Sparsholt

Sparsholt today

Sparsholt sits on the spring line where the chalk of the Berkshire Downs meets the clay of the Vale, just north of the B4507 between Wantage and Kingston Lisle. The parish is a long, narrow strip running from Sparsholt Down in the south, which reaches about 800 feet, north almost to the River Ock. Westcot, a hamlet of a few houses, lies about half a mile to the west. The parish had 308 residents at the 2021 Census.

The village grew along a single north–south street, with Sparsholt House at its southern end and the church a little to the north of it. Several cottages date from the 17th century, some timber-framed and some of brick. The village pub on Watery Lane, long known as the Star Inn, was trading as The Sparsholt at the time of writing. The village school, opened in 1874, closed in 1964; the building became the Griffin Memorial Hall in 1968. The church is part of the Ridgeway Benefice. There is no shop, and the nearest services are in Wantage.

History

Name and early records

The name first appears in an Anglo-Saxon charter of 963 as Speresholt. Place-name scholars read it as Old English for a wood where spear-shafts were cut. Domesday Book spells it Spersolt.

Domesday and the manor

Before 1066 three free men held Sparsholt as three small estates. Froger the sheriff later combined them into one, and by 1086 it was royal land, assessed at 16 hides and worth just over £20 a year, with a church and 88 acres of meadow. Three smaller holdings were recorded under Henry de Ferrers, Hascoit Musard and Turstin son of Rolf. Together they made 74 households, which put Sparsholt among the larger places in the Domesday survey.

Henry I granted the manor to Robert Achard, whose family also held Aldermaston. The Achards held Sparsholt until the 17th century, and several of them are buried in the church. In 1342 Robert Achard gave the church to Queen’s College, Oxford, on condition that the college paid for masses for him and his wife. The college later settled with him for a yearly payment of 13s 4d to the poor, and this was still being paid in the 1920s. The manor was sold in 1622 to Elizabeth, Lady Craven, and passed to a branch of the Craven family. It went through several more families before the Hippisleys bought it in 1807, and they still owned it when the Victoria County History described the parish in 1924. Sparsholt House, the manor house, is mostly of 1722.

Eastmanton, north-east of the church, was a small separate manor held by the Musard family and later by the Achards. Westcot belonged to the Knights Templar, and after them to the Knights Hospitallers, who kept a grange there. After the Dissolution it passed to the Pleydell family, and in the 18th century to the Atkins family of Kingston Lisle.

The church

The nave dates from the late 12th century. Its north doorway has two round-headed orders and beak-head label stops. The chancel and the south transept were rebuilt in the 14th century, with a fine set of sedilia and tomb recesses, and a shingled broach spire sits on the west tower. The church is best known for its three carved oak effigies of about 1300 to 1400: a knight in mail and two women, one of them probably a widow. It also has a stone effigy of a cross-legged knight, a brass of the priest William de Herleston of about 1410, and a monument to John Pleydell (died 1591) and his wife Bridget.

Enclosure, canal and railway

Sparsholt and Westcot were enclosed by an Act of 1800. The Wilts & Berks Canal, built through this part of the Vale between 1805 and 1807, crosses the north of the parish, and so does the Great Western main line of 1840, but there was never a station. By 1924 racehorses were being trained in the village, as well as the usual farming.

Since 1974

With the rest of the Vale, Sparsholt moved from Berkshire to Oxfordshire in the local government changes of 1974.

Things to see

• Church of the Holy Rood (Grade I): its oak effigies, 12th-century north doorway, brasses and the Pleydell monument
• Base and part of the shaft of a medieval cross in the churchyard
• Sparsholt House, the manor house of 1722, seen from the street (private)
• Westcot hamlet, the former Hospitaller estate, on foot along the lane west of the village
• Sparsholt Down and the Ridgeway, reached by footpath south of the village