Farnborough

Farnborough today

Farnborough is a small village high on the Berkshire Downs, south-east of Wantage, at about 720 feet above sea level; it is often described as the highest village in Berkshire. It is a scattered place of farms, cottages and big views, with the flint church of All Saints at its southern end and the Old Rectory beside it. There is no shop or pub. The village is reached by a lane off the B4494 Wantage to Newbury road. Unlike most of its neighbours to the north, Farnborough stayed in Berkshire in 1974 and is now in West Berkshire, although its postal town is Wantage.

History

Name and Saxon charters

The name means “fern-covered hill”. Abingdon Abbey claimed land here from the 9th century, though the earliest charter is doubtful. According to the abbey’s chronicle a widow named Eadfled was driven off her land here by force, won it back, and left it to King Æthelred, who returned it to the abbey in 993. Harthacnut confirmed the grant in 1039.

Domesday and the abbey

In 1086 Abingdon Abbey held Farnborough, with 19 households and land for ten ploughs; the manor was worth £8, a pound less than in 1066. It stayed with the abbey until the Dissolution. An old packhorse road from Hungerford to Abingdon and Oxford crossed the parish, and a field called Pack Acre remembered it long after the road was diverted in the 18th century.

Later owners

In 1540 the Crown granted the manor to Edward Fettiplace, who sold it in 1542 to John Wynchcombe of Newbury, a descendant of the clothier known as Jack of Newbury. His family held it until 1671. It then passed through the Jennett, Raymond and Craven families before being sold to the Wroughtons of Woolley Park, who were still lords of the manor in the 1920s. The open fields were enclosed in 1777. With no river or springs on the high chalk, the village relied on deep wells, some more than 300 feet deep, and on dew ponds.

The church and the rectory

All Saints is a small flint church whose nave has early round-headed windows and a blocked doorway; the Victoria County History dated the oldest work to the 12th century, while the Historic England listing suggests the 11th. The tower was added in the 15th century, and the church was restored in 1883 and 1885. The base of a medieval cross stands in the churchyard. The Old Rectory next door is a handsome brick house. Some accounts attribute it to Inigo Jones, but Historic England dates it to 1749, long after his death.

John Betjeman

The poet John Betjeman and his family lived at the Old Rectory from 1945 to 1951, between their years at Uffington and their move to Wantage. In 1986 a memorial window to him, designed by John Piper and made with Joseph Nuttgens, was put into the church. It shows a tree of life with butterflies and fish.

Things to see

• All Saints church (Grade I), with its early flint nave and 15th-century tower.
• The John Piper memorial window to John Betjeman (1986).
• The medieval cross base in the churchyard (Grade II).
• The Old Rectory, Betjeman’s home from 1945 to 1951 (private, seen from the lane).
• Downland walks towards the Ridgeway and the Ilsleys.