Bucklebury
FROM NWN but date unknown.
AN HISTORIC WANDER DOWN BUCKLEBURY WAY.
High on the north side of the Kennet Valley, where the Berkshire fields and woods run up to the ancient wold, lies Bucklebury, a village which time has passed by without defacing its quiet beauty only leaving a heritage of history.
To the passer-by the houses stand remote, mainly hidden by the trees, the beautiful Avenue a feature that never fails to captivate the traveller who sees it for the first time.
The common, stretching it seems, for ever towards the horizon guards this gem of Berkshire life and absorbs the many people who make for it from the ancient towns of Newbury and Reading between which the village is a halfway mark.
Yet this quiet place has witnessed so much of history of the realm, suffered the devastation of its youth in the wars, nurtured many, who held high office, yet remained the simple centre of a community.
Families of Bucklebury today are the descendants of those who lived and worked there generations ago.
The Lord of the Manor himself is a descendant of Jack of Newbury, the rich wool merchant whose fortune did much for this village when his son, John Winchcombe, received the Manor of Bucklebury from Henry VIII, the sum of £2,619 changing hands in the transaction.
At this time Bucklebury was already a place of some consequence.
First mention was in 956 when King Edwig granted wood from Hawkridge for the rebuilding of Abingdon Church. In Norman times, Borchedberie, one of the various names it has borne, was part of the great royal hunting forests so beloved of the Norman kings.
Traces of the 11th century church that stood there then can be found in St Mary’s parish church to this day.
That church was in the possession of Wallingford Priory when the Manor of Bucklebury was granted to the new Abbey of Reading by its founder Henry I. Wallingford Priory was a cell of St Alban’s Abbey and an exchange was arranged with the church at Shepehale in Hertfordshire, the parish church coming into the possession of Reading Abbey.
It was through the Abbey that the Bucklebury fishponds came into being, created to provide fresh fish for the Abbot who had a manor house built in the village. Pillow Mounds were also created to shelter rabbits to eat.
When Henry VIII decreed in 1538 that all baptisms, marriages and deaths be registered, not a single death was recorded in Bucklebury. The oldest family names, however, appeared for the first time.
The new decree was unpopular with the villagers as it was in the rest of the country, for it was felt that it meant new taxes, a fear that modern villagers can appreciate.
It was in 1540 that the Winchcombe family began their association with the parish when John, son of Jack of Newbury, became Lord of the Manor.
It began an association with the village, which was to prove to be of immense benefit to the inhabitants over the centuries and one which continues to this day.
John Winchcombe was a public-spirited man as many of his descendants have been. He extended his influence when in 1546 he purchased East Lockinge and in 1553 was returned as Member for Reading.
An event which caused this forward-looking man much distress was the trial of Julius Palmer, a young master of Reading School, who refused to renounce the new reformed religion. Despite pleas by Winchcombe and the High Sheriff of Berkshire he maintained his belief and with his companions Thomas Askew and John Gwynn, was burned at the stake.
John Winchcombe planned a fine manor house in which to live, but before it could be completed, he died and is buried in Newbury Church. His eldest son inherited the estate and was the first to live in the Manor at Bucklebury where, it is believed, he entertained Elizabeth I when the first of the oaks in the Avenue was planted. This tradition of Royal planting has continued through the ages.
Bucklebury continued to play an important role in the life of the county through the Winchcombe family, and during the Civil War the sympathies of many in the parish rested with the Royalist cause.
Among them was the Vicar of the day, the Rev Guy Carlton. He was arrested by Parliament forces but, with the help of his wife managed to escape and join the King in exile.
He returned to the country with the Restoration and his loyalty was rewarded with increasingly important appointments, eventually becoming Bishop of Chester. He was one of the parish’s most famous vicars.
Honour also came at this time to the Lord of the Manor when Henry Winchcombe the third was created a baronet in 1661 for his loyalty to the Royalist cause.
At this time the country was experiencing a shortage of small change and the landlord of the Bladebone Inn, the ancient hostelry still dispensing food and drink to villagers and travellers, issued his own tokens. These, valued at a farthing, were inscribed with the landlord’s name, John Morecock, and the reverse side bore the inscription ‘1666 in Bucklebury’ encircling the initials M I I .
The Bladebone took its name from the blade bone from the skeleton of a mammoth found in the Kennet Valley and claimed by a resident of the village. It is encased in copper in the inn sign and unlike so many hostelries its name is unique.
Bucklebury in older times ranked as an industrial area in the countryside by virtue of its foundry. This foundry continued until recent times powered by the waters of the River Pang, and while it is no longer following its earlier tasks exists still as an engineering works.
Among the products it manufactured were iron crosses which can be seen the churchyards and cemetery of Bucklebury and neighbouring villages.
During the eighteenth century the eminent politician Henry St John, married into the Winchcombe family. His bride was Frances Winchcombe who had inherited the Manor of Bucklebury and, on the death from smallpox in 1705 of her sister, the manor of Thatcham.
He was then Secretary of War but, when Parliament was dissolved in 1708, he did not seek re-election. During this period, he entertained at the Manor. Among his guests being Dean Swift who probably preached at the parish church during one or other of his visits to Berkshire. By 1710 St John was back in the political arena as Secretary of State. In 1712 he was created Baron St John and then Viscount Bolingbroke, but his marriage was not a happy one. Despite a brief reconciliation in 1713 he finally deserted his wife and shortly after fled the country through his involvement in a Jacobite plot. Despite the treatment she received Lady Bolingbroke continued to champion her husband until her death in October 1718. This unhappy episode in the family history is said to have led to her haunting the village in a coach drawn by six black horses.
Lady Bolingbroke’s sister, Mary, married to Robert Packer the Member of Parliament for Berkshire, inherited the manor. They watched carefully over the estate despite a spiteful attack on its young trees by Bolingbroke on his return from exile, who was angered by his dispossession. The Packer’s son died a bachelor in 1746 and in that year the estate passed to the son of his sister Winchcombe Henry Hartley, also member for Berkshire for 16 years. On the death of his wife, he married her sister Anne.
Their son, Winchcombe Henry Howard Hartley, took Holy orders and became Lord of the Manor and Vicar of the Parish in his presentation. He was a well-loved Lord of the Manor and parish priest on whose death in 1832 the Reading Mercury was to report: “The whole population of his extensive parish assembled in crowds to witness the last impressive ceremony over the remains of their beloved pastor and we may add that more heart-felt and general grief has rarely been exhibited on such an occasion.”
The Revd Hartley’s son became involved in a battle to enclose the common, an unusual proposal from the son of such a public-spirited man. But the fight was won by another outstanding man, John Morton, a cripple who farmed and preached for 55 years in and around the parish. He had made a disused blacksmith’s shop on Turner’s Green his headquarters, maintaining himself by farming at Holly Farm in the Slade.
In 1839 his long and faithful ministry was rewarded by his ordination to the Pastoral Office of the Congregational Church. Soon afterwards the present ‘Morton’s Chapel’ was built on the site of the blacksmith’s shop.
Records of the early nineteenth century contain many names familiar in Bucklebury today one of them Lailey. George Lailey was to become one of the most widely known residents of Bucklebury. A wood turner, he established a thriving business and high reputation for his wooden bowls turned on a primitive lathe in a shed on the common.
H.V. Morton, the travel writer, mentioned him and visitors from all over the world made their way to Bucklebury to see the man and purchase his wares. He was also a familiar figure about the sows in the area. He died at the age of 90 and is buried in the cemetery.
Bucklebury’s cemetery was opened during the mid nineteenth century and last weekend an acre extension was inaugurated. This was made possible by the publick spirited sale of the land to the parish council for £1 by the present Lord of Manor, Mr Derrick Hartley Russell.
Bucklebury, and its people, like so many in the unspoiled places of the countryside, are today fortunate in the service they receive from families whose roots go back a long way in the history of the place.
The descendants of Jack of Newbury, as well as those less well known outside their own village, carry on that tradition.
** We are indebted to Mrs Cecilia Milson for permission to use facts from her book ‘Bucklebury’s Heritage’ in the preparation of this article.