East Hendred

East Hendred today

East Hendred is one of the larger villages east of Wantage, with about 1,400 people at the 2021 Census. It lies on the spring line where the chalk of the Downs meets the greensand, with the Hendred Brook running through it on its way north to the Thames at Sutton Courtenay. The parish is a long strip: from the low ground by the railway in the north, through the village, and up onto the Downs past the Ridgeway, where its south-eastern corner takes in the western edge of Harwell Campus.

The village centre has a large number of timber-framed, brick and thatched houses, and is a conservation area. At the time of writing it has two pubs (the Eyston Arms and the Wheatsheaf), a village shop, Snells Hall (the village hall, in a former school), a sports ground, and two primary schools: the Hendreds Church of England School and St Amand’s Catholic School. There are two churches, the Anglican St Augustine of Canterbury and the Roman Catholic St Mary’s. The village is just south of the A417 between Wantage and Harwell; Didcot Parkway is the nearest station.

History

Name and early remains

The name, recorded as Henret in 1086, is usually explained as Old English for a stream frequented by wild birds, perhaps water-hens. On the parish’s southern boundary by the Ridgeway stands Scutchamer Knob (Cuckhamsley Hill), recorded in 1006 as Cwichelmeshlaew, ‘Cwichelm’s mound’. Historic England treats it as probably a large Bronze Age barrow, later reused; Iron Age pottery was found when it was re-dug in 1934. It was used as a meeting place for the shire, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records a Danish army making for it in 1006. The mound was badly cut about by digging in the 1840s.

Domesday and the manors

Domesday Book records the two Hendreds together, with 72 households under eight holders. East Hendred was later divided among five manors. The King’s Manor passed from the Count of Évreux to Norman monks and then, in the 15th century, to the Carthusian priory of Sheen, which obtained a market and two fairs in 1415; neither lasted. Reading Abbey held the Abbey Manor, Frampton’s Manor belonged to a cell of St Stephen’s, Caen, and New College Manor to the nuns of Littlemore and then to Lord Williams’s school at Thame. The manor of Arches passed from the Turbervilles and the Arches family to John Eyston by marriage in the mid-15th century. The Eystons, a Catholic family who kept their faith after the Reformation, still live at Hendred House.

Brasses in the church to a ‘woolman’ of 1479 and to two merchant brothers point to the late medieval cloth and wool trade. For a time the stewardship of the King’s Manor was one of the nominal offices used by MPs who wished to leave the House of Commons.

Churches and chapels

St Augustine’s has nave arcades of the late 12th century with carved capitals, a 14th-century north aisle and transept, and a 15th-century tower and Eyston chapel. Inside are a Jacobean pulpit and a carved medieval lectern. The faceless tower clock carries the inscription ‘John Seymour Wantage 1525’ and still plays a hymn tune through the day. The Chapel of Jesus of Bethlehem on the green was built by the monks of Sheen in the 15th century and later served as a bakehouse and dovecote. Now called Champs Chapel after an 18th-century owning family, it houses the village museum. Hendred House has its own chapel of St Amand, which has 13th-century work; the Catholic church of St Mary followed in 1865.

Enclosure and later change

The western part of the open fields was enclosed under an Act of 1801. The Great Western Railway crossed the north of the parish in 1840, though the village never had a station of its own. In the 20th century the building of RAF Harwell, and after 1946 the atomic research establishment, on the downs brought new residents; the scientist William Penney is among those who lived in the village. The parish moved from Berkshire to Oxfordshire in 1974.

Things to see

• St Augustine of Canterbury’s church, with its 12th-century arcades and 1525 clock (Grade II*).
• Champs Chapel Museum, in the 15th-century Chapel of Jesus of Bethlehem (Grade I); open on some afternoons in summer.
• The village streets around the green, High Street and Chapel Square, with timber-framed and thatched houses.
• Hendred House and St Amand’s Chapel (Grade II*), seen from the road; a private home.
• St Mary’s Roman Catholic church of 1865.
• Scutchamer Knob, a scheduled barrow beside the Ridgeway on the parish boundary.