West Ginge

West Ginge today

West Ginge is a handful of farmhouses and cottages in a fold of the chalk below Ginge Down, where one of the springs that feed the Ginge Brook breaks out. It has no church, pub or shop; the nearest facilities are in Ardington and West Hendred. East Ginge is a few hundred metres to the east. The hamlet is reached by a lane south from the A417, and bridleways climb from it to the Ridgeway.

History

Abingdon Abbey’s manor

Ginge takes its name from the brook; the old form of the name, Gaeging, is recorded in the 9th century, and its meaning is uncertain. Abingdon Abbey claimed that Ginge had been given to it in the 7th century and restored by kings Eadwig and Edgar in the 950s after the Danes had seized it. Historians regard those charters as later forgeries or doubtful, but the abbey certainly held the estate before 1066. Domesday Book records two abbey holdings at Ginge with 29 households between them, most of them cottagers, and a mill. The abbey kept West Ginge until the Dissolution.

After the Dissolution

In 1546 West Ginge was sold with East Lockinge to John Winchcombe of Newbury. It later passed to the Horton family, back to Benedict Winchcombe in 1611, and then through his sister to the Hall family of High Meadow in Gloucestershire. In 1720 their heiress and her husband, Viscount Gage, sold it to Matthew Wymondsold of Lockinge. From then on it followed East Lockinge, coming to Lord and Lady Wantage in the 19th century. Although it lay apart from the rest of Lockinge parish, separated by Ardington, it was counted as part of Lockinge until it was transferred to Ardington civil parish.

The surviving houses show the farming community of the 17th century: Lower Farmhouse and the pair of cottages now Nos 3 and 4 are timber-framed and brick buildings of that date, and Bishop’s Cottage is a thatched 17th-century house.

Things to see

• Lower Farmhouse, a 17th-century farmhouse with a timber-framed rear wing (Grade II, private).
• Bishop’s Cottage and Two Chimneys, a thatched 17th-century timber-framed house (Grade II, private).
• The spring-fed head of the Ginge Brook.
• Bridleways up to the Ridgeway on Ginge Down.