West Hendred

West Hendred today

West Hendred is a small village of fewer than 400 people. Like its neighbours it is a long, narrow strip parish, running about five miles from the downs south of the Ridgeway, through the spring-line village, and out onto the clay of the Vale. The village street follows the Hendred Brook north from the church, with a handful of timber-framed and thatched cottages; the village centre is a conservation area. The parish also includes the hamlet of East Ginge under the Downs.

There is no shop or school. At the time of writing the village pub is the Extraordinary Hare (long known as the Hare) on the A417 at the northern edge of the village, which follows the line of the old Portway between Wantage and Wallingford.

History

Saxon grants and Domesday

The earliest written record is a grant of land at ‘Hennarithe’ to the thegn Brihtric by King Eadwig in 955, followed by a grant to Abingdon Abbey by King Edgar in 964. The abbey lost it before the Conquest, and by 1086 the land had passed through the Norman baron Nigel d’Aubigny to St Albans Abbey. Domesday Book does not separate the two Hendreds cleanly; together they had 72 households.

Manors and families

St Albans gave the main manor to its daughter house at Wallingford. When Wallingford Priory was dissolved in 1528 the manor went to Cardinal Wolsey for his new college at Oxford, and after Wolsey’s fall it was given to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, which is still a landowner in the parish. A second manor, Sparsholt’s Court, took its name from the Sparsholt family who held it from 1273 into the 15th century. It later belonged to the Wiseman family, and the old manor house was pulled down in 1721 and replaced by the present farmhouse. East Ginge, in the south of the parish, had its own manors and later passed to the Lockinge estate (see East Ginge).

The church

Holy Trinity was rebuilt almost entirely in the 14th century and has been little restored since, which is why it is listed Grade I. It keeps 14th-century glass in the east window, medieval floor tiles in the chancel and nave, a Jacobean pulpit and communion table, old benches, and a font cover dated 1630. In the early 20th century the church bell was still rung at eight on Sunday mornings so that villagers could set their clocks by it.

Farming, enclosure and later change

The parish was farmed in open fields until enclosure in 1877, later than most of its neighbours. Watercress was grown in the streams, and the mill on the brook belonged to Sparsholt’s Court. The village school closed in 1967, when its pupils moved to a new school in East Hendred. The parish moved from Berkshire to Oxfordshire in 1974.

Things to see

• Holy Trinity church, a largely unaltered 14th-century building (Grade I).
• Sparsholt Court, the early 18th-century farmhouse on the site of the old manor (Grade II), seen from the lane.
• The Mill House and its outbuildings on the Hendred Brook (Grade II).
• The Ridgeway and the downland tracks in the south of the parish.