Roads Around Englefield
New Road - the village is finally by-passed
Although the new road over Common Hill in 1802 had provided an alternative route for travellers from the west going to Bradfield and the new Pangbourne Road did the same for those going between Tidmarsh and the Bath Road, the shorter route for those going from Tidmarsh to Bradfield was still through Englefield, past Englefield House and through the Old Deer Park. This meant that this road could still not be closed.
Just before his death in 1854 Richard Benyon de Beauvoir succeeded in gaining agreement for another new road (appropriately called New Road, though often called Chalkpit Road) from the chalkpit to Bradfield and providing a better route from Tidmarsh.
Application for the closure of the old Bradfield Road was formally made to the Justices on 1st January 1855 although that closure can’t have happened for several months because the Reading Mercury of 26th May 1855 noted that “...a new road...will shortly be opened. By this road, the long and dangerous hill, near Englefield House, will be avoided, and for this the public will be indebted to the liberal spirit of R Benyon Esq.”.
The new road is shown by the yellow line on the image below and ran from the cross-roads at Bradfield College, through another chalk pit (now the College’s Greek Theatre), a garden and a field, all belonging to the Rev John Frewen Moor and then, according to the notice in the Berkshire Chronicle of 4th November 1854, “through the bottom of the hill plantation and along the bank of a stream called the brook” to Lone Barn. Confusingly, the wood here called the hill plantation is not the one called by that name today (which was then called Middle Plantation) but the one called Bradfield Plantation in 1883 and now known as Strawberry Copse. From Lone Barn the new road followed the existing occupation road (a private road for the convenience of occupiers of the land) past the chalkpit to the Pangbourne Road by a cottage called at that time “Awberry’s Lodge”.
New Road having been completed, the old Bradfield Road from the Pangbourne Road, past Englefield House and through the Old Deer Park to the Bourne bridge was closed. The section shown as a yellow broken line was disused completely, although the course remains visible and the remainder (shown in light blue) became a private road to Englefield House except that a right of public passage was retained over the length between Appleton’s Corner and the southwest corner of the churchyard (in blue and red) to allow access to the church.
Richard Benyon made another coach road for his own use to replace the old Bradfield Road from Englefield House across the Old Deer Park and down to the Bourne bridge at the bottom of Common Hill, replacing the closed Bradfield Road. The road that already existed between the old Bradfield Road and Common Hill through Daintylands was extended to meet this coach road at the Dew Pond.
At Common Hill there was a gate and lodge (less grand than the ones on the new Pangbourne Road) which still stand today, the sole survivors of many houses that were formerly scattered around here. The gate is now redundant, however, since although the old coach road still survives, it has been blocked at that end in recent years by a new plantation.
