Wootton comes from the Old English ‘wudu’ meaning a ‘wood, wood–timber’ with ‘tūn’
as an ‘enclosure a farmstead, settlement’; therefore, a ‘wood farm/settlement’.
Wootton parish church is a Grade: II listed building, dedicated to Saint Martin.
The Normans built it in the 12th century, with alterations and additions in the following
two centuries. In 1800, Edward Hasted described the Wootton church as consisting
‘of a body and one chancel, having at the west end a low flat tower, in which there
is one bell. This church is small and neat’. The architect Robert Jewell Withers completed
the restoration in 1881.
