Between 1739 and 1840, three generation of the Fowle family held the living at Kintbury. The first Thomas Fowle became vicar in 1739, his son Thomas in 1762, then his son, Fulwar Craven Fowle, in 1798.
Back then, it was not unusual for a living to be passed on through the family like this because the appointment of a vicar was often in the gift of a particular patron. This was the way in which Pride & Prejudice’s Lady Catherine de Bourg was able to appoint Mr Collins – although it has to be hoped that not all patrons were as interfering!
Until the middle years of the nineteenth century, there were only two universities in England: Oxford and Cambridge. Both were regarded as very fitting destinations for the sons of the educated upper and upper middle classes; Thomas Fowle the younger was no exception and he became a student at St John’s College, Oxford.
It was at St John’s College that Thomas Fowle met another student, George Austen of Tonbridge, Kent. There were no female students at either Oxford or Cambridge at that time – indeed it was to be over 150 years before women were admitted to either university. However, George Austen met his future wife at Oxford: Cassandra Leigh was the daughter of the Master of Baliol College whom he married in 1764.
George Austen & Thomas Fowle remained friends after graduation and leaving Oxford. George was appointed rector of the parish of Steventon, Hampshire in 1761 and it was here that he and Cassandra brought up their eight children. A country rector’s income was not large so to augment his earnings George opened a school in the rectory where he taught the sons of other gentlemen along with his own boys.
By now, Thomas Fowle was himself vicar of Kintbury and he and his wife, Jane, sent each of their four sons to Steventon to be educated alongside the young Austens. And so Jane & Cassandra Austen came to know Fulwar, Thomas, William and Charles Fowle in what must have seemed something like an extended family.
The Austens and the Fowles were to remain lifelong friends.
Eliza has seen Lord Craven at Barton, and probably by this time at Kintbury, where he was expected for one day this week…She found his manners very pleasing indeed.
Eliza has seen Lord Craven at Barton, and probably by this time at Kintbury, where he was expected for one day this week…She found his manners very pleasing indeed.
Lord Craven was prevented by company at home from paying his visit at Kintbury, but, as I told you before, Eliza is greatly pleased with him and they seem likely to be on the most friendly terms.
Jane Austen, letter to Cassandra, January 1801
The Eliza to whom Jane refers is Eliza Fowle, wife of Fulwar Craven Fowle, vicar of Kintbury and sister to Jane’s close friend Martha Lloyd. Barton – or Barton Court – was the home of Charles Dundas, M.P. and is a large house about half a mile north of Kintbury church on what would have been the old coaching road into Kintbury.
Lord Craven was a distinguished military gentleman who served in Flanders and was AD to the King and a favourite of Queen Charlotte. He was reputed to be a bit of a rake before his marriage – as Jane Austen remarked in her letter to Cassandra:
The little flaw of having a mistress now living with him at Ashdown Park seems to be the only unpleasing circumstance about him.
Some people believe that Jane based Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility on Lord Craven. However, the novelist R. L. Delderfield wrote as a preface to one of his books that,
…every character in fiction is an amalgam of factors drawn from the author’s memory and imagination.
I disagree with the assumption that Willoughby’s character was based on Lord Craven’s. Why? Well Craven’s mistress was the young Harriet Wilson. Craven was 31 and unmarried at the time. Harriett was much younger and does not give Craven a good press. Her memoirs start with the line,
I shall not say why and how I became, at the age of fifteen, the mistress of the Earl of Craven…
Harriet leaves the reader in no doubt that she finds the Earl boring and old-fashioned, with his night caps and his endless talk of his cocoa trees on his estates in the Indies. She left him for Lord Melbourne. Mind you if as a teenager one had been isolated in Ashdown House on the Lambourn Downs I think most of us would have been a tad miffed even if our career was that of ‘entertaining men’!
Christopher Hibbert wrote that Harriet had a Swiss father and was renowned not so much for her beauty as easy manners, gaity and flighty charm. Sir Water Scott described her as smart, saucy with the manners of a wild schoolboy. Harriet was a well-known ‘lady’ in certain circles. When she grew too old to charm, she wrote her memoirs, sent the relevant passages to the gentlemen concerned and offered to suppress it for a fee. This caused the famous reply of Wellington: Publish and be damned!
So, I believe Harriet Wilson did not resemble the girl described as Colonel Brandon’s ward. She was seduced by Willoughby aged 17, and left without help, friend or home. He promised to return but didn’t and after breaking another girl’s heart married a rich wife.
Lord Craven on the other hand went on to marry an actress, Louisa Brunton, (without informing his very formidable mother) after Harriet had left him. They lived in Hamstead as a close family and the Countess was renowned for her gracious generosity. Obviously unlike Willoughby, Craven did not marry Louisa for money
The Georgian gossip collector Creevy, wrote that in January 1816, Lord Craven embarked, on his own yacht, for the Mediterranean. There were 70 members of his family on board at an expense of £40,000. Creevy added, somewhat ominously, that it gave a good chance to his brother Berkley, especially as he would rely much upon his own skill in the management of the vessel! Evidently they all survived Lord Craven’s seamanship and Berkley was disappointed.
Walbury Beacon Benefice is named after the point on Walbury Hill where, traditionally, a beacon has been built.
But mind-chains do not clank where one’s next neighbour is the sky.
Thomas Hardy, “On Wessex Heights“
Walbury Beacon Benefice is named after the point on Walbury Hill where, traditionally, a beacon has been built. Originally beacons were lit across the south of England as an alert to the danger of invasion. More recently and at least since Victorian times, the chain of beacons has been lit to celebrate royal jubilees. Sometimes known as Inkpen Beacon, at 974 feet above sea level, Walbury Hill is the highest point on chalk in England and the site of Walbury Camp, an Iron Age hill fort, which, I believe, has never been excavated.
A beacon on Walbury Hill/Inkpen Beacon celebrating the Platinum Jubilee in June 2022
It will surprise some people to know that when the Ordnance Survey first surveyed this area, Walbury Hill was measured as being 1,011 feet above sea level, thus making it a mountain! However, a subsequent survey in the late C19th measured Walbury at less than 975 feet and so demoted it to the status of a hill.
Further westward along the ridge is Inkpen Long Barrow, one of only three long barrows in Berkshire but one of a cluster, most of which are located in Wiltshire and Dorset. However, it is not the long barrow that many visitors come to see, but the famous (or perhaps that should be infamous) Combe Gibbet.
Combe gibbet
Many people mistakenly believe that a gibbet was the site of a public execution, but this was not so. The original Combe Gibbet was only used once but it was not for an execution. In 1676, George Broomham and Dorothy Newman were convicted of the murder of George’s wife Martha and son, Robert. They were executed at Winchester but their bodies returned to their home parishes where they were hung on the gibbet – as a deterrent to anyone contemplating committing murder. What contributes to the general confusion between a gibbet and a gallows is the fact that the downland on the north side below the gibbet is marked on OS maps as “Gallows Down” – presumably a misnomer which has stuck!
As many of you will know, the story of Broomham and Newman inspired the then young Oxford graduate John Schlessinger, to make his first feature film, “The Black Legend”. In the late 1940s the Schlessinger family lived at Mount Pleasant, between Inkpen and Kintbury and so the grisly local landmark would have been a familiar sight to them. With family members and friends from Oxford taking the major roles, John Schlessinger filmed the story of murder during the summer of 1948, using many local people as extras. I doubt any of these villagers had the remotest idea that this young man would one day go on to be one of Britain’s foremost directors winning 7 BAFTAs and an Oscar.
Nearly 20 years later John Schlessinger was to return to Wessex to film his adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s “Far from the Madding Crowd”. Filmed entirely on location in Wiltshire and Dorset, what fascinates me about this later work are the number of scenes which recall moments from Schlessinger’s earlier film. It is as if the inspiration he took from his work around Walbury Hill stayed with him and was used in this, one of the visually most beautiful of British films.
However, it is not only because of the Black Legend that many other people visit Walbury Hill. The Newbury Weekly News archive features various accounts of visits to the area or discussions of its history. Some time in the late C19th, the novelist and poet Thomas Hardy visited Walbury Beacon – though perhaps to confuse us even more, he calls it “Ingpen Beacon” – and referenced it in his poem, Wessex Heights:
There are some heights in Wessex, shaped as if by a kindly hand For thinking, dreaming, dying on, and at crises when I stand, Say, on Ingpen Beacon eastward, or on Wylls-Neck westwardly, I seem where I was before my birth, and after death may be.
Walbury Hill might not be a mountain but it remains a much loved landmark.
In times past Rogation was celebrated in the Benefice of Walbury Beacon by groups of people setting out from each church after a service, joining at West Woodhay and onwards to Inkpen and Combe. It was a very popular event; the countryside is glorious and Combe the highest point in the south.
In times past Rogation was celebrated in the Benefice of Walbury Beacon by groups of people setting out from each church after a service, joining at West Woodhay and onwards to Inkpen and Combe. It was a very popular event; the countryside is glorious and Combe the highest point in the south.
Today, we celebrated in the West Woodhay Memorial Garden next to the church. It was a a beautiful morning, we sang, we prayed for God’s blessing. We were joined by a robin that hopped amongst us and a cuckoo calling in the background. The service was made even more memorable when Mr. Henderson and his Estate Manager told us of their wonderful decision a few years back to dispense with pesticides, chemicals etc and bring the land back clean and productive -thus of course, promoting biodiversity. Maybe we shall once again hear the plaintive cry of the lapwing and song of the nightingale.
St Laurence’s Church, West Woodhay
After the service there was a chance to drive around the farm to see the work in action.
A great step forward in our area and one we hope that will be followed. Many thanks to Mr. Henderson for this decision and the hospitality of the day.
‘All creation is designed to work together: God made it this way to show his Glory.
Humans were created to look after everything in the world; they should not destroy it.
The world’s resources, including animals, are not to be exploited’
Should you turn to look to your left as you walk up the path to St Mary’s Church, Kintbury, you will see a rather unusual grave marker.
Should you turn to look to your left as you walk up the path to St Mary’s, Kintbury, you will see a rather unusual grave marker. Rather than being stone, as are the great majority of grave markers, this one, standing little over three feet high, is of metal, probably tin, and enclosed in a five-sided wooden frame. From a distance it looks a little like a larger version of a Victorian schoolchild’s slate; perhaps this was deliberate , because the person commemorated was six year old Olive Emma Witt, who died in 1896.
Olive Emma Witt’s grave marker in Kintbury church yard
The Witts were not originally of Kintbury. Olive’s father, Tom, had been born in 1846 at Braemore, Hampshire, where his father, Charles had been an agricultural labourer. Emma Witt had been born in Salisbury in 1850.
At the time of the 1871 census, Tom was working as a gardener in Salisbury and it has to be likely that it was around this time that he met Emma Skeet, the local girl who would become his wife.
By 1881, the Witts had moved north out of Wiltshire to west Berkshire where Tom now worked as a gardener at Elcot. The family had grown: Walter had been born in 1877 and Herbert in 1880.
It would seem that Tom Witt was an ambitious young man – by the census of 1891 he is a farm bailiff at Inlease Farm on the Hungerford Road out of Kintbury where they have been living for at least six years now. Two more children had been born: Charles in 1885 and Olive in 1890. The household must have been a busy and possibly crowded one as the Witts had four young men lodgers: two carters and two ploughboys, all working on the farm.
Some time within the following six years, Tom progressed from being a bailiff at Inlease to a farmer in his own right at Cullamores Farm on the road out of Kintbury towards Inkpen. Very sadly, however, it was here that, on June 10th, 1896, little Olive died. The grieving family put an announcement in the Newbury Weekly News.
The census of 1901 shows Tom & Emma still at Cullamores with Tom described as an “Employer”. The distinction between “Employed” and “Employer” was particularly significant in an age of increasing social mobility, particularly for someone like Tom whose father had been an agricultural labourer like so many thousands of men in the middle of the century. Tom & Emma were coming up in the world.
Herbert, now 20, was working on the farm. Charles, however, had turned his back on farming and at 16 was a carpenter’s apprentice. Walter had left Kintbury altogether, and was now a police constable at Rochester Row Police Station in London.
The end of the nineteenth century saw decreasing numbers of workers employed in agriculture and this national trend seems to have been reflected in the family experience of the Witts. By 1911, Walter was married with a daughter and living in Harrow, Middlesex. He was still with the Metropolitan Police. Herbert, who had previously been working on the family farm, had followed his elder brother into the police force, but for him a force not so far from home as he was in Wantage.
By 1911, Tom was 64 and no longer working in agriculture and no longer himself an employer. Furthermore, he and Emma have left Kintbury and were now living in Newland, Cogges, close to Witney in Oxfordshire. He has returned to his first occupation, that of gardener and on the census is identified as a “worker”.
The trajectory of Tom Witt’s life experiences would have mirrored those of many of his contemporaries. Born into an agricultural labourer’s family, Tom had improved his life chances becoming upwardly mobile until he could describe himself as a farmer and employer – a distinction which mattered in this ultra class conscious time. By the time Tom and Emma’s sons had been born, universal education would have given them a far better start in life than that experienced by their grandfather Witt in Hampshire, enabling them to join the police force and ensuring their place in the lower middle classes.
We do not know exactly why Tom & Emma left Cullamores farm but it has to be likely that the slump in agriculture had something to do with it. This was a time when many thousands were still leaving the countryside for the growing towns whilst others were emigrating overseas. For Tom & Emma, perhaps the move northwards to Witney was a fresh start away from the world – and the social status – they had lost.
I wonder if they ever returned to Kintbury and to the little grave in St Mary’s churchyard -the journey back then from Witney would have required three changes of train on the Great Western Railway. The forty mile journey across the downs by road would have been slow and unlikely to be completed easily within a day.
Why Olive’s grave marker was of tin rather than stone I do not know. Iron crosses are not unknown in churchyards but a grave marker of tin is something I have seen nowhere else.
But then, any exploration of family history – any family – raises far more questions than it ever answers.
Think of the author, Thomas Hardy (1840 -1928), and your first thoughts are probably of Dorset, the county most associated with his life and where most of his novels and poems are set.
So, what did this author, most associated with the countryside around Dorchester, have to do with Berkshire?
Think of the author, Thomas Hardy (1840 -1928), and your first thoughts are probably of Dorset, the county most associated with his life and where most of his novels and poems are set.
Fans of Hardy will know that in his novels he identified his semi-fictional Dorset as South Wessex, Wiltshire as Mid Wessex, Hampshire as Upper Wessex and so on, adapting the name of the early medieval kingdom. If you look carefully at the map of Hardy’s Wessex inside most editions of the novels, you will see that North Wessex corresponds to pre 1974 Berkshire with “Christminster” or Oxford, just to the north.
So, what did this author, most associated with the countryside around Dorchester, have to do with Berkshire? Well, Hardy’s paternal grandmother, Mary Head, was actually born in Reading and brought up in Fawley, a village on the downs south of Wantage. In his novel, Jude the Obscure, Hardy gave Jude the surname, Fawley, but chose to identify the village as Marygreen, after his grandmother. Similarly, Wantage becomes Alfredstone after the King Alfred who was born there, and Newbury, Kennetbridge, after its river. Along with Aldbrickham for Reading, all these places feature in Jude the Obscure, Hardy’s novel of 1895.
Another Hardy link with Old Berkshire, this time in reality rather than fiction, is with Denchworth, a village in the Vale of White Horse north of Wantage. Hardy’s sister Mary had trained as a teacher in Salisbury and accepted her first teaching post at Denchworth village school. Quite why she took a post so far north of either her home or the town in which she trained, I cannot find out. I do not believe that teaching posts were so difficult to come by in those days but I might be wrong. Perhaps she had connections with the Wantage area or had been recommended by someone. It would be interesting to find out. Mary was, apparently, very lonely in this isolated spot so her mother allowed her much younger sister Kate to live with her there. Whether Hardy ever visited his sisters in Denchworth we do not know, although it has to be a possibility.
As a successful author, Hardy and his first wife Emma lived for a time in London where they befriended some of the society figures living in the capital at the time. These included Sir Frances & Lady Jeune who, in the later years of the nineteenth century, also owned Arlington Manor, north of Newbury on Snellsmore Common. Hardy came to stay with the Jeunes in their Berkshire home in 1893 when he also visited Shaw House, Newbury at that time the property of the Eyre family.
In October of the same year, Hardy paid a visit to his grandmother’s childhood home up on the downs at Fawley. Sadly he does not seemed to have enjoyed the North Wessex downland, or at least that around Fawley, as he wrote, “Entered a ploughed vale which might be called the Valley of Brown Melancholy”.
I hope that the surrounding downland untouched by the plough was more to Hardy’s liking!
However, we do know that there was somewhere in Berkshire that was very much to Hardy’s liking. Although we do not know for sure when or how he got there, Hardy visited our own Walbury Beacon. We know this because he refers to it – as “Ingpen Beacon”- in his poem of 1896, “On Wessex Heights”.
Perhaps Hardy visited whilst he was staying with the Jeunes the previous year. Maybe they had a very early model of motor car, although it is difficult imagining one negotiating the incline to reach the top. Perhaps Hardy, and whoever was accompanying him, travelled to Kintbury station and made the rest of the journey in a horse drawn vehicle. We shall never know. However, I am sure he would have been fascinated to see the gibbet (in its late 19th century manifestation ) silhouetted against the skyline – I do so hope someone made him aware of the story of George Broomham & Dorothy Newman as I think he would have enjoyed it.
The gibbet as seen today
But it was the hill we know as Walbury Beacon which Hardy particularly enjoyed visiting and compared favourably with other hills across Wessex, inspiring the following:
Wessex Heights
There are some heights in Wessex, shaped as if by a kindly hand
For thinking, dreaming, dying on, and at crises when I stand,
Say, on Ingpen Beacon eastward, or on Wylls-Neck westwardly,
I seem where I was before my birth, and after death may be.
In the lowlands I have no comrade, not even the lone man’s friend –
Her who suffereth long and is kind; accepts what he is too weak to mend:
Down there they are dubious and askance; there nobody thinks as I,
But mind-chains do not clank where one’s next neighbour is the sky.
Thomas Hardy, December 1896
Theresa Lock
This article was first published in The Beacon in September 2022.
Close scrutiny of the 1901 census shows something rather odd about the inhabitants of Combe. On first sight it would seem that many of the 90 or so inhabitants identified as having been born in Hampshire but were now living in Berkshire – a sort of mass migration across the border to the north. Had they left behind them a deserted village somewhere like Imber on Salisbury Plain or Tyneham in Dorset? If not, what had happened sometime in the previous ten years?
Close scrutiny of the 1901 census shows something rather odd about the inhabitants of Combe. On first sight it would seem that many of the 90 or so inhabitants identified as having been born in Hampshire but were now living in Berkshire – a sort of mass migration across the border to the north. Had they left behind them a deserted village somewhere like Imber on Salisbury Plain or Tyneham in Dorset? If not, what had happened sometime in the previous ten years?
What had actually occurred happened a long way from Combe; in the hallowed debating chambers and offices of Westminster the late Victorian governments had been bringing in laws to change how the country was being governed at a local level. Late nineteenth century policy changes are totally mind boggling unless you are one of those people for whom study of such minutiae brings you deep joy. However, put simply the 1894 Local Government Act enabled elections to take place for district and parish councillors. In doing so it brought a level of democracy much nearer for many people. This was mostly men, although the 1894 Act enabled women who owned property to vote in local elections.
Before district and parish councillors could be elected, it was necessary to determine where district and more importantly parish borders actually were. A glance at early nineteenth century county maps will show that back then not all county boundaries were where they are now. One such example is Combe which was originally in Hampshire although for the purposes of the Poor Law it was part of the Hungerford Union. This meant that anyone in Combe unlucky enough to fall upon hard times such that they could not look after themselves might find themselves in the workhouse in Hungerford.
In July 1894 a Joint Enquiry was held by representatives of the County Councils of Wiltshire, Berkshire and Hampshire to define more conveniently the county boundaries between those three administrative areas. At that time, the boundary between Berkshire and Hampshire passed right through the middle of Walbury camp and just to the north of the gibbet, as you can see on old OS maps.
Representing Combe, the vicar – and also Poor Law Guardian – Rev George Pearson expressed the view that his parishioners would rather their village to be in Berkshire. It was easier to get to Hungerford than either Kingsclere or Andover for what the Newbury Weekly News reported as “magisterial” purposes and for paying the rates into the Hungerford Bank. Questioned as to where the nearest Union (or workhouse ) was in Hampshire, the Rev Pearson explained that the one in Kingsclere was 10 or 11 miles away across difficult roads. Other members of the Enquiry concurred with this.
Absent from the meeting was Mr A.C. Coles, Combe’s representative of the landed gentry and, presumably, the most significant person in the community. However, his representative, a Mr Browning, informed the enquiry that Mr Coles was anxious that the parish should be transferred to Berkshire as it would be more convenient for highway purposes and that there were only one or two paupers in the parish, anyway.
I have to say the precise significance of this remark is lost on me, although I would hazard a guess that the implication is that the poor of Combe are not going to be a drain on the rates of those in the Hungerford Union area.
And so, in this rather prosaic way, Combe – despite being on the other side of the one-time mountain and highest point on chalk in England – came in to Berkshire and turned its back on Hampshire. Its ninety-something inhabitants, from the Coles in the manor house to the two paupers in their cottages, moved without going anywhere because the roads into Hungerford were better and more convenient despite the climb up and over Walbury Beacon. The boundary was redrawn so that Berkshire included Combe Wood and Eastwick and there it has stayed ever since.
St Swithun’s church stayed in the diocese of Winchester, at least for the time being. In the years that followed it was transferred to the diocese of Salisbury and then back again, moving eventually to the diocese of Oxford in the early 1960s.
I have heard of other reasons being given for why the county boundary across our benefice was moved. However, I can find no other reasons other than those given above – essentially the convenience of road communications between Combe and Hungerford in implementing the 1894 Act.
I would love to hear from anyone else who might know or have evidence otherwise!
Tessa Lock
This article was first published in “The Beacon” in 2022
Ascension Day 2023 is observed on Thursday 18th May. It marks the last appearance of Jesus to the disciples after his resurrection at Easter.
Ascension Day 2023 is observed on Thursday 18th May. It marks the last appearance of Jesus to the disciples after his resurrection at Easter.
Rogationtide, which begins on 14th May (rogation from the Latin rogatio is to intercede asking God’s blessing upon the land), ends at Ascension. Ten days after, Pentecost is celebrated.
There are many folk customs and beliefs connected with this day.
It was believed that eggs laid on Ascension Day will not go bad and, if placed on the roof, will bring good luck to the household. In Devon, it was an ancient belief that the clouds always formed into the familiar Christian image of a lamb on Ascension Day. In Wales it was considered unlucky to do any work on the day.
Weather
If the weather is sunny on Ascension Day, the summer will be long and hot; but if it rains, crops will do badly and livestock, especially cattle, will suffer from disease. Although traditionally, it was considered that a cold May is better for people and harvest, and a wet May brings a good load of hay (probably because it usually meant a warm sunny June).
Food
It was a widespread custom in many parts of Europe, during the Middle Ages, to eat a bird on Ascension Day, because Christ “flew” to Heaven. Pigeons, pheasants, partridges and even crows graced the dinner tables. In western Germany bakers and innkeepers gave their customers pieces of pastry made in the shapes of various birds. In England the feast was celebrated with games, dancing and horse races.
Odd customs
In Italy, particularly in Florence, a man used to gift his beloved some flowers on this Feast, and give her a cricket cage. It is uncertain how the cricket became associated with the Ascension, but the Feast is known in parts of Italy as “La Festa del Grillo” (“the Feast of the Cricket”). According to Tracy Tucciarone, of FishEaters.com, this “custom usually takes place on the Sunday after Ascension Day, and caged crickets are sold so that children can release them.”
Early in its observance as a Festival it had a distinctive feature in that the liturgical procession went outside the city to the top of a hill in imitation of Christ leading the Apostles ‘out towards Bethany’, Luke 24 verse 50.
Unknowingly, when we first became a Benefice and celebrated Ascension, we were in a way following this tradition by worshipping in the church in the foothills of Combe. (Any crickets around Inkpen?)
Imagine our area over sixteen hundred years ago in the fourth century AD. For three hundred years the country has been ruled as part of the Roman Empire and the local Celtic tribe, the Atrebates, now have a good working relationship with the incomers.
Imagine our area over sixteen hundred years ago in the fourth century AD. For three hundred years the country has been ruled as part of the Roman Empire and the local Celtic tribe, the Atrebates, now have a good working relationship with the incomers.
The regional centre is at Calleva Atrebatum (modern Silchester) – a town in the traditional Roman style but with a name reflecting the presence of the Iron Age people who were here first. Out here to the west, our area is close to the main route from Calleva to Aquae Sulis (modern day Bath) where the hot springs are an attraction to visitors. The route passes through the settlement of Spinis, which today we know as Speen.
For those living closer to this major road, the ranks of Roman soldiers, their helmets and shields glistening in the pale sunlight, have been a familiar sight. The men are not all from Rome, of course – far from it. The Roman army recruit from all over the Empire – across Europe and even North Africa. Sometimes local men from the indigenous Celtic tribes have signed up too, attracted to the idea of gaining Roman citizenship with all its advantages if you were able to complete a long period of military service, as well as the chance to travel and see the world.
Those who have travelled beyond our valley, or have spoken to others who have done so, speak of towns where the buildings are of stone with heating actually under the floor, where there is drainage and streets paved so that you are not deep in mud as soon as you leave your dwelling. This is the Roman way, and it all sounds very attractive and modern.
Indeed, some local people are wanting a piece of this new, improved lifestyle for themselves. There has been talk of local, Celtic women who have, despite family opposition, married young Roman men. Perhaps they have been attracted by the striking uniform or the offer of a more comfortable home. Who knows. But you do not have to marry into a Roman family to adopt this new way of living. Wealthier Celts have been increasingly adopting Roman ways.
Although there were no major Roman towns in our immediate area, we know that those who were influenced by Roman ways did live in our valley. These people may have been exclusively of Roman descent, although it is more likely that they were Romano-British and therefore of possible mixed heritage or of Celtic descent but influenced by Roman ways.
Between 1950 and 1951, a teacher from St Barts Grammar School, Douglas Connah, led an excavation of a site which had been uncovered following work at the sewage works to the east of Kintbury. The excavation revealed the rectangular ground plan of a fourth century bath house, unfortunately badly damaged by ploughing and robbing out of much of its stone.
The building measured 5.25m by 4.04m with an extension to the south. At the east end was evidence of a praefurium, or furnace, to facilitate heating via a hypocaust which had been cut into the natural chalk and was still, at the time of the excavation, covered by a layer of wood ash. The building had been constructed of large flints and the lower courses of sarsen stone.
Painted plaster remains, now in West Berks Museum, indicated that the walls of the building were originally decorated whilst several tesserae suggested that there had once been a mosaic floor. It was possible to date the building to the fourth century due to pottery and a fibula brooch found in a rubbish pit nearby.
A tessera found near Irish Hill, outside of Kintbury
Although the bath house, as excavated, appeared not to have been joined to another building, it would not have been built in isolation but as part of a villa complex. It could have been on the site of a prosperous farm or indeed at the centre of a large estate. We may never know. But it is clear that sixteen hundred years ago, someone from around here wanted to build a modern, fashionable house with the latest in painted walls and mosaic flooring, and, of course, central heating.
It is sad for us that the remains of the accompanying villa have long been destroyed, most likely when the canal was constructed in the early 19th century. What happened to the broken remains of the roof tiles, the wall plaster, the tesserae? Who knows, keeping a sharp eye open when you’re walking towards Hamstead Marshall from Kintbury, you just might spot something of interest.
Kintbury and Beyond 