Written by A.W.Proser. © Thatcham Historical Society Occasional Paper Number 2, 1979
Most of the towns and villages of the Thames and Kennet Valleys have histories, which are full of interest, but few can boast a story either as long or as fascinating as the history of Thatcham.
The first known human settlement in the area occurred about ten thousand years ago during the Mesolithic Period, when a village of light temporary shelters was erected on a pine covered gravel bluff near the modern sewage works on Lower Way Lane. The bluff was bordered on one aide by a lake - which covered a large part of the Kennet Valley, possibly extending from Newbury to Woolhampton - and the other side by treacherous marshes.
The villagers, who were semi nomadic hunters and fishers, occupied the site periodically for d least three centuries, but about 7500 BC the area was flooded and covered with layers of peat and marl, perfectly preserving many of the relics buried beneath.
The settlement was discovered by workmen in 1920 and excavated a year later by Messrs. Peake and Crawford. Further traces of occupation were discovered in 1957 by Local amateur archaeologists, Messrs. Barber, Collins and Sheridan, and an excavation, directed by Mr. John Wymer and completed in 1962, revealed that Thatcham was one of the finest examples of Mesolithic prehistoric settlement in Britain.
Numerous flint tools were unearthed, as well as hearths and flint knapping floors, on which the tools were shaped. Excavated food and bones included those of the red deer, roe deer, wild pig, elk, horse, ox beaver, pine marten, fox, dog, wolf and some wild fowl. Very rare bone and antler tools were also discovered.
Perhaps the most curious find of all were some pine cones which, having been buried for almost ten thousand years, popped open when exposed to bright sunlight as if they were freshly grown.
Soon after the Roman invasion of Britain in 43 AD the 2nd Augustan legion marched from the south of the country crossing the Kennet Valley at Thatcham. A road was constructed from Silchester, through the Wasing Park area, crossing the Kennet, probably at first by a ford and later by a bridge, passing through the Midgham marsh (the remains of the ancient lake) through Thatcham, and on to Speen, north west of Newbury. Here it is believed that a small fort was constructed at the junction of the roads leading to Bath and to Cirencester and G1oucester.
During the second or third century AD the Romans established a large village in the area of Henwick Lane and Roman Way in Thatcham. Excavations of the site were carried out nearly forty years ago and some foundations of buildings; pottery, tiles, household implements and coins were unearthed near the Roman road. Several flint lined Roman wells have also been discovered in the area.
Early in the fifth century AD the Roman legions were withdrawn from Britain to face the Barbarian hordes who were threatening the imperial City itself. Britain was thus left to the mercy of the Anglo Saxon invaders, who drove the Britons to the west and began to settle in England.
It is supposed that at this time a Saxon chief called Tace, or possibly Tac or Tec, led his men up the navigatable rivers Thames and Kennet as far as the ruined roman bridge. Here they probably disembarked and move some distance to the northwest where they erected a large village which they called Taceham (the village of tace) on the site of the modern centre of Thatcham.
The Saxon village probably consisted of a collection of huts of wood or wattle and doub, roofed with thatch, the whole settlement being enclosed within a palisade fence. The inhabitants settled down to become a peaceful farming community and the village prospered, eventually being incorporated into the Saxon kingdom of Wessex.
In 634AD a Christian missionary named Birnus was sent from Rome to convert the west Saxons. After winning King Cynegils for the faith, Birinus spent several years tramping around Wessex teaching the people. It is most probable that he visited Thatcham at this time and it is believed that a small place of worship was erected on the site of St. Mary's church before 650AD.
During the late eighth century AD, a new menace began to threaten the peace of England. The Vikings began to leave their Scandinavian homelands to seek their fortunes across the seas. They raided and plundered the English coastal villages and monasteries, and during the mid ninth century, they began to conquer the Saxon kingdoms and settle.
In 871AD they finally swept across the Thames into Wessex. The men of Thatcham and the surrounding villages were mobilized by Earldorman Ethelwulf of Beorrocscire (Forestshire) to block the Viking advance. In the ensuing conflict at Englefield near Reading, Ethelwulf was slain and his army fled leaving the Danes to lay waste to the area, plundering many villages, possibly including Thatcham.
Soon afterwards, the men of Wessex under king Ethelred defeated the norsemen at Ashdown, but they returned in grater numbers in 877AD to overrun most of the kingdom. Finally in 878AD the young king Alfred the great rallied his followers to crush the Vikings at Ethandune and restore peace in Wessex.
From the foundation of the Saxon village of Thatcham until the tenth century, it was held by a succession of noblemen of whom the last was Earldorman Alfeah, the godfather of Queen Elfrith, wife of King Edgar, 'King of all the English'. He was the great grandson of Alfred the Great. By this time, the manor of Thatcham had grown in size and importance until it was among the largest and most valuable manors in the country and the principle manor of Thatcham Hundred, the second largest of the thirty two Hundreds of Berkshire.
When Alfeah died about 965AD, he left many bequests of land and property to religious houses, particularly the Abbeys of Bath and Maimesbury, but he left Thatcham to the King. Thus Thatcham became a royal Manor, and it remained in the hands of the crown for over one hundred fifty years.
Twenty years after the Norman Conquest, in 1085AD, King William first authorised the preparation of a Domesday survey to establish the value of all the manors in his Kingdom, for the purpose of calculating federal dues.
Thatcham is described in the survey as having thirty-five virgates and twelve borders, with sufficient arable land for twenty-five ploughs. In addition there were two mills, one hundred and forty seven acres of meadow (pasture) and a wood giving pannage for sixty pigs. There was a church and two clergymen, and twelve hagae (the houses or closes of townsmen). The total value of the manor was assessed at £34 per annum, a very considerable sum in those days. For comparison, the annual value of other manors were assessed as follows:
In 1125Ad King Henry I founded the great Abbey of Reading and endowed it with many gifts of land, including the Manor of Thatcham. At the same time Thatcham Hundred ceased to exist, the western part being transferred to Faireress Hundred, and the remainder to the Hundred of Reading. The abbot of Reading was exempted from all taxes and feudal dues in respect of lands granted to him, and he was allowed to hold Manor courts. Henry I also allowed the monks the privilege of holding a market each Sunday in Thatcham church. Some authorities believe that a weekly market existed even earlier than 1125AD.
In 1141AD Thatcham Church previously the property of the Diocese of Salisbury, was granted to Reading Abbey by the Empress Mathilda, who at the same time confirmed her father's gift of the Manor to the Abbey.
Thatcham prospered greatly under the patronage of the Abbots of Reading, most of whom were very powerful and exercised great influence at court. This influence is manifested in many royal charters concerning Thatcham issued during the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.
During his reign King Henry II issued three charters confirming the weekly market, and compelling the men of Berkshire to attend Thatcham Market or suffer a fine in default. When the men of Newbury jealous of the privilege enjoyed by Thatcham attacked Thatcham market, overturning stalls and scattering merchandise. King Henry II immediately issued an order forbidding the men of Newbury to injure or interfere with the market. The close proximity of the two markets of Thatcham and Newbury intensified commercial rivalry and much ill fooling existed between them, at least until the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.
In 1218AD King Henry III ordered the Market day to be changed from Sunday to Thursday and in 1222AD the status of Thatcham was further enhanced when the King granted the town a fair, to be held annually on the eve and day of the feast of St. Thomas the Martyr (the 6th and 7th of July). Later this fair was abandoned and two one-day fairs were held instead during April and September lasting until 1888AD.
Thatcham reached the peak of its Medieval prosperity around 1300AD and it was possibly granted a borough charter by King Edward I though there is no longer any record of this. Certainly during the reign of King Edward III (1327-1377) it was classed as one of the four boroughs of Berkshire, the others being Windsor, Wallingford and Reading.
The streets of the borough during the fourteenth century were known as:
East Street led out of Thatcham towards Reading, and it was renamed Chapel Street soon after 1304 AD, when the Chapel of St. Thomas the Martyr, now known as the Bluecoat School, was opened and licensed for divine worship by the Bishop of Salisbury. The Chaplain served in subordination to the Rector of Thatcham who, in 1317, after an application by the Abbot of Reading to King Edward II and Pope Clement V, was instituted Vicar.
A large variety of light crafts were practiced in the medieval town of Thatcham, the chief of which were wood turning, coopering, flour milling, fulling, weaving and felt making. None developed into large-scale factory based industry as weaving did in Newbury during the Tudor period, under the direction of the enterprising Jack of Newbury and the Dolman family. The crafts in Thatcham were operated in cottage workshops, often on a part time basis; in support of the main occupation which was always open field farming.
Some of the names of residents of the borough, listed below, give us an excellent guide to the crafts practiced in the town:
In common with the inhabitants of other Open field villages throughout the country, the people of Thatcham tilled the arable acres around the town growing their staple crops, wheat and barley and pasturing their herds and flocks on the common meadows. The names of these fields survive in one form or another, chiefly in street names and these include the North Field, the Worthy Field, Parsons Down (one third of which was held by the incumbent of St. Mary's Church), the Widmede (or wide meadow), Stone Field, Red Field and the Moor.
The people of Thatcham suffered terribly during the period of the bubonic plague known as the Black Death, which struck between 1348, and 1350AD. Almost the total population of the Manors of Greenham and Crookham perished, and Thatcham and Newbury were similarly afflicted.
"Of the common people, together with religious and clerks, there died an innumerable sort for no man but god knew how many."
The plague came at a critical time in the development of Thatcham. Property depreciated, some houses stood empty and fell into ruins, and fields lay neglected further stifled by the commercial rivalry of Newbury, which enjoyed amore favourable geographical position as a route centre, and which benefited greatly from the enterprise and industry of its craftsmen and the efficient organisation of its Mayors and corporations.
After the quarrel between King Henry the 8th and the Pope over the King’s failure to secure papal sanction for his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, the Church of England was separated from the Roman Church by Act of Parliament and the monasteries were closed and their properties confiscated by the crown.
Reading Abbey was dissolved in 1539 AD, and by 1540 AD the Borough and Manor of Thatcham and the Royal Manor of Bucklebury were granted by King Henry to Sir John Winchcombe, the son and heir of Jack of Newbury, in the return for a payment of £2619 13s 4d to the exchequer.
The closing of the monastery was a disaster for the poor and sick of the district, who would no longer look to the monks for charity. There was still a great increase in vagrancy and some people perished from starvation and exposure. “Poor man found dead” is a common entry in local church records after 1540 AD.
The Winchcombe Family held Thatcham throughout the 17th century, but on the death of Sir Henry Winchcombe in 1703 AD, there was no male heir to succeed to either the manor or the baronetcy. Sir Henry therefore settled it on his second daughter Elizabeth, who died in 1705, leaving Thatcham and Bucklebury to her sister Frances, the wife of Henry St. John, later Viscount Bolingbroke. Frances is probably best remembered as the founder of the Winchcombe Charity in 1707 AD, which provided for the rebuilding of the derelict Chapel of St. Thomas as a school for thirty poor boys of the district. The Bluecoat School continued to function until the early years of the 20th century. After a period during which it was employed in a variety of roles, it has now become an antique shop, an appropriate use for a building of such antiquity.
Viscount Bolingbroke had a very distinguished career as a minister of the crown, his greatest achievement being the negotiating of the Peace of Utrecht 1713 AD which concluded the war of Spanish Succession. However, in 1717 AD he was convicted of plotting to exclude King George the 1st from the throne on the death of Queen Anne. Bolingbroke was a leading conspirator in the plan to perpetuate the Stuart Royal line in the person of James the old Pretender, the Roman catholic half brother of Queen Anne.
On his conviction, Bolingbroke forfeited all his lands, including Thatcham and Bucklebury, to the crown. The Manor of Bucklebury was restored to the Winchcombe Family in the person of Winchcombe Howard Packer in 1720 AD, and it has remained in possession of his descendants to this day.
In 1720 AD Thatcham Manor was sold by the crown to the Duke of Chandos, who in turn sold it to Brigadier General Waring in the same year. It was General Waring who enclosed Dunstan Park and built a fine Manor House there known as Dunstan House, which was later destroyed by fire. He was in fact the 1st Lord of Thatcham recorded in history to live permanently within the boundaries of the Manor.
Thatcham's greatest celebrity is without a doubt the world famous astronomer Francis Baily, who was born on the 28th April 1774. As a young man he braved many hazards charting huge tracks of unexplored land in America. Later he returned to Britain and became a very successful stockbroker.
His great interest in astronomy led him, in due course, to take a prominent part in the foundation of the Astronomical Society, of which he was Secretary for three years, four times President, and eleven times Vice President. He also became Vice President and Treasurer of the Royal Society and he held numerous other important offices during his lifetime. He died in Italy in 1844AD, and was buried at hi own request, in Thatcham Church, despite the fact that he was offered burial in Westminster Abbey.
In more recent times the people of Thatcham have been justly proud of three men of the village, two of them brothers, who won the Victoria Cross for gallantry in action. In 1900AD, William House received the award for rescuing a wounded soldier while under enemy fire during the Boer War. In 1915AD, Alexander Buller Turner was mortally wounded in a single-handed grenade attack upon a German position. His medal was awarder posthumously. During the second war, his brother Victor was awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry in the field while commanding a battalion of the Rifle Brigade with the Eighth Army in North Africa.
Until the end of the eighteenth century, St. Mary's church was the only recorded place of worship in Thatcham, though dissenters had been meeting in private homes in the village for perhaps a hundred years or more. In 1799AD, the house of Moses Fass at Crookham was registered as a Baptist-meeting place, and four years later the Thatcham home of Mrs. Hannah Bailey was certified as a congregational meeting place.
On the 1st December 1804AD, the congregational church erected on land provided by John Barfield in Church Lane, was opened for public worship. Later in the century the Methodist Chapel in Chapel Street was built and more recently the independent mission chapel in Green Lane and the modern Roman Catholic Church on the Bath Road have opened their doors to the rapidly expanding population of Thatcham.
Socially and economically there have been some very important developments in Thatcham over the last two centuries. Between 1811AD and 1848AD all of the arable land and common pasture within the parish was enclosed, forcing the smallholders out of farming and opening the way for the modernisation and improvement of the industry. Although this change was beneficial in the long term, it undoubtedly caused much hardship to the peasant farmers of the district some of whom left Thatcham to seek livings elsewhere.
The cutting of the Kennet and Avon Canal, completed in 1811AD by John Rennie, and the opening of the Reading to Hungerford Railway Line in December 1847AD by the Great Western Company did little to bring prosperity to Thatcham.
Since 1900AD however, industry has been attracted to the area. The Colthrop Board Mill where paper had been produced for over a century, grew very quickly particularly after its acquisition by the worldwide Reed Paper Company. The Sterling Cable Works was established nearby, and A.W.R.E Aldermaston, A.E.R.E Harwell together with the R.A.O.C Depot at Station Road, Thatcham, have all brought employment and increasing prosperity to the area. This growth has in turn brought a further influx of population, and has attracted numerous smaller businesses into the district.
The present population of Thatcham is above thirteen thousand and the rate of development is expected to be much accelerated during the next decade. Evidence of the growth and greater economic prosperity is to be seen all round us, and the future prosperity of Thatcham would seem to be guaranteed by the construction of the M4 Motorway, which is attracting further industrial and commercial enterprise into the district. With careful planning and proper exploitation of these advantages, the people of Thatcham can look forward with confidence to a bright and secure future.