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Aldworth is mostly a cultivated village and civil parish in the English county of Berkshire, close to the modern northern county boundary with Oxfordshire. It is in the rural area between Reading, Newbury and Streatley. The parish includes one hamlet, Westridge Green, narrowly separated by a cultivated agricultural field from the village of Aldworth. Aldworth is on the high ground of the Berkshire Downs, just off the B4009 road between Newbury and Streatley; its north is crossed by The Ridgeway, a pre-Roman Britain 87-mile long-distance path. The parish church has very large medieval figures in white stone, seemingly life size representations of most of the people but they show some of the knights as over seven feet tall which has led to doubts about these tallest figures being life-sized. The site of the Battle of Ashdown, where King Alfred defeated the Danes in January 871, is said by some authorities to have been located just outside the village in the vicinity of the Ridgeway and Lowbury Hill. Aldworth was originally an ancient parish in the Compton Hundred. Between 1894 and 1974 it was located in Wantage Rural District. In the nationwide reorganization of local government of 1974, it became part of the non-metropolitan Newbury District. In 1998 the Newbury District was replaced by the unitary authority of West Berkshire. [edit] Manor
[edit] Parish Church
The Church of England parish church of Saint Mary is a Grade I listed building, parts of which date back to the 12th century. The church contains numerous effigies to the De La Beche family. The collection holds the largest number of medieval memorials to a single family in any parish church.[1] The figures are supposed to be life-size representations, but some of the knights are over seven feet tall, which has led to them being known as the Aldworth Giants. They were long thought to have been erected in the 1340s by the influential Sir Nicholas De La Beche (sometimes erroneously called Lord De La Beche), but historians now prefer to date them variously in the Middle Ages.[2] A large number of the effigies were damaged by Parliamentarian iconoclasts during the English Civil War of the 17th century. Many of the knights are missing the lower part of their legs, noses and arms, presumably because these were easy parts to break off. Parliamentarians may have seen the giants as a symbol of royalty, although many churches were ransacked in the same period. The poet, Laurence Binyon, moved to Westridge Green on his retirement in 1933. After his death in 1943, his ashes were scattered in the churchyard,[1] where there is a slate memorial plaque to him. The parents of Emily Tennyson, Lady Tennyson née Sellwood, the wife of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, are also buried there.[1] [edit] Research Tips[edit] Maps
[edit] Online Historical References
[edit] Nineteenth Century Local AdministrationEnglish Jurisdictions is a webpage provided by FamilySearch which analyses every ecclesiastical parish in England at the year 1851. It provides, with the aid of outline maps, the date at which parish records and bishops transcripts begin, non-conformist denominations with a chapel within the parish, the names of the jurisdictions in charge: county, civil registration district, probate court, diocese, rural deanery, poor law union, hundred, church province; and links to FamilySearch historical records, FamilySearch Catalog and the FamilySearch Wiki. Two limitations: only England, and at the year 1851. During the 19th century two bodies, the Poor Law Union and the Sanitary District, had responsibility for governmental functions at a level immediately above that covered by the civil parish. In 1894 these were replace by Rural and Urban Districts. These were elected bodies, responsible for setting local property assessments and taxes as well as for carrying out their specified duties. Thses districts continued in operation until 1974. Urban districts for larger municipalities were called "Municipal Boroughs" and had additional powers and obligations. Poor Law Unions, established nationally in 1834, combined parishes together for the purpose of providing relief for the needy who had no family support. This led to the building of '"union poorhouses" or "workhouses" funded by all the parishes in the union. The geographical boundaries established for the individual Poor Law Unions were employed again when Registration Districts were formed three years later. In 1875 Sanitary Districts were formed to provide services such as clean water supply, sewage systems, street cleaning, and the clearance of slum housing. These also tended to follow the same geographical boundaries, although there were local alterations caused by changes in population distribution.
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