Focus on Thatcham
Until 2014 the town of Thatcham was considered
to be Britain’s oldest inhabited settlement,
with evidence dating back over 12,000 years.
The modern spelling of Thatcham became
standard from the late 1500s, and the name
itself probably refers to the reeds used as roof
covering (Thæc) in a river meadow (hamm),
although traditionally it was believed to refer
to the hamlet of Tace, a Saxon leader.
The area of Thatcham, with a river running
through the valley, heaths at the top and
a gravel plateau, would have been very
appealing to prehistoric people as well as the
modern humans who followed.
Thatcham is the second-largest parish in West
Berkshire, a total of 21.76 square kilometres
(8.40 square miles). It was formerly even
larger, incorporating what became the
parishes of Greenham, Midgham and Cold Ash
as well as parts of Brimpton and Newbury. This map shows the parish of Thatcham in 1851.
Geology and Prehistory
The earliest evidence for life in Thatcham are mammoth tusks and teeth. This tusk was excavated at the gravel works in Lower Way, Thatcham in October 1979. NEBYM:1980.13.1
The geology and natural landscape around Thatcham made it attractive to early settlers.
Chalk deposits enabled the development of chalk streams, which are exceptionally rich in life. Layers of flint also formed, useful for making tools. The weathering of the chalk created clay, and gravel terraces, ideal for a settlement.
Hand axes found in gravel workings in Thatcham provide evidence of human activity from the Palaeolithic period (locally about half a million years ago to 10,000 BC), although these objects may have originated elsewhere. In 1921, workmen at the Lower Way Sewage Farm unearthed flint tools, some of which were taken to the Museum. The Museum’s Honorary Curator, Harold Peake, and Ordnance Survey Archaeologist O. G. S. Crawford, inspected the site and found further flakes in a thick deposit of black soil. Crawford dated the finds as Mesolithic (early Stone Age, about 10,000 BC to 8,000 BC) and further excavations in 1956 and 1989 revealed finds that demonstrated settlement by various groups of Mesolithic people in the area.
Further excavations in the east of Thatcham carried out from the 1950s until the 1970s by Pete Tosdevine uncovered more evidence of Mesolithic occupation.
Between 1958 and 1961, excavations were carried out, as recommended by Reading Museum’s Curator John Wymer, Britain’s foremost specialist in Palaeolithic archaeology. Thatcham is one of the best preserved Mesolithic sites in the country, occupied by ‘Maglemosian’ people between about 8,400 and 7,500 BC. There is also evidence from this time that Thatcham residents were repeatedly starting fires in the surrounding area, possibly to clear dead plant growth or maintain open areas for hunting, demonstrating efforts to control their environment.
By 6000 BC the body of water around Thatcham started to fill with silt, causing the site to become flooded, and making the area a less desirable place to live. By this time, Britain had become an island, and the Neolithic people started to live in more permanent settlements from about 3000 BC. Only a few Neolithic finds have been uncovered in Thatcham, but from 2000 BC, the Bronze Age people left more signs of inhabiting the area, evidence being finds from field walking around Chamberhouse Farm in 1891. By 500 BC, people were working iron rather than bronze, and when Dunston Park was investigated in 1996, evidence of an Iron Age round house was found. The ruling tribe were the Atrebates, who were being challenged by the neighbouring Catuvellauni, when the Roman conquest of Britain began.
Collection of Iron Age pottery from Benham Hill, Thatcham; Sherds are all from rim and body of vessels. Includes one sherd of grey ware with slight cross hatch decoration visible on external surface. NEBYM:S142
Roman Thatcham
After the Romans first invaded Britain in 43 AD, it did not take long for their building techniques to become established and for them to develop the infrastructure of roads and cities.
The Roman road from Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester) to Corinium (Cirencester) known as Ermin Street passed through or near Thatcham, although its exact course is still debated. An excavation at Colthrop Mill in 2001 uncovered a road of a single compacted layer, 8 metres wide and up to 16 centimetres thick, made of mixed small pebbles, flint and gravel on the alignment of Ermin Street. In the 1920s and 1930s, excavations led by W. E. Harris found evidence of road structures up to about 5 centimetres thick along the Bath Road around Thatcham Newtown. There are also crop marks that were observed near Pipers Farm that indicated evidence of a road, but these have not been explored and have since been built upon.
Archaeologists have investigated along the current Bath Road roughly between Northfield Road and Henwick Lane and found considerable evidence of Roman occupation and industry. Excavations started in the 1920s when the area was being developed and referred to as the ‘new town’, and the Roman settlement is therefore Thatcham Newtown. Harris and his team found a large quantity of Roman pottery, melted glass, burnt wood and nails, as well as some flint foundations, a bracelet, coins and a Roman flue. The remains of wells have been found, containing artefacts ranging from a sandal to pewter.
The archaeological evidence suggests that there was a roadside settlement that included a metal working industry, probably using recycled metal. This is West Berkshire’s only known Roman town, though a small one. The finds mostly date from the 200s and 300s AD, although some earlier coins and pottery were found. As the Roman Empire declined, so did the Roman settlement in Thatcham, providing opportunities for the next inhabitants – the Saxons.
Part of a Romano British column found north of the Bath Road, possibly intended for a grand house but abandoned when it broke. NEBYM:1979.72.317
Sole of leather shoe from Thatcham Newtown, Berkshire; Recovered from lower levels of flint lined well 1. The sole of a leather girls shoe which would have originally been hobnailed. NEBYM:1928.14.
The Manor of Thatcham and Royal Links
Following the Roman withdrawal from Britain, there is evidence of continued Romano-British habitation and we know Thatcham was a relatively prosperous Saxon town. From around 400-700 AD, the Anglo-Saxons became the dominant people in England.
In 951 AD, Thatcham is mentioned for the first time in a surviving document, the will of the Saxon King Eadred. In 1066 the Saxon kings were replaced by the Normans and the new king, William I (the Conqueror), commissioned the Domesday survey of his kingdom. Thatcham is recorded here as a thriving community with about 250 inhabitants. Thatcham Manor was held directly by the king, and was the centre of ‘hundred’, which is a Norman administrative area. Thatcham’s ‘hundred’ contained at least 15 other manors including Crookham, Midgham, Colthrop, Henwick and Greenham as well as Thatcham itself, and was the second most important in Berkshire after Windsor.
The royal family held Thatcham Manor until about 1123 AD when the third Norman king, William’s son Henry I, gave it to the monks of Reading Abbey. Royal patronage for the area continued, with Henry III granting Thatcham the right to hold an annual fair in 1222 AD, and the town being declared a borough, a special sort of town allowed to largely self-govern, by royal charter between 1276 and 1306 AD.
Eventually Thatcham started to be eclipsed by the much newer town of Newbury, which was founded in the late 1000s by the Normans, its name literally meaning ‘New Borough’. In 1540 AD Reading Abbey was dissolved by Henry VIII as part of his wider campaign against the Catholic Church, and Thatcham Manor was purchased by John Winchcombe, the famous Jack O’Newbury. Colthrop Manor was similarly purchased in 1553 by Thomas Dolman, the father of the builder of Shaw House.
Seal die, lead, vesica shaped, around 1220-1300, from Chamberhouse Farm, Thatcham. Inscribed +2’WALTER’.D’LA HVLL’ around a crescent and star. Bent, presumably in antiquity, and missing a loop at one end. La Hulle was an estate in Inkpen, and a Walter Punchard was granted lands here (by his father Simon) in the 13th century; the seal may have been his. NEBYM:1989.70.
The Bluecoat School, St Thomas’s Chapel
The Bluecoat School or the former Chapel of St Thomas is one of the best known buildings in Thatcham and is the town’s only Grade I listed building.
From 1707, the chapel building was officially called Lady Frances Winchcombe’s Charity School after its founder, Lady Frances Winchcombe, but it became locally known from the mid-1800s as The Bluecoat School because of the distinctive uniform worn by later students.
The building is first referred to in 1304 when Sir Richard Fokerham of Colthrop was granted a licence to hold chantry services, where prayers were offered for the souls of the deceased. The exact date of construction is unknown. The chapel was dedicated to St Thomas Becket, the murdered Archbishop of Canterbury, and would have served the needs of people living on the eastern side of the village as well as travellers on the Bath Road.
It is possible that the chapel closed around 1548 after the Abolition of Chantries Acts although some records from the 1600s refer to it as the ‘Chapel of the Borough of Thatcham’. By 1707 it was listed as a ‘decayed chapel’ when Lady Frances Winchcombe left provision in her will for the building to be converted into a school for 30 poor boys of Thatcham and the surrounding neighbourhood. The school opened in 1713 but closed in 1730 after mismanagement by the trustees.
It re-opened in 1796 and continued until 1914 when the teacher enlisted. It was still used as a classroom in the mid-1900s, at times when the Council School and the Kennet School were oversubscribed. The pupils walked to The Bluecoat School for lessons including cookery, woodwork, mathematics and English. From 1976 until 2000 the building was used as an antiques shop, before a charity was established in 2004 to manage the building ‘for the benefit of the community.’ It was most recently refurbished in 2015.
Photograph of Bluecoat School taken possibly in the 1940s by Alfred Shadlock, who taught at Francis Baily School, Thatcham. NEBYM:2015.6.603.
St Mary’s Church
The first church in Thatcham was built around 675 AD on the site of the current St Mary’s Church, as it is positioned in the standard location beside the village green.
It is likely this Saxon church was a simple timber framed hall with a thatched roof and earth floor and was the only church to serve the area. Its significance is suggested by the record in the 1086 Domesday survey stating that two clerks held the church, with three hides of land worth three pounds. Over time, other local churches were established and the significance of Thatcham’s church declined.
The first stone church on the site was built around 1141 AD when control of the church was granted to Reading Abbey. The Norman doorway from this church can still be seen at the south entrance. Additions were made over the following centuries, and the building was extensively remodelled in the mid-1800s.
The church was at some time dedicated to St Luke. It was referred to as St Mary’s in documents from the 1300s, and again in directories dating from the 1890s, but parish magazines in the 1860s and 1870s are for ‘St Luke’s, Thatcham’, as is the 1881 Census. Research continues into when and why the name changed.
It seems that the inhabitants requested the institution of a vicarage from King Edward II when he was in Newbury in 1308, and on 20th December 1316, Jordan de Appelford became the first vicar of Thatcham. There are stories associated with the vicars of Thatcham. In 1648, the newly appointed vicar went to Suffolk to collect his belongings but became ill and during his absence, John Vicars, apparently the vicar of Rushcombe, forcibly took control of the pulpit and broke open the vicarage door to live there. The House of Lords had to intervene to remove him. In 1662, the vicar Thomas Volsey was accused of high treason because of his fervent preaching style, although he was released after 15 months and returned to his birthplace in Devon.
Copy of a late 1900s postcard, showing the interior of St Mary’s Church. The original image was taken by Mr Jim Irving, a local photographer. NEBYM:1998.35.4
Watercolour of the southern Thatcham landscape with St Mary’s Church in the background. The painting is a copy of a lithograph design. NEBYM:1989.46.2.
Thatcham Churches and Chapels
The United Reformed Church
Services were held by religious dissenters in houses in Crookham in 1791 and 1799, although there is evidence of religious defiance in the village since the 1600s. The first non-conformist chapel was built in 1804 when the Independent Church opened in Church Lane on land given by John Barfield, despite considerable local opposition. It became a United Reformed Church in 1972.
Wesleyan Methodist Chapel
Wesleyan Methodists met in a house in the High Street from the 1790s. By the summer of 1834, an old brush turnery works in Chapel Street was converted for use as a chapel. In 1902 a schoolroom for 100 children was added to the rear of the building.
Primitive Methodist Chapel
Primitive Methodist preachers travelled around Berkshire in the 1820s and 1830s, a chapel was built in Thatcham’s St John’s Road in 1840 and re-built in 1868. In 1932 the Primitive Methodists united with the Wesleyan Methodists. The chapel was sold in 1964 and demolished in 1986 after being used for commercial purposes.
Plymouth Brethren, Independent Evangelical Mission, and Thatcham Free Church
George Wallis of Thatcham Farm joined the Plymouth Brethren and gave them land on the west side of Green Lane. They erected a ‘tin hut’ for their services, which was demolished in 1986, but the Plymouth Brethren had moved to a new church in 1935 built at the top of Green Lane, hey left Thatcham in the early 1960s. In May 1965 the building was taken over by the Green Lane Independent Evangelical Mission, which became Thatcham Free Church in 1977.
Our Lady of the Assumption Roman Catholic Church, Bath Road
A local religious survey of Thatcham in 1931 did not mention Roman Catholics. A Catholic mass was held at the Memorial Hall in 1954, the first since a secret one was reportedly held in 1654 and from 1956 Roman Catholic services were held in an old cadet hut. A campaign to build a church was launched in 1976 and the Church opened in 1978.
Baptists
Services were held in the Lower Way Children’s Centre, and later at the Bath Road Memorial Hall. A church was completed in Wheelers Green Way in 1987.
The Independent Church was called the Congregational Church by 1910 when this photograph was taken. The building was constructed partly with bricks from Dunston House. NEBYM:2004.50.48
The tower of the Roman Catholic Church seen in the background of the Memorial Playing Fields. NEBYM:2009.043
Industry
The woodlands around Thatcham have always provided timber for local industry, particularly woodturning and papermaking.
Industrial woodturning in Thatcham goes back at least to the 1600s when Richard Baily set up a pike makers – pikes being a type of spear over two metres long. As pikes became obsolete, the business turned to making mop and broom handles. In the early 1800s, Stephen Pinnock moved to Thatcham and established himself as a “mopstick maker” in the Broadway. His sons later took over the company which employed a number of men, and earned several government contracts. The Brown family of woodturners established a mop-handle manufactory in the Broadway in 1847 and became the dominant name in Thatcham woodturning, before closing in 1958. Two employees continued woodturning until 1988, and their St John’s Road site was eventually redeveloped into a housing estate, still known as The Turnery.
Local woodlands also fed the paper industry. Colthrop Mill was part of Colthrop Manor and was let by the lord to local tenants. Until 1740 it milled corn before switching to papermaking. John Henry purchased the mill in 1864 and became the owner/operator. By his death in 1905, the mill had increased its staff from 25 to 200 and had gone from producing 8 tons of paper a week to 100 tons a week. At its height, Colthrop employed 900 people and was the only paper mill in Berkshire, but was forced to close in 2000 due to falling production demands.
The third major industry in Thatcham was peat digging. Not only could peat, a mass of compressed, decaying plant matter found in bogs or wetlands, be burnt as fuel once dried, but the ash could also be used as a natural fertiliser. The industry died off after the invention of artificial fertilisers (peat is a very polluting fuel as it releases lots of carbon dioxide) but the pits left behind formed the Thatcham Reedbeds, originally a resource for thatching. Thatcham Reedbeds is now the site of the Nature Discovery Centre and a wildlife habitat.
Agriculture and Poverty
Medieval Thatcham appears to have been a centre for local industry rather than agriculture. By the 1800s, however, agriculture seems to have become a more important part of Thatcham’s economy. This period saw numerous protests, both in Thatcham and nationally, by agricultural workers about poor conditions.
In 1800 a group of over 300 farm workers gathered at Thatcham churchyard to protest low wages, lack of work and high prices. Their complaints were listened to by the vicar and local leaders, before the crowd was peacefully seen off with the use of the Thatcham Volunteer Cavalry Corps, who would later form part of the Berkshire Yeomanry. The national ‘Swing Riots’ against agricultural mechanisation in 1830 impacted Thatcham, with 11 local men being arrested and four transported to Australia after the Colthrop mill was attacked and machinery destroyed. The protests culminated in 1875 when 2,000 Thatcham farm workers attended a National Agricultural Labourers’ Union meeting at the New Inn in Chapel Street.
Poverty in Thatcham was a serious problem throughout the 1800s. This was before the government established any sort of official poor relief, so charities and local groups took care of people. In 1889 alone, £38 was given to various Thatcham residents though charitable bequests – the equivalent today of over £5,200.
Two local Friendly Societies provided support in times of hardship to members and the Newbury Board of Guardians provided a weekly shilling, sometimes bread, to the village’s most destitute inhabitants.
Thatcham’s almshouses, a form of charitable housing for the poor, elderly or infirm, were first built in Chapel Street around 1430 with money from Thomas Lowndyes, whose name they still bear. Thatched cottages, called the Nine Shilling Houses, were built nearby in the 1600s to help financially support the Lowndyes Almshouses, which were rebuilt in 1848-49 and again more recently. There are still four flats on the site, managed by Thatcham Parochial Charities, together with John Hunt’s Almshouses, originally endowed in 1590, and six flats in Nine Shilling House.
illustrated prize certificate, from the Agricultural and Labourers’ Friend
Assocation, awarded in 1847 for thatching to Gabriel Cook, employed by
Richard Tull of Crookham House, Crookham Common, Thatcham. NEBYM:1989.46.1.
68-72 Chapel Street, cottages that possibly provided income for the Lowndyes Almshouses. Image from a postcard of the cottages after restoration in the 1990s. NEBYM:2015.6.577
Amenities and Leisure in Thatcham Town
The Industrial Revolution enabled Thatcham town to develop the amenities and utilities to support its population.
In 1866, a gasworks opened behind the Old Chequers Pub, powering a gas street lighting system by 1889. In 1881 the telegraph system, which had been extended to Thatcham Station in the 1850s, finally reached the town centre.
The 1900s saw Thatcham’s public services improve, as a Police Station opened in 1905, Thatcham Fire Brigade was founded in 1910, the Tomlin Drinking Fountain in Broadway was opened in 1911, and the first public telephone installed in 1912. The mains water supply would not reach Thatcham until 1931.
Following the Second World War, many public services went into decline or closed down. Thatcham had two fire stations which shut down in 1945 and 1980, while the Police Station closed in 1968, with future coverage being provided by Newbury. Electricity replaced the gas street lighting in 1926, while the gasworks closed in 1949.
Aside from the public services, the town’s sporting and leisure facilities also grew. There is evidence that Thatcham Cricket Club dates back as far as 1767, which would make them one of the oldest cricket teams in the sport, with an ‘experienced’ team recorded as beating Aldermaston in 1786. Meanwhile, Thatcham Town Football Club was founded in 1895, and the two clubs shared a ground in Park Lane from 1925. Thatcham Rugby club began as a pub side in 1981.
Kennet Amateur Theatrical Society was formed in 1968 and performs a variety of productions, often in Kennet School, as it was originally an offshoot of the Kennet School Parent Teacher Association. Another popular local facility is the Memorial Playing Field, created in 1947 on land purchased from the Brown family by a voluntary group because the village urgently needed a playing field.
The opening of the drinking fountain at the Broadway, Thatcham on 5 July 1911. Mrs Ann Tomlin, who paid for the fountain, is holding a silver goblet. NEBYM:1997.32.2
Military History of Thatcham
In common with many other English towns, the local gentry in Thatcham, led by John Barfield, established the Thatcham Volunteer Cavalry Corps. This was a Yeomanry unit, a volunteer cavalry auxiliary drawn from the rural gentry and their tenants.
The Thatcham Volunteer Cavalry Corps would later form part of the Berkshire Yeomanry, who served in the Second Boer War and First World War, as did the Royal Berkshire Regiment. The local men who died during the First and Second World Wars are commemorated on the Thatcham War Memorial. Designed by Sir Charles Nicholson of London and costing £190 (over £9000 today), it was unveiled on 11 November 1920 alongside a captured German gun which was disposed of as scrap metal in 1940 for the war effort. In 1966 the memorial was moved to a location beside the A4, opposite Green Lane.
When the Second World War broke out, Thatcham prepared by building a communal air-raid shelter at the end of the Broadway. This proved wise, as 15 bombs were dropped on 3rd July 1940 by a single aircraft in broad daylight, blocking the railway for two hours, killing a cow and slightly injuring two people.
The tobacco store site on Station Road was requisitioned and re-opened as a Royal Army Ordnance Corp Depot, with Lt. Col. Vernon Watkins Urquhart as its first Commanding Officer. He was killed by a piece of shrapnel during a bombing raid on 16th August 1940. More bombs fell on 21st August and the last weekend of September 1940.
During the war, the Army Depot was handed over to the American Army. After the war, it was returned to the Royal Army Ordnance Corp (RAOC) and became a major source of local employment, with over 270 people, approximately half of whom were women, working there. In 1993 the RAOC were amalgamated into the Royal Logistics Corp, who closed the Thatcham Depot in 2000.
Nose section of a CG-4a glider in a packing case, being unloaded by crane at Crookham Common aerodrome, 1944. The glider assembly area was to the east of
the runway at Greenham, in the Crookham Common section, part of the parish of Thatcham. NEBYM:1998.23.1
Rows of glider fuselages at Crookham Common aerodrome, 1944, horse-drawn timber whim on road down to ford at Thornford. NEBYM:1998.23.7
The Pubs of Thatcham Town
As Thatcham town was on the main coaching route, it was inevitable that coaching inns would flourish in the area.
The White Hart, King’s Head and Coopers Cottage, have all been established as being coaching inns, although there may well have been more.
The King’s Head is a listed building in the Broadway and dates from the 1700s, it was probably extended earlier in its history to create the other half of the building, which has seen several uses over recent years.
The coaching inn that no longer exists is Coopers Cottage, bought by Thomas Cooper in 1827 when he established Cooper’s Old Company and controlled his stage coaches between London and Bristol. The coaching inn that no longer exists is Coopers Cottage, bought by Thomas Cooper in 1827 when he established Cooper’s Old Company and controlled his stage coaches between London and Bristol.
The Plough is currently closed but was first recorded as a pub in 1795, although the building is at least 100 years older. Of the pubs currently operating in and around the town, The Old Chequers is listed and the timber framed buildings date back to the 1600s.
There have been two Crown Inns, the older was at 36 High Street and closed between 1874 and 1881, the original timber framed building dated back to the 1600s. Around 1900, 16 High Street was opened as The Crown Inn, but closed in 1954 and became a shop.
Taken in about 1900, this image shows Thatcham High Street with The White Hart on the left in the foreground, and at the far end of the road, the original Crown Inn. The White Hart appears to date to the early 1600s and is still operating, on the corner of Broadway and High Street. The current building dates from the early 1700s but the front was rebuilt after a Guinness tanker destroyed it in 1954. NEBYM:2019.25.9.
Chapel Street in about 1955, with The Prancing Horse, formerly the New Inn, on the left. The Prancing Horse has now been converted to residential accommodation, but its timber frame dates from the 1500s. NEBYM:1992.52.3.
Travelling to and from Thatcham
Roads
The course of the Roman road through or near Thatcham changed, but it remained the major route from London to Bristol. In the 1600s, Bath became increasingly popular as a health resort and a number of inns date to this time, suggesting an increase in traffic. In 1720 the Bath Road became a turnpike (toll road) with a toll house just west of Thatcham. Regular coach services were established and a mail coach service started in 1784.
The first motor bus service between Thatcham and Newbury started in 1914. The growth of motor traffic led to the Bath Road in Thatcham (which ran along the current High Street) becoming a major bottleneck and accident blackspot, resolved when the current A4 through road opened in 1962.
River and canal
The Kennet Navigation opened in 1723 having been surveyed and engineered by John Hore, a Thatcham resident. Barges could then travel from Newbury to Reading to join the River Thames. Locally the waterway encouraged the establishment of the papermaking and peat digging industries, both of which required access to bulk transport facilities. Thatcham is also home to Monkey Marsh Lock, one of only two turf sided locks on the Kennet. A turf sided lock is an earlier design of waterway lock featuring sloping, turf covered sides rather than vertical brick or masonry. The waterway was eventually extended, with the Kennet and Avon Canal opening in 1810, allowing water-bourne transport from London to Bristol.
The derelict former toll house, on Bath Road. It stood near the current site of the
Turnpike (Garden Centre) Roundabout, and was demolished in the early 1960s. NEBYM:1988.10.23.
Rail
A branch line from Reading to Hungerford opened in 1847 with a station on the Crookham road, about a mile outside Thatcham. Goods sheds were built in 1850 as the railway took over the transport functions of the canal. In 1906 the connection to Taunton opened making the line the main route to the south-west. There were also goods sidings to Colthrop Mill and, later, to the Royal Ordnance Depot. The Beeching cuts saw the station downgraded to an unstaffed halt and the buildings being demolished. Rebuilding started in 1987 and the station and its adjacent footbridge and level crossing have been upgraded several times.
Photograph of Thatcham Railway Station in 1919. NEBYM:1983.145.3.