South Fawley

South Fawley today

South Fawley is a small hamlet on high downland about half a mile south of Fawley village, reached from the A338 between Wantage and Great Shefford. It is made up of the manor house, a few cottages and farm buildings. There are no shops or pubs; the church is St Mary’s in Fawley. It is still in Berkshire, now under West Berkshire Council.

History

A royal manor

Edward the Confessor held Little Fawley, and in 1086 it was still the king’s, a small estate of six smallholders worth £2 a year. Over the next three centuries it changed hands many times, often returning to the Crown. In 1364 it was bought by Edmund Childrey, and it passed through his descendants, the Kingstons, and then the Cope family. In 1594 Nicholas Radishe sold it to Francis Moore of East Ilsley, a lawyer and later MP for Reading, who went on to buy North Fawley in 1606.

The manor house

Moore, knighted in 1616, built the present house about 1614. It is a tall gabled house of flint and brick with stone mullioned windows, a square embattled stair tower and a Jacobean porch. The oak staircase has turned balusters and heavy newel posts. The Civil War diarist Richard Symonds recorded that on 19 November 1644 Lord Bernard Stuart’s troop of the King’s Life Guards was quartered in what he called the neat and fair house of Lady Moore. At that time the family’s arms and the motto Regi et legi were painted over the porch. The Moores, baronets from 1627, lived here until they sold up in 1765. The names of three daughters of Sir Richard Moore, who died in 1737, are scratched on a window pane.

From 1787 the house belonged to the Woolley Park estate. For many years it was a farmhouse, and part of its north end was pulled down. It was restored in 1909 and is now a private home, listed Grade II*.

Things to see

• South Fawley Manor House (Grade II*), seen from Dog Kennel Lane (private)
• St Mary’s Church, Fawley, half a mile north