settlement round the Greens may well originally have been fenced, as a protection for the early settlers' livestock from wild animals in the forest. Certainly the northern boundary with Wychwood forest was fenced with bank, ditches and walls into modern times. The three gates into the Forest were still clearly marked on the 1921 Ordnance Survey map.

The 'street village' development, with houses strung along the main routes out of the village, probably developed after the central core was established. The first of these developments, and the most extensive, was undoubtedly the lane known as Lower End, which runs along an ancient track way known as "the Mereway" (derived from the Old English "gemaere", meaning boundary), which leads to Finstock and Fawler.