East Challow

East Challow today

East Challow lies on the Gault clay of the Vale, strung along the A417 as it leaves Wantage for Faringdon. It is the largest of the villages immediately west of the town, with about a thousand people, and it grew a great deal during the 20th century. Letcombe Brook forms part of its southern edge, and the line of the Wilts & Berks Canal runs east to west through the parish. It was in Berkshire until 1974.

The village has St Nicholas’s church, St Nicholas Church of England Primary School, a large village hall, a mission hall, a cricket club and a Royal British Legion branch. The Goodlake Arms, a pub since at least the 1850s, has closed. Buses to Wantage run along the main road.

History

The name

Challow is first recorded in a charter of 947 (known only from a 12th-century copy) as to Ceawan hlewe, ‘to Ceawa’s mound’. The second word means a burial mound or small hill. Some scholars read the first part as a man’s name; others suggest an Old English word for jackdaw. Where the mound stood is not known. Challow was one township, later split into East and West.

Manor and chapel

For most of its history East Challow was part of the parish of Letcombe Regis, and its tithes and chapel belonged to the nuns of Amesbury until their priory was dissolved in 1541, when they passed to the Dean and Chapter of Winchester. East and West Challow were made one ecclesiastical parish in the early 1850s. Woodhill Farm preserves the name of a small manor first recorded in 1554, and Windmill Hill, on the boundary with Letcombe Regis, probably marks a lost mill. The open fields were enclosed under an Act of 1801 (award 1804).

The church

St Nicholas’s has a 12th-century font and some early walling, but it was drastically restored in 1858, when the west end was rebuilt and lengthened and the 12th-century west doorway was lost. The low tower was added in 1884. The chancel arch and the three-bay south arcade survive from the early 14th century, and a lych gate was dedicated as the war memorial in 1921.

Canal, road and 20th-century growth

The Wilts & Berks Canal, opened throughout in 1810, carried Somerset coal across the Vale to the Thames at Abingdon and passed through the parish. It lost its trade to the railways, was abandoned in 1914, and is now the subject of a long-running restoration project. Three old milestones survive along the roads through the parish. By 1924 there was a factory in the village alongside the dairy farms. The village grew a great deal in the 20th century, and the A417 was later realigned near the Goodlake Arms to ease a dangerous bend. In the 1934 drought, water had to be brought in by cart.

Things to see

• St Nicholas’s church, with its 14th-century arcade, 12th-century font and war memorial lych gate.
• The line of the Wilts & Berks Canal, followed in places by public footpaths.
• The listed village pump and trough, and the K6 telephone kiosk.
• Old milestones on the A417.