East Hendred Museum at Champs Chapel, Oxfordshire and Berkshire Heritage

CHAPTER V NEWBURY ROAD

Leaving the Old Rectory till we come back to Church Street, we drive straight up Newbury Road and on for a couple of miles to the Ridgeway. We have still not reached the southern limits of the parish, but we have left all the houses behind. We shall work northwards again from the top of the Downs.

Before the A417 (the Portway) became the graded road we know, it was narrow and winding with little hump-backed bridges. Heavy traffic such as coal was brought along the naturally graded Ridge Way and wagons used to be sent up from the village to meet the coal wagons and bring down the fuel.

I think we owe the survival of the public right of way along the Ridge to the fact that public traffic used it for thousands of years. Well within living memory, huge flocks of sheep grazed their way along it to the great sheep fairs at Ilsley, where it was not unusual for two hundred thousand sheep and more to be sold at one fair. The Downs were open: the drovers kept their sheep moving just fast enough to feed as they went and slept beside them at night. A good drover would so conduct his flock that it arrived at Ilsley in better condition than when it set out.

Today we see how fields of arable land have been developed on the Downs. This is a new thing. It came about during the second world war and has been maintained by the use of artificial manures and weed killers, and by the use of barbed wire.

Where we reach the top of the Ridge we see a barbed-wire-enclosed plantation of fir trees. Amongst them are the remains of a great barrow in which we are told lies buried King Cwychelm of Wessex. It is easy to visualise the crowded life of the Ridgeway which continued until recent times. First, it was the great way along which prehistoric herdsmen made their way from Norfolk to Avebury, the meeting place for all kinds of communal purposes, including rites performed at the vast stone circle.

Such passage of flocks and herds went on until recent years. It was also a place of meeting of the great council of the kings of Wessex, when hundreds of nobles and their retainers camped in the open, and it was a place of trade, and of fun. It is well to think of the Ridge Way as not merely a place to exercise horse or dog but as a centre of communal life, a great place of meeting and of movement. Sheep did not then reach the abbatoir in tiered motor transport along tarmacked roads.

Looking northward across the parish of East Hendred we now see large fields mechanically cultivated. The fields were large before the enclosures, but they were divided into strips of an acre or so. Any farmer might hold a dozen or more of such strips, scattered throughout the parish from over the Downs right to the stream on the edge of Steventon.

There are people living today who took part in this driving of cows to pasture. Mrs. Tinson, herself a Besley, used to take her father's cows and those of the Willoughbys (who then farmed at Hill Farm) to Aldfield Common, and stay with them all day, alternating a week about with a Willoughby. When the parish lands were enclosed in 1801 and 1814, Aldfield was allotted to the squire, but it was not actually put down to crops until the second world war. The present farmer of Hill Farm was then given grazing rights in the home park to compensate him for the loss of grassing rights on Aldfield, which is now part of Aldfield Farm.

As we stand on the Ridge Way we can see Aldfield Farm away to the north east beside the AERE buildings. I have seen it described as an eighteenth century building; but this seems to contradict the idea that outlying farms were only built after the enclosures. I happened on Mr. William Goddard one evening painting the north window which Sheard the artist made for the kitchen of Monk’s Orchard. He told me that an old man had told him that the bricks of which Aldfield Farm was built were burned on the site.

I immediately drove to Aldfleld and came on Mr. George Smith chatting in his farm yard. He confirmed Mr. Goddard's story. He said that a Barny Mulford had told him that his father, another Barny Mulford, had helped to dig the clay in a field near the house, where the hole could still be seen, and that the bricks were said to have been burned on the site. He also told me that the date 1841 is clearly visible on the house: it was then covered with Virginia creeper, but I am prepared to take his word for it.

So I called on Mr. Eric Mulford at Abbey Farm. He said his grandfather’s name was Charles and that he farmed Little Mulfords, the farm since burned dowm, opposite St. Amands in Church Street. Then I called on Mr. Peter Mulford at the Wheatsheaf, and he produced two medals awarded to a Barny Mulford for the Afghan Campaign of 1879-80. He did not know which Barny Mulford this might be; but it is clear that a soldier on active service in 1879-80 could not have been digging clay in 1841. The problem of which Barny Mulford is still unsolved. I was also worried as to how bricks were actually burned. I am lucky in having a friend who is expert in brickmaking. He came along to see the Farm. He is convinced that a clamp kiln was used, easily and cheaply erected and simply to use. Such a kiln would leave no trace when its use was past. He verified that the bricks are indeed hand made.

The Allin family were well established farmers long before the enclosures; but the John Allin of the period acquired a reputation as a valuer when the spate of enclosure acts made such services extremely lucrative. (There were then no ”profess-ional qualifications" involved in our sense). When he received his allotments of land under the East Hendred enclosure awards, he built himself a house on his land at the foot of the Downs. The family fortunes prospered and at a time of agricultural prosperity (Crimean War) his grandson extended the house into a mansion and laid out a deer park. The story of the Allin estates is hardly relevant to such a study as this. It is enough to say that the house, well remembered by many people in the village, was pulled down, and nothing but its ruins and the railings of the deer park (still in excellent condition) now remains. From the Ridgeway we look down on the trees which were planted in and around the park.

The Allins also did some building for estate servants. This included two cottages across the lane from the park, now occupied by Mr. Cross, who keeps game now for a syndicate. Further north at Skeats Bush, are five more cottages, originally two in a pair and three in a block. When Mrs. Beary bought them in 1961, it was a condition of sale that no estate employee should be disturbed. One of these cottages was tenanted by Mr. William Swadling when he became an estate employee. The Swadlings had been sawyers for generations. Sawyers were an independent people who worked by contract. Anyone who had trees to cut down or sawn into planks would call on the Swadlings and agree a price for the job. They moved about the countryside very much at their own free will, staying at inns and farms. The Swadlings were musicians, singing in the church choir, playing instruments and really enjoying music. It was the power-driven circular saw that made the old sawyer life impossible and caused William Swadling to work as an employee for one master. Almost his last free-lance job must have been done on Mr. Colt’s house in White Road.

We can see all this together with Ellaway’s Barn and Parson's Barn from the Ridge. What we cannot see from there is the great chalk pit from which so much of East Hendred was built and from which came the material to mend roads. When we drop off the Ridge, the park is immediately before us. We turn sharp left (west) and come to another sharp turn (north). It is at this point that access to the chalk pit is possible. At the Westmanside Enclosure, this pit was reserved for public use. The stone is easy to get and easy to use: much of the village was built of it.

When we pass Skeats Bush we drop fairly rapidly, crossing the Icknield Way. We see on our left a cedar-built house set amongst trees. Then we are on the hollow way (or, on the maps, Ellaway's Hill) where the chalk pit from which Mr. Colt obtained material for his house in White Road lies amongst trees.

Then we come to the village itself. On our left (west) is what used to be a farmstead but now houses the horses of Mrs. Mather-Jackson. Across the road on our right is Downside House. The last court roll of the Manor of Arches held in 1790 tells us that William Harris Mason held three acres, an orchard and a messuage which the enclosure award map shows to have been Downside (not so named till later). I find the first mention of a William Harris in the court roll of the Manor of Arches in 1712, and in 1713 he was fined for overstocking the common. Harrises continued to farm (there is a William Harris farming at Harwell today) but by 1769, there was a William Harris builder (we have referred to his accounts already), and so on to 1883, when the last William Harris died at Downside. Since then it has been owned by a farmer called Whiter, an artist named Webb, Miss Lavinia Smith who collected her museum material there, and now Mrs. Mather-Jackson.

Downside, like so many other houses in East Hendred, has grown over the years. The heavy timber frame is still the most striking feature of the interior of the house; but the north face has been stuccoed and only the way in which the upper storey projects over the lower on wooden corbels (probably the ends of joists) suggests its age.

The south face is brick. At either end there is a brick archway. In the one at the west end there is a brick on which is inscribed, upside down, the letters and figures E.E. 1763; while the one at the east end is inscribed H.S. 1799. I guess that these archways were added at these different dates to the original front: the letters and figures have a distinctly Georgian style. The central section of the south front projects about eighteen inches and has a pediment and a semicircular window of a style suggesting that it was added to the front in very late Georgian or Regency times.

The outbuilding beside the road is also an interesting piece of architectural development. Its south face is of good cut stone (perhaps from the quarries at Headington) and has mullioned windows: the string course rests on two little Ionic capitals. The lower part of the roadside front is of chalk-stone with a timber frame infilled above with, probably, wattle and daube. Mrs. Mather-Jackson told me that when she knew it first there was a doorway opening to the road; but this has been filled in with chalkstone, and another window added. In the north face of this outbuilding, Webb the artist built in a bay window. It was in this building that Miss Lavinia housed her collection.

The Besleys also come into the picture. They made everything that could be made in iron, from horse shoes to gates and pumps. The very fine pump in the Downside scullery bears the name of Joseph Besley. And another point: the importance of the Harrises and of their home at Downside was marked by the name used for the hill up from the village before streets were renamed so recently; it was Harris’s Hill: pity to lose this significant link with the past.

Much more could be said about Downside: suffice it to say that, whereas Spark’s Farm is important because of the way it retains its medieval quality, Downside shows aspects of every style from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.

My first visit to Downside was at the request of Dr. Fletcher who had been asked by Reading Museum to investigate the discovery of stone mullions and other stones in the garden there. I am satisfied now that these were left over from the material William Harris used for the outbuildings. Mr. Sowdon suggests that William Harris may have acquired the stones from King’s Manor when he was doing some work there. It was quite normal for a builder to cart away unwanted material.

As I kept coming across the name of William Harris in rolls, deeds, on buildings and maps, I built an imaginary picture of a cheerful extrovert. I was very pleased when Miss Martin, in Cat Street, told me that her grandmother had described the last William Harris to her as "a big man, a jolly man, who shook his sides when laughing."

Across the road from Downside House is Framptons. The Empress Maud, daughter of our King Henry 1, gave her lands and rights in Hendred to the monks of St. Stephen in Caen. They already held land at Framptons in Dorset, and their lands in East Hendred were dealt with by the prior at Frampton, - hence the name. These East Hendred lands and rights were organised as a manor, and court was held for its tenants. Business, such as the collection of tithe corn was carried on by a steward or bailiff, who may at times have been a monk. Most of the old house was said to have been pulled down before 1802. I was therefore surprised to find so much timber in the house and also the quite typical construction of the stairs at one end of the great chimney place. I asked Dr. Fletcher to come out and look at it. My opinion is that the internal timbering is sixteenth century. The external brickwork is late Georgian. The appearance of the house has been further altered by the recent extension of the house to incorporate an outbuilding beside the road. This has been done so well that it now forms an acceptable part of the older Georgian house.

Behind the house is a thatched and timbered barn, which must have been built about the time the Georgian reconstruction took place. Its roof stands out above the surrounding buildings as seen from the High Street, and it is to be hoped that it may be preserved.

Immediately below Framptons is the house now called Wellshead and occupied by Mr. Parker and Nurse Parker. At the enclosures, it was the farm of John Robey and was for many years known as Robey’s Farm. Like Spark’s Farm it is basically a bayed structure. One bay is still open to the thatch, but two bays were still open in 1922 when the Nursing Association bought the house from Mr. F.A. Smith. They built up one of these bays to provide two additional rooms and turned the middle bay into a hall with a modern staircase. This is another example of how our forefathers gradually developed their open plan farmhouses into modern dwellings. Such houses grew according to developing needs rather than to a settled plane.

Opposite Framptons stands another house which has "grown". It seems to have started as a timber frame, but it has been much altered. It is now called Monk’s Orchard after a farmer called Monk who occupied it briefly before emigrating to Canada just before the first world war, and had his farm buildings where Mrs. Mather-Jackson’s horses are kept. It was the home of Mr. Sheard, the artist who did so much of his work in Hendred. He altered the south front, extending its windows upwards to form dormers. The result is that the gutter crosses them in an unusual manner. The gable end beside the road still shows the original timber frame of the house, most of which has been stuccoed. Mr. Sheard built himself a studio in the grounds which is still intact. The wall beside the road is built of cob and has recently been re-roofed with tiles instead of thatch. The roadside wall of the Downside gardens is chalkstone and tiled, but rather more generously roofed than that of Monk’s Orchard. Both cob and chalkstone need to be kept dry at foot and head.

Below Monk’s Orchard is a thatched cottage not yet restored. When the south gable fell, it was replaced by brick covered with corrugated iron.

The next house below is a very different matter. It was a cottage connected with Hunt’s Farm some two hundred yards to the east, and came into the Dearlove family by marriage with the Hunts. It was very fully restored by Miss Dearlove’s father, who was a wheelwright and carpenter. He squared off the south gable where there was a rounded protrusion for the great oven, and moved the doorway from that end of the house to its present position. As in many such houses, the stairs were fitted in beside the chimney. Mr. Dearlove took them out to make room for a new front door, and himself built a new staircase. Miss Dearlove, later, had a rearward extension made to provide for a kitchen and offices, and she enlarged the rear bedroom windows. The house still has some of the genuine flavour of the sixteenth century. The main beam supporting the ceiling is bevelled in the later Elizabethan manner and, though the timbering on the west side overlooking the street has been tidied up, restored to the vertical and smoothed so that it looks to be recent work, the cottage still quite recognisable belongs to its period.

Its neighbour, now called Featherbed Cottage, has undergone less change. It is a very good example of a one-bay cruck cottage. It was reconditioned by Mr. Belski, a Chelsea sculptor, who bought it in 1967, and the work done on it has adjusted it to modern living conditions with a minimum of alteration. The great crucks are used as a principal feature of the cottage, and the new extension to the rear is invisible from the road.

The name "Featherbed", given to it by Mr. Belski, originates from the manorial heriot. Until the invention of sprung mattresses, feather-beds were a valued luxury. The down feathers of all kinds of birds were collected over the years and such beds were infinitely more comfortable than the straw mattresses used by younger members of the family. I would have liked to know more about the cottage, and wrote to Mr. Belski. He tells me that the earliest deed, which must have been quite a collector’s piece, disappeared at some stage in the transfer business.

An interesting case of heriot occurred at the court of the Manor of Arches held in 1583. The jurors presented that Agnes Waynsford Widow who held a messuage in Esthenrethe...was dead, in consequence of which a heriot was due to the lord; viz, "unus laitus plumarius pretii xxxiiis iiiid. et unum molendinum Anglice a querne pretii Vs." (A featherbed price 33/4 and a mill, in English a querne, price 5/-.) In 1583, 33/4 was a lot of money.

The inhabitants of such sound cottages as Featherbed and those further north are very likely to have at least supplemented their family income by work in connection with wool. Of mediaeval homes only those well built with good timber frames have survived. Of the flimsier type of dwelling the following is an example: at the court of the Manor of Arches in 1665 it was stated "that on 18th April 1637 permission for a cottage on the waste of the Manor was given to Robert Hutchins for a couple of capons." The commoners resented a hovel like this on the common and kept bringing it up at the court. It could have been pulled down in a few minutes.
The cottages north of Featherbed are a little later: they are timber framed but not cruck. A picture painted by Sheard shows them already no longer thatched and with the beginning of dormer windows. The last of these, at the junction with St. Mary’s Road, is remembered as a bakery and later as a news agent’s. Under the slope of the thatch at the end of the row it must have had its storage. This is now incorporated in the house; but the walls are so impregnated with salt from the curing of bacon that papering is difficult.

St. Joseph’s had its own well; but these lower cottages shared one behind what is now called The Cottage. The well has been filled in, but the right of way to it still exists.

Past the junction of Newbury Road and St. Mary’s Road are two pairs of cottages on our right. The first pair may be contemporary with those in Portway Place, for they are of chalkstone framed with brick. The second pair, now about to be restored by Mr. Eyston, is very much older. It was probably all one building, though now divided. This is an exciting example of cruck construction. It consists of two bays each of 15 feet, which was the original building, with further shorter bays of eleven feet added, one at either end. Then came the great central chimney with the spiralled stairs inserted in the space between the chimney and the wall. Everything is there: the great crucks, the heavy purlins, the tie beams, the flimsy modern partition to form a passage where the upper rooms were formerly open. The way in which the thatched roof droops over the north short bay shows how the original loft has not yet been turned into a bedroom as has been done over the south bay, where there is now a window in the heightened wall end.

A wing has been added to that part of the building which is now No. 2 Newbury Road, the masonry being the work of the inevitable Joe Prater, and the carpentry done by the father of Mr. Theobald who now mends shoes in the old maltster’s house in Orchard Lane. As a further example of the way the basic population keeps emerging, Mrs. Charlton’s maiden name was Hunt.

It is not the business of this description of the village to pry unnecessarily into personal tragedy, but there is on the A417, between White Road and Woods Farm Lane, a little metal cross with the initials W.J.C. and the date 1883. Here a little boy of the Charlton family was killed when he fell from the shaft on which he was riding and was run over by the wheels of the cart. This may surprise newcomers to the village; death on the roads was not infrequent even before the days of the motor car.

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