The Village in 1844

Two different maps were produced of the estate in 1844, both with accompanying listings showing who owned all the houses and parcels of land, and also the occupier if that was not the owner. One survey was for rents and tithes and as usual there were three identical copies of this, one for the landowner, one for the church and one for the tithe commissioners. The other appears to be for use in connection with the management of the estate for it has the land belonging to the different farms and other owners colour-coded and also shows land just outside the parish boundary. Interestingly, this survey also shows some differences in terms of occupiers from the tithe survey and both sometimes differ from censuses of 1841 and 1851, although the way the census of 1841 is recorded makes it impossible to identify any particular property accurately. Some of the houses seen in 1844 were demolished and replaced by new ones on the same site later in the century.

The turnpike from Bostock has now been closed and replaced by the new Pangbourne Road and along the new Pangbourne Road is Wickcroft Farm (120 on the image left), kept then by William Clarke.

The old road to Bradfield still runs on its old course between the Pangbourne Road and Apppleton's Corner. The Rectory (88) is still the one given by Richard Benyon as part of the enclosure settlement in 1829. The pair of cottages nearby (89) are now occupied by Daniel Harris and George Swadling and there is a new lodge (128) since 1829, occupied by Martha Horn, built near where the coach road to Englefield House joins the Bradfield Road. The lake has now reached its fullest extent.

At the top end of the street (below) the house remains (131), now owned by George Appleton which explains how Appleton's Corner got its name. The gardens are shown in detail with their glasshouses (73) and the house for the head gardener, William Greenshields, with the older dwelling behind it. The new stables for Englefield House (75) are also shown and the old buildings on the other side of the road have gone. The old Wimbleton farmhouse, now three cottages are at 54 with the farm buildings just beyond.

Number 79 is is the Crown Inn and owned by Caroline Hopkins along with the land at 80, 81, 82, and the two fields at 85 and 86 seen on the plan above. All these are occupied by "the widow Mildenhall", a beer seller. Number 4 and 5 in the Street are shown at 72 and in the estate survey the occupier of number 5 is given as Charles Webb, who also occupied the shop (69) owned by Caroline Hopkins. The person actually living in number 5 seems to have been the shoemaker Aaron Grey. Number 10 in the Street is at 83 and occupied by Anne Pelham, a widow and a laundress.

Continuing down the street (below), the next house is the schoolhouse (103) occupied by schoolmistress Elizabeth Giles and her schoolteacher son Robert. Beyond that is an old pair of cottages (104) opposite the entrance to the timber yard (68) with "the widow Horn" and Charles Horn as the respective occupants. In 1851 Charles Horn's daughter Elizabeth was an infant school teacher and according to Miss Winchcomb it was probably this building that was then the infant school and the schoolhouse was the senior school. Just beyond Chantry Lane is Chantry Cottage (106), owned by John Price and occupied by Jesse Povey, seemingly as a sub-tenant of Richard Benyon.

At the top of the new, straight alignment of the Street is the old Pound Cottage (66), occupied at this time by Charles Mason, a builder, who also rents part of the Timber Yard (67). Beyond Pound Cottage are two new pairs of cottages (63 and 64) in addition to the ones shown in 1822 (61 to 63) with the Three Daggers at the end nearest the Pangbourne Road. At this time, with Kitty May as beer seller, the Daggers appears only to have occupied one half of the pair of houses for Thomas Allen is shown as occupying the other. In 1851, the year after Kitty May died when John Woods was the publican, the inn seems to have occupied the whole building, little enough space, for in addition to the public house Woods also had his wife, two sons, six daughters and a lodger living there. On the other side of the Pangbourne Road is the former Dunts's Farm now separated by the road from the rest of the village. This is now apparently two dwellings occupied by James Cox and James May but likely still the old farmhouse and not the one there today.

An interesting anomaly arises from the 1851 census. George Appleton's house, the Rectory, the two houses of Daniel Harris and George Swadling and the lodge are all present but there is now an additional pair of houses here in "Englefield Road" somewhere between the Rectory and the lodge and not shown on any map. These are inhabited by William Varndell, a tailor, and Thomas Cox, aged 30. There is also, beyond the lodge, "Englefield School House" with Henrietta Percy, aged 21 and born in Bermondsey, as schoolmistress. The schoolhouse from the 1844 survey appears to be unoccupied in the 1851 census, though is back in use in 1861. Thomas Cox may be the one at North Street in the old Timbered Cottage in 1844, but this is the only mention in Englefield of William Varndell and Henrietta Percy and these houses do not appear again in 1861. It seems hardly likely that they would have been built between 1844 and 51 then demolished again before 1861 but there is a dip in the field where polo is now played, close to the road about where this phantom schoolhouse might have been. In the days when this field was cultivated, the plough used to bring bricks to the surface in this dip so there must have been a building of some sort there at one time.