East Hanney

East Hanney today

East Hanney is a village in the flat clay country of the Vale of White Horse, strung along the Letcombe Brook shortly before the brook joins the Childrey Brook on its way to the Ock. The A338 between Wantage and Oxford runs along its western edge, and a single field separates it from West Hanney. The two are usually spoken of together as ‘the Hanneys’ and share most of their facilities.

The older part of the village along Main Street has timber-framed and thatched cottages, several old farmhouses and two former mills. Around it, a good deal of new housing has been built: the parish population rose from 748 in 2011 to 1,231 in 2021. At the time of writing East Hanney has the Black Horse pub, an Italian restaurant, and Hanney Chapel, a Grace Baptist church. Hanney War Memorial Hall, built in 1969, is the shared village hall, and a volunteer-run community shop with a post office counter is attached to it. The primary school, St James C of E, stands on the Causeway between the two villages.

History

Name and early finds

Hanney is usually explained as Old English for an island frequented by wild birds (literally ‘cocks’), a reminder that the villages once stood on slightly raised ground among marshy meadows. Local archaeology, gathered by the Hanney History Group, shows people here from the Neolithic onwards, with Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman finds, and the West Hanney Anglo-Saxon burial of the 7th century lies just across the parish boundary.

Saxon and Domesday

King Edgar granted land at Hanney to Abingdon Abbey in 968, and its bounds are close to those of the present parish. In 1086 Domesday Book recorded three holdings at East Hanney, held by the abbey, by the Count of Evreux and by Gilbert of Bretteville, with 56 households between them. It was well supplied with water power: the three holdings had five mills.

Manors and families

The abbey kept its manor until the Dissolution. It then passed through the Wellesbourne, Croke and Clarke families and was bought in the 1720s by Matthew Wymondsold of Lockinge, so that it later formed part of the Lockinge estate of Lord and Lady Wantage. The Count of Evreux’s land went to the priory of Noyon in Normandy and later to Sheen Priory, which is why it became known as Priors Hanney. A third manor took the name Philiberts from the St Philibert family, who held it in the 14th century; Philberd’s Manor house still stands. East Hanney also had a small chapel of St James by 1288, which Alice Yate is said to have closed after she acquired Philiberts in 1546.

Enclosure, canal and mill

An Inclosure Act for East Hanney was passed in 1803. The Wilts and Berks Canal, opened throughout in 1810, crossed the low ground south of the village between Grove and Abingdon; its line can still be traced in places. Dandridge’s Mill on the Letcombe Brook was built around 1820 as a silk mill. When the silk trade failed it ground corn, and it was later used for engineering work, including, according to local accounts, parts for the Mosquito aircraft in the Second World War. It became derelict, and in 2007 to 2008 it was converted into homes powered in part by an Archimedean screw turbine on the millstream.

Church and chapel

A chapel of ease, St James the Less, was built in 1856 in a plain 13th-century style; local and published accounts attribute it to the diocesan architect G. E. Street. It closed for worship in 1976 and is now a private house. Hanney Chapel, a nonconformist chapel, was built in 1862, closed after the First World War and reopened in 1943; it is still in use.

20th century

The village shops and last bakery had closed by 1988, when villagers opened the community shop. Philanthropist James Robins Holmes, who died in 1937, owned many cottages in the village and let them at low rents, according to the Hanney History Group. East Hanney moved from Berkshire to Oxfordshire in 1974 with the rest of the Vale.

Things to see

• Dandridge’s Mill (Grade II), the red-brick 1820 silk mill beside the Letcombe Brook, seen from the lane (private homes).
• Timber-framed and thatched cottages along Main Street, many of them listed.
• Philberd’s Manor, named after the medieval St Philibert family (private).
• Old Mill House and its mill buildings on the brook (private).
• The former church of St James the Less (1856), now a house.
• Two listed milestones on the old Wantage road.