Thaxted developed as a Saxon settlement on a Roman road. There is some evidence that a Roman villa to the east of the current town and roman artefacts have been discovered in the area. The British Museum holds a Roman bronze head of Bacchus found at Thaxted in the nineteenth century. The first documented record of Thaxted, including a church, is in the Liber Eliensis, describes a gift of land in "Thacstede" by a woman named Æthelgifu at some time between 881 and 1016.