Cold Ash

From Wikishire
Jump to: navigation, search
Cold Ash
Berkshire
St Mark, Cold Ash - geograph.org.uk - 1538217.jpg
St Mark's parish church
Location
Grid reference: SU5169
Location: 51°25’26"N, 1°15’50"W
Data
Population: 3,623  (2001)
Post town: Thatcham
Postcode: RG18
Dialling code: 01635
Local Government
Council: West Berkshire
Parliamentary
constituency:
Newbury
Website: Cold Ash Parish Council

Cold Ash is a village in Berkshire about a mile north of Thatcham and 2½ miles northeast of Newbury.

Parish curch

The parish church is St Mark. It was designed by the architect Charles Beazley and built in 1864–65.[1] It is a brick Gothic Revival building with a polygonal apsidal chancel.[1] The chancel windows have tracery in a late 13th-century Decorated Gothic style.[1] The chancel windows have stained glass: the east window by Clayton and Bell and the north and south windows by Charles Eamer Kempe.[1]

History

Downe House School, a girls' boarding school, moved to Cold Ash in 1922 when it outgrew its original premises, Downe House, Charles Darwin's former home near Bromley in Kent. St Peter's, a red brick house built in about 1700, is now part of the school.[2]

The Cloisters was built as a Roman Catholic Convent for the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary.[1] The architect WC Mangan of Preston in Lancashire designed the chapel, which was built in 1934–36 and has a tower.[1] It is now part of Downe House School.

Amenities

Cold Ash Post Office

Cold Ash has two public houses, the Castle Inn[3] and the Spotted Dog.[4] Cold Ash has a Women's Institute.[5] St Mark's Church of England Primary School[6] has about 150-200 pupils in the 4–12 age range.

The village has a recreation ground with two tennis courts and space for football and cricket. The Acland Memorial Hall[7] is Cold Ash's village hall.

Outside links

Commons-logo.svg
("Wikimedia Commons" has material
about Cold Ash)

References