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.
