Sutton Courtenay is a village and civil parish on the River Thames south of Abingdon-on-Thames and northwest of Didcot. Historically part of Berkshire, it has been administered as part of Oxfordshire since the 1974 boundary changes. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 2,421. Sutton Courtenay is home to some important structures, such as The Abbey, the Manor House, All Saints' Church, a twelfth-century Norman hall, the Sutton Bridge, and Didcot power station. Archaeology and history A Neolithic stone hand axe was found at Sutton Courtenay. Petrological analysis in 1940 identified the stone as epidotised tuff from Stake Pass in the Lake District, to the north. Stone axes from the same source have been found at Abingdon, Alvescot, Kencot and Minster Lovell. Excavations have revealed rough Saxon huts from the early stages of Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, but their most important enduring monument in Sutton was the massive causeway and weirs that separate the millstream from Sutton Pools. The causeway was probably built by Saxon labour. In 2010 the Channel 4 Time Team programme excavated a field in the village and discovered what they then thought was a major Anglo-Saxon royal centre with perhaps the largest great hall ever discovered in Britain. Written records of Sutton's history began in 688 when King Ine of Wessex endowed the new monastery at Abingdon with the manor of Sutton. In 801 Sutton was made a royal vill, with the monastery at Abingdon retaining the church and priest's house. It is believed that this was on the site of the Manor in Sutton Courtenay and where Alfred the Great was married in 868. The Domesday Book of 1086 shows that the manor of Sudtone ("south" of Abingdon) was owned half by William I and farmed mainly by tenants who owed him tribute. There were three mills, of river meadow (probably used for dairy farming) and extensive woodlands where pigs were kept. Most historians believe that Matilda, the elder of the two legitimate children of Henry I of England, was born in Winchester; however John M. Fletcher argues for the possibility of the royal palace at Sutton (now Sutton Courtenay) in Berkshire; the queen had been delivered of a child that died, and it seems likely that she stayed for the birth of Matilda the following year. Sutton became known as Sutton Courtenay after the Courtenay family took residence at the Manor in the