Enborne Data & History

Location

The civil and ecclesiastical parish of Enborne adjoins Newbury on its eastern side. To the north run the river Kennet, the Kennet and Avon Canal, and the Reading-to-Penzance railway line. For centuries the river marked the northern parish boundary, but since 1991 it has been the railway. The river Enborne marks the southern limit of the parish, and also the county boundary with Hampshire.

▪ Hundred: Kintbury Eagle

▪ Poor Law union: Newbury

▪ Registration district: Newbury

▪ Grid reference: SU 435 650

▪ Adjoining parishes: Hamstead Marshall, Speen, Newbury, and in Hampshire: Highclere and East Woodhay

▪ Size: The civil parish was measured at 2,500 acres at the turn of the twentieth century, but this has since been eroded on the eastern side of the parish by the encroachment of Newbury and Wash Common.

▪ The ecclesiastical parish of Enborne lost ground to the Newbury Wash Common parish of St George’s, created in 1963.

▪ Population 492 (2001), 407 (1851)

Census returns

West Berkshire Library has 1841-91 census returns for Enborne on microfilm/fiche, together with printed indexes to the 1851 census.

Parochial records

The following parish registers are in the Berkshire Record Office on microfilm:

▪ baptisms 1665 - 1878

▪ marriages 1665 - 1974

▪ burials 1665 - 1929

▪ banns 1754 - 1812, 1892 – 1957

West Berks library has a bound and indexed typescript of BTs.

Some register copies are also held by Swindon and Wiltshire History Centre, reflecting the parish's former allegiance (up to 1836) to the Salisbury diocese.

Enborne burials are included in the Berks FHS Berkshire Burial Index, and marriages 1614 – 1799 are in the Berkshire Marriage Index.

St Michael’s MIs were recorded in 1929, and copies of this handwritten transcription are filed in the Berks FHS library, as well as in the Berkshire Record Office and the public libraries of Reading and West Berks (Newbury).

Other sources

Narrowing the field: a study of local government in the parish of Enborne, Berkshire 1660-1710 (Reading University extra-mural group, 1990)

Ancient and modern: a celebration of the second millennium. (Informally published by the churchwardens of the United Benefice of West Woodhay with Enborne, Hamstead Marshall, Inkpen and Combe, 2000)

Walter Money. Early History of Enborne (1893)

Anglican church and parochial organisation

The rectory of Enborne was usually held in plurality with Hamstead Marshall after 1816; the two were officially combined in 1926. In 1981 the parish joined the united benefice of West Woodhay, Hamstead Marshall, Inkpen and Combe under one rector. The united benefice lies within the deanery of Newbury and the archdeaconry of Berkshire, which transferred from Salisbury diocese to that of Oxford in 1836.

Enborne’s Anglican parish church is that of St Michael and All Angels. It stands on a hill overlooking Newbury, beside the former main farm of the village, and opposite one of two entrances to Hamstead Park.

St Michael’s first appears in thirteenth-century documentation, but is thought to date from Norman times, with later additions. A restoration of 1878 revealed fourteenth-century wall paintings, one of which on the chancel wall, depicting the Annunciation, survives today.

A list of rectors dating back to 1255 is posted in the church, which is usually open.

The war memorial is inside the church.

Nonconformist churches

An independent chapel was set up in Wash Water (in the south of the parish in 1829). It veered between Congregationalist and Independent Methodist allegiance, and split into two separate congregations after a dispute in the 1950s. Both chapels are now closed.

A Primitive Methodist chapel was built in Wash Common in 1844, situated on the Enborne side of the parish boundary until the boundary was redrawn in 1934, bringing it into Newbury. The chapel was demolished in the early 1990s, but a plaque marks the spot.

Nothing is known of the registers of these chapels, but there are records about both in the Berkshire Record Office and in the West Berks Museum.

Local history

Enborne saw much of the fighting during the first battle of Newbury in 1643 although, sadly, the parish registers of that era have not survived, nor is there any contemporary account written from a local point of view.

The First Battle of Newbury took place within the parish. Most of the fighting of the battle occurred around Round Hill near Skinners Green. The Royalists had failed to secure the Hill while trying to stop the Earl of Essex reaching London after the Siege of Gloucester. It was between here and Dark Lane that the celebrated Viscount Falkland (of memorial fame) received his mortal wounds. He was the King’s Secretary of State, not a soldier, but joined Byron’s men on the assault on Round Hill. The attack was halted by various hedges that the Royalists found impassable until a small gap was discovered. Falkland immediately rode through and was met by a volley of musket fire. Some say he committed suicide because he could not bear to see Englishman killing Englishman. Prince Rupert is said to have stayed at (the now lost) Cope Hall, just below Round Hill, and the lane outside was said to have been heaped high with dead bodies. Ghostly sounds of the battle have been heard nearby in recent years. Not far away are cottages, still known as the Hospital, where King Charles visited the wounded when the battle was done. The Earl of Essex’ Parliamentary reserve, under Robartes, was stationed near Enborne village, and many of the dead were buried in the local churchyard. Crockham Heath was crawling with parliamentary troops as the Earl of Essex stationed his artillery and the main body of his men here. Prince Rupert attacked them between here and Hill Farm. Some of the fiercest fighting took place just north of Enborne Row, on the edge of Wash Common. The parliamentary leader, the Earl of Essex spent the night before the battle at Biggs Cottage. It is still haunted by his ghost. His right wing of men were stationed, under Skippon, below Biggs Hill. There is an old story told that, during the battle, a group of the parliamentary infantry managed to get hold of a large pig which they roasted on a spit in Lusky Gully behind Enborne Lodge. Just as the animal was done, a Royalist cannon ball came hurtling their way, shot straight into the pig and flew off with it! There is a recorded string of people through whom this tale is known to have passed, so it could well be true.

There is a curious legal custom from Enborne parish (which also prevailed in Chaddleworth). If a copyholder’s widow remained, she forfeited her rights to her husband’s lands. However, if she rode into court backwards on the back of a large black ram, the manor steward would be obliged to return her lands when she repeated the following lines:

Here I am, riding upon a blck ram,
Like a whore as I am;
And, for my Crincum Crancum,
Have lost my Bincum Bancum;
And, for my tail’s game,
Have done this worldly shame.
Therefore, I pray you, Mr. Steward,
Let me have my land again.

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Construction of the Kennet and Avon Canal in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries affected the landscape along the northern edge of the parish.

Settlement is scattered, but the centre of the parish is usually considered to be the area around the church of St Michael and All Angels. In the south, alongside the river Enborne, lies a settlement known as Enborne Row (or Wash Water), which developed as a fringe of cottages along the edge of the former commons, but is now a hamlet of mostly detached, twentieth-century houses. Other houses cluster around the former commons of Skinner’s Green and Crockham Heath.

Local place names which have been lost include Sadmore (obliterated by the Newbury bypass), Trundle Hill and Bunker’s Hill, both lying at the southern end of Enborne Wash. The name Bunker’s Hill has transferred to a road in the postwar Wash Common housing estate.

The parish is predominantly agricultural. The largest farm in the village was alwaysChurch Farm (also known at various times as Enborne Farm and Manor Farm). Other farms whose names, if not their function, have survived are: Enborne Gate Farm, close to the edge of Newbury; Vanner’s, Hill and Boame’s Farms, on the rising ground to the south of the parish; Skinner’s Green and Crockham Heath Farms, both the products of enclosure; Enborne Street Farm; Bourne Farm(formerly known as Wash Water Farm) and King’s Farm also in the south;Wheatland's and Wash (Common) Farms, also close to the Newbury boundary.

Farm names which have completely disappeared include Webb's, Munday’s, Stocksand Wood’s.

In addition to farming, Enborne had an oil and bone mill on the canal in the second half of the nineteenth century. The village also supported a brick kiln, two smithies and market gardening.

The Craven Arms pub was mapped in the eighteenth century, but is probably older. Until the mid-nineteenth century it was called the Three Horseshoes. Two former pubs long defunct were the Old Bell (now Peregrine House) and the Fox and Hounds, a (probably short-lived) cottage beer-house further west along Enborne Street.

Enborne's big houses included Cope Hall (possibly Tudor in origin, now demolished),Enborne Lodge (mid-nineteenth century replacing an older house, now part of a redevelopment). The biggest landowner (around 70% in the nineteenth century, mostly to the west) was the Craven estate.

Several schools have operated in Enborne over the centuries:

Robert Brookes, rector of St Michael’s Church, ran a boys school, from about 1598 to 1607, as did one of his successors, Thomas Shephard, from at least 1806 to 1811. Later in the nineteenth century there seems to have been a dame school in Crockham Heath, subsequently taken over by a schoolmaster.

When rebuilt to conform with the 1870 Education Act this parish school became the forerunner of today’s Enborne Church of England Primary School, still in Crockham Heath. A log book is filed at the Berkshire Record Office, and there is some correspondence relating to the school in The National Archives and Lambeth Palace library.

Enborne Lodge School was set up around 1980 for disadvantaged London boys. Funded at first by the Inner London Education Authority, it became in 1990 the responsibility of Lambeth council, who closed it amid controversy later in the decade.