The Village
The Manor and Parish of Englefield
The history of Englefield is that of a village but it is also more than that. The village itself is indeed a rare survival: one of the very few intact estate villages left in the country, functioning much as it always did and providing homes and jobs in the one place. The village, though, was but the hub of a much greater estate that stretches far beyond it, encompassing other surrounding villages. So the history of Englefield has to be the history of a much wider area, of not only the village but also of a wider parish and of other surrounding parishes.
The ancient parishes developed from the manorial system and the manor and parish usually shared the same boundaries. The manor was the principal unit of local administration and justice in rural areas, with the manorial court as its centre of administration, but in the 16th century the Church took over the role of the manorial court.
The first clear view of the parish of Englefield comes in 1762 courtesy of a hand drawn and painted map by Josiah Ballard of the lands of Powlet Wright. The extent of the map is the then parish (the ecclesiastical parish, since civil parishes did not come into existence until the end of the 19th century) and it shows the buildings and roads then in existence. An accompanying book lists the details of land ownership.
The original parish of Englefield when the church took over the role of the manorial court in the 16th century (and as it remains for ecclesiastical purposes) was somewhat smaller than the modern civil parish, and is shown shaded blue on the map (left), with the modern civil parish outlined in red, courtesy of West Berkshire Council GIS.
To the north and west the parish was bounded by the rivers Pang and Bourne. The area to the south was occupied by the parishes of Sulhamstead Abbots (shown in peach shading), Sulhamstead Bannister (green) and Ufton Richard (pink), all of which then spread across the Bath Road in parallel strips. Sulhamstead Bannister was later amalgamated with Sulhamstead Abbotts to create Sulhamstead and Ufton Richard with Ufton Robert to create Ufton Nervet. To the east lay the large parish of Tilehurst, to the north-west was Bradfield and to the north were Tidmarsh and Sulham, all as today.
In the south a tongue of the parish of Englefield extended across the Bath Road with a strip of land running along the north bank of the River Kennet into what is now the civil parish of Theale.
In the modern day the civil parish of Englefield has conformed to what might be regarded as its “natural boundaries” and now includes the hamlet of North Street and the former parts of Ufton and Sulhamstead north of the Bath Road, though without the the area south of the Bath Road.
Owing to later purchases of land, there was also an even wider sphere of influence beyond even the boundaries of the modern civil parish. Certainly by the time of Richard Fellowes Benyon in the later 19th century the Englefield estate included large parts of the outlying villages of Sulhamstead, Ufton, Burghfield, Mortimer and many more scattered farms and hamlets. This remains largely the case today. Around the whole area can be seen the characteristic Englefield estate cottages dating from mid to late 19th century. These satellite villages were very much a part of the bigger estate and their inhabitants took part in regular cricket matches and games tournaments at the Club, and were included in key festivities. Estate employees and tenants moved regularly between the various villages and many marriages took place between people from Englefield and the surrounding villages.