Village Institutions

The church, the school, the pub and the shop: these are the institutions that are at the heart of a village. Englefield still has most of these, although since 2008 there is no longer a Post Office and more recently the Workmen's Club has become the Village Hall. In the late 19th and early 20th century there was also a village nurse, paid for by Mrs Benyon.

From the earliest times, as people settled down in one place and formed little communities there was a need for some sort of control and coordination, and a way of settling disputes in a more civilised way than outright violence. From the start, and by various means, village leaders emerged but then in feudal times the Lord of the Manor took the role through the manorial system. The church also played a part, not always in complete harmony with the Lord of the Manor, and the manor and parish usually shared the same boundaries. Initially the manor was the principal unit of local administration and justice in rural areas, with the manorial court as its centre of administration but over time the Church replaced the manorial court. In the 16th century, after the Reformation and with the decline of the feudal system a new type of administration evolved to become the Vestry meeting, chaired by the Rector and attended by all the parish ratepayers. In addition to looking after the church and the related appointments of Churchwardens and Sidesmen, the Vestry appointed a village Constable to enforce law and order, maintained the roads, looked after the poor, set up the fire brigade and ran the school; although the fire engine, fire station and the church and school buildings were all paid for by Mr Benyon. Thus all matters relating to the upkeep of the parish and its inhabitants were dealt with in the parish by the parishioners themselves.

A serious move to greater centralisation - and for the parishioners the loss of direct control over their own lives - came in 1834 when under the Poor Laws, “unions” of parishes were formed and rather than the poor being looked after in their own villages the system of "indoor relief" was introduced and they were housed all together in a single Workhouse which served the needs of several parishes. The Bradfield Union was formed in 1834 with the Workhouse erected the following year (later Waylands Hospital, now a housing development) in Union Road. The Union covered some 29 parishes from Goring and Ashampstead in the north to Padworth and Grazely in the south, containing in 1841 some 15,000 people of whom 150 were housed in the Bradfield Workhouse and a further 55 in a Poor-house at Tilehurst. In 1881 the Workhouse had 137 inmates; men, women and children aged from 1 to 84.

This system obviously didn’t fully take hold in Englefield for in the 1851 census Charles Horne is living in his cottage in The Street with his occupation given as “Farm Labourer (now in receipt of Parish Relief)” and even in 1890 Englefield still continued to look after its own with over £25 (approximately £2,000 today) collected for the poor, although only £16-10s-4d was given out, despite this apparently being a time of much illness in the village.  The reason for this, as explained by the Rector, was that “so much brandy, wine and nourishing food of all kinds has been given from Englefield House…”.  Eight trained nurses were also retained to attend to sick persons in the village during the course of that year and in other years a Parish Nurse was always provided, courtesy of Mr Benyon.

A further step towards centralised control came with the introduction of County Councils in 1889 by the minority Conservative government of Lord Salisbury, at the insistence of the Liberal Party on whose support Salisbury relied for a majority. The County Councils inherited the powers of the old courts of quarter sessions and did not, initially, much affect the running of the parishes but the Local Government Act of 1894 set up the system of civil, as distinct from ecclesiastical, parishes and Parish Councils and Rural District Councils were created. This split church and state, with the new Parochial Church Council being only responsible for church matters and all other functions of the Vestry meeting being transferred to the new civil Parish Council. As these two bodies evolved over time the boundaries of their separate parishes even ceased to be identical.

The Englefield Vestry continued to discharge its secular duties up to the end and at a meeting on 25 January 1894 there was unanimous consent to an application by the Tilehurst, Pangbourne and District Water Company Ltd for a Provisional Order to construct and maintain waterworks and supply water in part of the parish of Englefield. The company also undertook to apply for a further Order to supply the whole parish with water within 21 years. There was no Lady Day Vestry that year because Easter Day was also on March 25th but at a meeting the next day only the usual church business was dealt with.

In Englefield the composition of the first parish council was arrived at by arrangement without a poll. A parish meeting was held on Wednesday 28 November to consider the question of candidates and after the names of Mr Benyon and George Roake (Clerk of Works) had been approved it was suggested that the necessary number of five councillors should be made up by a representative from each of the three large centres of labour in the village: the gardens, the timber yard and Chalkpit Farm.

The nominee from the timber yard was Daniel Harris, a carpenter living at number 1 in The Street, with Thomas Dixon from number 18 representing the gardeners and the farm blacksmith Henry Horne from 39, Chalkpit Cottages for the Farm. At the official meeting held on Tuesday 4 December 1894 with the Rector in the chair and 27 of the 54 parochial electors present no other nominations were made and so these five were duly declared.

As time went by the rural district and county councils gradually assumed more and more of the powers previously held by the parishes and some of the separate ecclesiastical parishes were also combined into joint benefices under the bureaucracy of the Church of England. By this transfer of power away from the lowest level villages lost their independence and the ability to manage their own affairs and came to be controlled by outsiders, often with no connection to or affinity with the parish and with their own agenda.