The Old Village

 

For the location of houses described here and in the other pages by their modern numbers, see The Numbered Houses.

 

The nature of the old village of Englefield is unknown until just after the middle of the 18th century when, in addition to Ballard's survey, we have a number of other maps. These maps all show the locations of buildings, although do not allow us to distinguish between houses and other buildings, although Ballard can be interpreted through the accompanying book to give that information. Later estate plans do distinguish by showing houses in red and other buildings in black.

 

The first of these maps is John Roque’s road map of 1761 (top, right) and it shows the village centred around Appleton’s Corner with a great many buildings  along the road that is now the private drive to Englefield House, between the church and what was then Green Lane running through Great Field. In fact, the part of this road between Green Lane and Appleton's Corner then ran a little way to the north of the present one, along the line of the wall in the left-hand picture below and the houses were on the grassed area in the centre of the picture. In this location too, was Cranemoor House, probably the old home of the Englefield family until Sir Francis fled in 1559 and later of Sir Edward Norreys. Between Appleton's and the church were more buildings, these mainly on the grass to the left of the road in the older picture below. The lime tree on the right of that picture stood on the spot where the slightly rougher circle of grass is in the modern picture and where there formerly was a house.

 

In what is now the park, between Appleton's and Cranemoor Pond are also many buildings and on the other side of the junction, in the area now occupied by the modern village down as far as the junction where the old road to Tidmarsh diverged to the left, are more buildings, some of which remain to this day.

 

A map of four years later, centred on the nearby village of Padworth, (centre, right) shows a similar situation. The aerial image (left) shows the through roads of the time in red with the location of Cranemoor House marked by the yellow circle. The yellow rectangles show other buildings that were there in the 18th century and still exist today, at least in some small part.

 

 

Richard Benyon inherited Englefield in 1789 and apparently lost no time in removing the village and creating the new park, even before he made Englefield his permanent home in 1802. Thomas Pride’s map of 1790 (bottom, right) shows a similar situation to Roque's map of 30 years earlier, though with the Tidmarsh turnpike built by Powlett Wright in 1771 replacing Green Lane, but with the road across the park closed and all the buildings there removed. A building opposite junction of the turnpike with the road to Theale, also seen in the 1765 map, might well be the original Three Daggers Inn for the location certainly accords with the description of the line of the turnpike. One hundred years earlier the village pound stood at this junction, opposite this building. It was later moved to the other end of the village, in the area where the old Tidmarsh road turned off the Street, where it remained until near the end of the 20th century.

 

Pride's map is probably the last time many of these old houses were seen for in 1802 only four are shown. One of these stood around where the lime tree is in the left-hand picture below and another to the left of the wall in the right-hand picture below. Both of these had apparently gone by 1822. Behind this second house was still another old building that may well have been the house where Joshua Loring lived between 1783 and 1789 and which became the Rectory in 1829, when the previous one just behind the church was demolished, until a new one was built in 1870. It and another old house further on towards the junction with Green Lane remained until the 1870s when the new Rectory was built.