The Open Domesday record reveals that by 1086 Great Tew - placed in the hundred of Wootton, Oxfordshire - was a notably large and prosperous manor, with 53 recorded households, 26 ploughlands, and 288 acres of meadow, all held by Bishop Odo of Bayeux after William the Conqueror dispossessed the pre-Conquest lord Alnoth of Kent. The doubling of the manor's annual value from £20 (1066) to £40 (1086) under Odo's lordship underlines the intensity of Norman exploitation of this estate. The earlier Anglo-Saxon lease (c. 1049-52), in which St Albans Abbey granted land at *Cyrictiwa* ("Church Tew") to a widow in return for gold and honey, confirms that Great Tew was an established ecclesiastical estate with a named church well before the Conquest.

This passage situates Great Tew within the hydrographic and topographical framework of northern Oxfordshire, identifying it as lying along the Worton brook watershed along a turnpike road. The reference places Great Tew in the context of the broader Cherwell drainage system and regional geology, establishing its position in the North Oxfordshire uplands and its significance as a waypoint on the important road network of the area.

VCH Oxfordshire Vol. 11 is the authoritative published source for the medieval manorial descent of Great Tew, covering its tenure under the bishops of Lincoln, its grant by King John, and its passage through the de Tew, Lovell, and Fettiplace families. The Oxfordshire History Centre also holds a dedicated "Great Tew and Deddington Estates" archive collection (E16, 1647-1949) containing estate records. To obtain a full verbatim extract, please search archive.org directly for "Victoria History County Oxford volume 11" and navigate to the Great Tew parish entry.

This Edwardian county history (1902) devotes significant attention to Great Tew as the seat of Viscount Falkland, describing the manor house as a celebrated gathering place for scholars and intellectuals in the early 17th century - the famous "Great Tew Circle." The book also covers the Civil War period, noting the presence of Royal Forces at Great Tew in 1644, and records the monuments in the parish church. It draws on local vicars and Bodleian Library sources, making it a well-grounded local and county history for the Great Tew area.

The Oxfordshire HER record documents extensive Roman settlement activity in Great Tew, including an elaborate villa with courtyard, bath house, decorated wall plaster, and tesselated pavements discovered in 1810. The survey and evaluation evidence indicates a double-ditched Roman settlement enclosure with activity spanning from late Iron Age through the mid-to-late Roman period (AD 180-410), with domestic and agricultural functions supporting the principal villa site at Beaconsfield Farm.

The document records a 2019 archaeological evaluation conducted by Oxford Archaeology on the Beaconsfield Farm site within Great Tew parish. This corresponds to the location of a known Roman villa estate and represents recent mitigation work ahead of proposed development.