Part 1

Cambridge County Geographies

BERKSHIRE

by

H. W. MONCKTON, F.L.S., F.G.S.

With Maps, Diagrams and Illustrations

Cambridge: at the University Press 1911

Cambridge: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

CONTENTS

PAGE

1. County and Shire. Meaning of the Words 1 2. General Characteristics 6 3. Size. Shape. Boundaries 8 4. Surface and General Features 15 5. Watershed. Rivers and their Courses. Lakes 18 6. Geology and Soil 25 7. Natural History 41 8. Climate and Rainfall 47 9. People--Race. Population 52 10. Agriculture 55 11. Industries and Manufactures 57 12. Minerals. Building Materials 61 13. The History of Berkshire 65 14. History (continued) 75 15. Antiquities--(a) Prehistoric 80 16. Antiquities--(b) Roman and Saxon 89 17. Architecture--(a) Ecclesiastical. Churches 91 18. Architecture--(b) Religious Houses 102 19. Architecture--(c) Military 109 20. Architecture--(d) Domestic 113 21. Communications--Ancient and Modern 117 22. Administration and Divisions--Ancient and Modern 125 23. Public and Educational Establishments 128 24. The Forest in Berkshire 135 25. Roll of Honour 137 26. The Chief Towns and Villages of Berkshire 146

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Windsor Castle from the North-West 2 The Ridgeway--Uffington Castle in the distance 7 The Thames near Pangbourne 10 The Thames at Maidenhead 12 The River Kennet at Hungerford 13 Crown Hill, South Ascot 16 Cookham Dean 17 Streatley from Goring 19 The Pang at Pangbourne 21 Pangbourne 22 The Thames near Abingdon 24 Diagram to illustrate the Geology of Berkshire 30 Diagram-section of the Berkshire Rocks 31 Corallian Rock, Shellingford 33 Specimen from the Reading Leaf-Bed 37 Bagshot Heath Country from Bog Hill 39 Sarsens in Gravel, Chobham Ridges 40 The Pine Plantations near Wellington College 45 Wellingtonia Avenue near Wellington College 46 Factory Girls leaving Work at Reading 58 Whitening Factory, Kintbury 61 Christ's Hospital, Abingdon 63 White Waltham Church 64 Statue of King Alfred, Wantage 67 St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle 69 St George's Chapel: the Interior 71 Abingdon Abbey 74 St George's Hall: Windsor Castle 78 Statue of Queen Victoria at Windsor 79 Wayland Smith's Cave 83 Flint Implements of the Neolithic Period found in Berkshire 84 The White Horse 87 Blewburton Hill, near Blewbury 88 St Nicholas's Church, Abingdon 92 Abbey Gateway, Abingdon 94 North Door, Faringdon Church 96 South Door, Faringdon Church 97 Finchampstead Church 98 Faringdon Parish Church 99 The Upper Cross: East Hagbourne Village 100 Abingdon Parish Church 101 Ruins of Reading Abbey 103 Part of the Hospitium of St John, Reading Abbey 104 The Refectory, Hurley Priory 105 The Abbey Barn, Great Coxwell 106 Bisham Abbey 107 The Round Tower, Windsor Castle 110 Gateway, Donnington Castle, Newbury 112 Cottage at Cookham Dean 115 Wayside Cottages, Bisham 116 The London Road near Sunninghill 118 Hungerford Canal 120 Hambleden Weir 121 Disused Canal between Abingdon and Wantage 122 Boulter's Lock 123 The Town Hall, Abingdon 127 The Cloth Hall, Newbury 129 The Town Hall, Wallingford 130 Royal Military College, Sandhurst 131 The Town Hall, Faringdon 132 Gate of the Old Grammar School, Abingdon 133 Ascot Race Course 136 Archbishop Laud 139 The Hoby Chapel, Bisham Church 141 Miss Mitford 144 Abingdon Bridge 146 Binfield Rectory 148 Bray Church 149 Cookham Lock 151 East Hagbourne Village 153 Hurley Church and Site of Lady Place 154 Pangbourne 156 Shottesbrook Church from the Park 158 Streatley Mill 159 Wallingford Bridge 161 The Stocks at White Waltham 163 Diagrams 165

MAPS

Berkshire, Topographical Front Cover Berkshire, Geological Back Cover England and Wales, showing Annual Rainfall 50

The illustrations on pages 7, 33, 61, 84, 88, 96, 106, are from photographs by Mr Llewellyn Treacher, of Twyford; those on pages 83 and 87 are from photographs by Mr H. A. King, of Reading; those on pages 37, 40, 46, 64, 74, 105, 158, 163 are from photographs by the author. The portraits on pages 139 and 144 are reproduced from photographs supplied by Mr Emery Walker; while the illustrations on pages 67, 69, 71, 92, 94, 97, 99, 100, 103, 110, 112, 122, 127, 129, 130, 132, 133, 153, 156, are from photographs supplied by the Homeland Association; and those on pages 2, 10, 12, 13, 16, 17, 19, 21, 22, 24, 39, 45, 58, 63, 78, 79, 98, 101, 104, 107, 115, 116, 118, 120, 121, 123, 131, 136, 141, 146, 148, 149, 151, 154, 159, 161, are from photographs supplied by Messrs F. Frith & Co., Ltd., of Reigate.

1. COUNTY AND SHIRE. MEANING OF THE WORDS.

If we take a map of England and contrast it with a map of the United States, perhaps one of the first things we shall notice is the dissimilarity of the arbitrary divisions of land of which the countries are composed. In America the rigidly straight boundaries and rectangular shape of the majority of the States strike the eye at once; in England our wonder is rather how the boundaries have come to be so tortuous and complicated--to such a degree, indeed, that until recently many counties had outlying islands, as it were, within their neighbours' territory. We naturally infer that the conditions under which the divisions arose cannot have been the same, and that while in America these formal square blocks of land, like vast allotment gardens, were probably the creation of a central authority, and portioned off much about the same time, the divisions we find in England have no such simple origin. Such, in fact, is more or less the case. The formation of the English counties in many instances was (and is--for they have altered up to to-day) an affair of slow growth, and their origin was--as their names tell us--of very diverse nature.

Let us turn once more to our map of England. Collectively, we call all our divisions counties, but not every one of them is accurately thus described. Some have names complete in themselves, such as Kent and Sussex, and we find these to be old English kingdoms with but little alteration either in their boundaries or their names. To others the terminal shire is appended, which tells us that they were shorn from a larger domain--shares of Mercia or Northumbria or some other of the great English kingdoms.

The division of England into counties or shires has often been attributed to King Alfred (A.D. 871-901), but the shire of Berks is mentioned as early as the time of Ethelbert (A.D. 860-866), and Berkshire very probably existed as a county from the days of Egbert (died 836).

The words county and shire mean practically the same thing, but the former is derived from the Latin comitatus through the French comté, the dominion of a comes, or Count, and the latter from the Saxon scir (from sciran to divide). The termination "shire" is generally used for Berkshire and four of the neighbouring counties, viz. Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, and Wiltshire. The next neighbouring county is usually called Hampshire, but in Acts of Parliament and official papers it is called the county of Southampton. For the remaining county, Surrey, the termination shire is not used: its name--Suthrege--tells us that it was "the South Kingdom."

The boundary of the county follows in great part the river Thames or its tributaries but in many places it is not distinguished from the neighbouring counties by any natural features. On the west the chalk downs run from Wiltshire into Berkshire with no change at the boundary of the county, and on the south there is little distinction between the forest and moorland of Berkshire and of the adjoining tracts of Hampshire and Surrey.

Berkshire has thus existed as a county for about 1100 years; previously it was part of the Saxon kingdom of Wessex, which also comprised Hampshire, Wiltshire, Somerset, Dorset, Devon, and part of Cornwall. The Saxons were called in by the Britons to assist them against the Picts and Scots (A.D. 429-449). This was a short time after the departure of the Romans, A.D. 418, or nearly fifteen hundred years ago. The Roman rule in our district may be taken as from A.D. 40 to 418, a period of 378 years. We shall realise the length of their rule if we remember that 378 years ago Henry VIII was reigning in England.

When the Romans came to the district they found it occupied by a tribe of Britons named the Atrebates; and Silchester, just over our county boundary in Hampshire, was their chief town or settlement.

The written history of the district does not go further back than the Atrebates, but we find many relics of man of a much earlier date. There are in our museums human bones found in old graves, but it is not possible to give them a date or to name the tribe or tribes to which they belonged. There are also early gold coins without any inscription, but bearing a rude figure of a horse not unlike the celebrated white horse cut in the chalk hill above Uffington. These coins take us back to about B.C. 200. There are also various weapons and implements of iron, bronze, and stone, found in graves or barrows or in the beds of our rivers, about which we shall say more in a subsequent chapter. All these remains belong to a period when the surface of the county, though no doubt covered to a great extent with forest, was not very different from what it is to-day. The streams and rivers followed to some extent the same courses and flowed at much the same level as now.

But there are remains of man which carry us back to a very much earlier date. In what is known as the Palaeolithic Period our rivers flowed at much higher levels than now; possibly the land has risen since that time, but however that may be, there are beds of gravel of the river Thames as much as 114 feet above the present river, and these gravels contain implements made by man. These, which are at least as old as the gravel in which we find them, are nearly all of flint, and often beautifully made. A large collection from Berkshire is in the Reading Museum.

Several animals now extinct were living at that time. The mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, and the Irish elk roamed through the forest of Berkshire, and in all probability were hunted by Palaeolithic man.

2. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.

Berkshire is an inland county separated from the English Channel by the full width of Hampshire. The river Thames, however, gives a waterway to the sea, and the county town, Reading, is especially well served by railways and has mainly on that account become the centre of trades of great importance. Reading biscuits and Reading seeds have a world-wide celebrity, and printing is now extensively carried on in the town.

Berkshire is, however, essentially an agricultural county, and some of the most fertile corn land in England is found in it. Until quite modern times great tracts were waste, or woodland and moorland. But these, though of no agricultural value, are for the most part very good to live in and are now being rapidly built over.

The county is divided by nature into three well-marked districts. The first of these natural divisions is formed by the Vale of White Horse and the part of the county north of it, as well as the low-lying ground between Wallingford and Steventon. The soil is clay and sand, and a few beds of limestone occur in places.

The second division is the great chalk district forming central Berkshire, with Ashbury, Wantage, and Wallingford on the north and Hungerford, Kintbury, Chieveley, Bradfield, and Tilehurst on the south. The tract included in the curve of the river Thames between Twyford and Maidenhead also belongs to the chalk district. The chalk is not always at the surface of the ground, for it is often covered by thin beds of clay or gravel, but it will always be found at a little depth below the surface in this district.

The third division comprises the forest country of the southern and south-eastern parts of the shire. Its northern boundary runs from Inkpen in the west to Maidenhead in the east, but in places tracts north of this line belong to the third division and in other places the chalk comes to the surface south of it. The soil in the third division consists of clay and sand with no limestone. These clays and sands are very thick in the south-east of the county, but everywhere the chalk is below them if we go deep enough.

The chalk downs of the central division are dotted over with mounds and earthworks, probably for the most part the work of man before the Roman occupation, for it was an inhabited part of the county in the time of the Britons. On the other hand the Vale of White Horse division was in those days mainly or wholly uncultivated, but it is now the most fertile part of Berkshire. The south or forest division has been thinly populated up to quite modern times, though the Roman town of Silchester stood in the Hampshire part of this forest country.

Berkshire is almost all within the drainage area of the river Thames and its tributaries, and the natural line of communication between our county and the sea is by river, Windsor being some 85 miles from the Nore.

The estuary of the Severn is less than 32 miles from Faringdon, and there seems to have been a tolerably good road from Berkshire to the west coast in quite early times. Formerly a very usual line of communication between our county and the sea was from the south coast across the chalk downs. Hungerford is only 35 miles from Southampton, and the roadways across the Chalk are very old and fairly direct.

3. SIZE. SHAPE. BOUNDARIES.

The length of Berkshire on an east and west line is 41 miles. It may be described as a rectangle with a somewhat square projection at the south-eastern corner. Ashmole compares it to a lute and Fuller to a slipper. The northern boundary is practically formed by the river Thames, and is in consequence most irregular. Where the river curves in a southerly direction, the width of the county is contracted until it is less than seven miles at Reading. Until 1844 Three Mile Cross and the country between that place and the Hampshire border was an outlying part of Wiltshire, so that the width of Berkshire at Reading was less than four miles. This little bit of Wiltshire has however now been joined to Berkshire.

Berkshire as it is shown upon most maps is known as the "Geographical" or "Ancient County" of Berkshire, and its area is 462,208 acres, that is about one-seventieth of the area of England.

For administrative purposes the boundaries are slightly different, and the area of Administrative Berkshire including the county borough of Reading is 462,367 acres. By deducting from this the area under water, i.e. rivers, ponds, lakes, etc., we arrive at the figures 459,403, which are used as the area of Berkshire in acres for the purpose of agricultural and other returns issued by Government. The county of Berks for registration purposes, that is for Parliamentary elections, etc., includes all the Administrative County and also Egham in the east, Culham and Crowmarsh in the north-east, small bits of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire in the north, and the rural district of Ramsbury in the west, giving a total area of 573,689 acres.

Berkshire was, as we have said, a part of the Saxon kingdom of Wessex, and it has inherited from that kingdom its northern boundary, the river Thames. It is interesting to note that some rivers have been selected as boundaries to a much greater extent than others. Thus the Thames forms a county boundary for a great part of its course, whilst the river Severn flows through the middle of counties.

The Thames forms the county boundary at Old Windsor from a point a little above Magna Charta Island and separates Berkshire from Buckinghamshire, and later on from Oxfordshire, the boundary sometimes running in midstream, sometimes on one bank, and sometimes on the other bank. Near Oxford the boundary passes for a short distance a little to the west of the river, that is on the Berks side. The Upper Thames or Isis becomes the boundary between Berkshire and Oxfordshire, and then for a very short distance between Berkshire and Gloucestershire, until near Buscot the river Cole joins the Isis and the boundary turns in a southerly direction near to the bank of the Cole, the adjoining county being then Wiltshire. The county boundary runs by or close to the river Cole to near Bourton, and it then crosses the chalk country with no definite marks. At one point it crosses an old earthwork, Membury Fort, and reaches the river Kennet a little east of Chilton Foliat. From this point to near Woodhay, a distance of some 14 miles, the boundary of the county for administrative purposes differs from the boundary of the ancient or geographical county (see page 9), indeed considerable alterations have been made in this part of the county boundary at various times. The present administrative boundary after crossing the Kennet, turns in a westerly and then in a south-easterly direction following the border of Hungerford and Inkpen parishes and runs on to a point at the south-western corner of Combe parish where Berkshire, Wiltshire, and Hampshire meet. The Berkshire boundary then runs west to Pilot Hill and then turning takes a northerly or north-easterly course until it reaches the stream Emborne which it follows for several miles until near Brimpton the stream bends sharply northwards to join the river Kennet, while the county boundary continues its easterly course through a forest country to the Imp Stone plantation. It then makes a wide detour to the north leaving Mortimer West End and the Roman town of Silchester in Hampshire. This part of the boundary has at more than one date been subject to alteration and for a time it ran close to Silchester and is thus marked on many maps. Stratfield Mortimer is in Berkshire, and about a mile to the east of Silchester the county boundary reaches a Roman road which it follows pretty closely for a considerable distance, crossing the river Loddon at Stamford End Mill. On the east of the Loddon we come to a small tract which, until modern times, was an outlying part of Wiltshire, bounded in part by Berkshire and in part by Hampshire. It is now included in the former county, and the Berkshire boundary continues its easterly direction on or near the Roman road until it reaches the stream Whitewater close to its junction with the Blackwater. The county boundary reaches the latter river close to a ford, no doubt a well-known place, for these fords are in most cases very old crossing-places and this one certainly goes back to Roman times and may very likely have been used in still earlier days. The boundary then turns along the Blackwater, and though it does not always follow the present course of the stream, it keeps near to it for some eight miles, until we reach the Blackwater Bridge on the London and Southampton Road. This is another ancient crossing-place, and here the counties of Berkshire, Hampshire, and Surrey meet. The Berkshire and Surrey boundary now runs in a north-easterly direction, through the grounds of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, up a small stream to a place named Wishmoor Cross, possibly the site of a cross in former days, and evidently a well-known place, for five parishes meet there. From this point the boundary crosses the forest district of Bagshot Heath, celebrated in connection with highwaymen, and eventually reaches the Thames near Old Windsor.

In old maps it will be noticed that there are detached portions of Berkshire surrounded by Oxfordshire, and also detached portions of Wiltshire partially or wholly surrounded by Berkshire, but in modern times the county boundaries have been much modified for purposes of convenience. Thus an Act of Parliament was passed in 1844 to annex detached parts of counties to the counties in which they are situated. This Act transferred from Wiltshire to Berkshire parts of the parishes of Shinfield, Swallowfield, and Wokingham. Shilton and Little Faringdon were transferred from Berkshire to Oxfordshire, and part of Inglesham was given to Wiltshire. The boundaries of counties were still further simplified by an Act of Parliament of 1887, one of the objects of which was to arrange that no Union, Borough, Sanitary District, or Parish should be in more than one county.

4. SURFACE AND GENERAL FEATURES.