Dunsden Green

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Dunsden Green
Oxfordshire

The village green at Dunsden
Location
Grid reference: SU741775
Location: 51°29’32"N, -0°56’2"W
Data
Post town: Reading
Postcode: RG4
Dialling code: 0118
Local Government
Council: South Oxfordshire
Parliamentary
constituency:
Henley
Website: Eye & Dunsden Parish Council

Dunsden Green or Dunsden is a village in the very south of Oxfordshire, north-east of Caversham and about three miles north-east of Reading, the latter across the River Thames in Berkshire.

The Church of England parish church, All Saints, was designed by the architect John Turner and built in 1842.[1]

History

The name 'Dunsden' means "Dynn's valley". In 1086 the Domesday Book recorded it as Dunesdene, and a document of 1586 records it as Donsden Grene.

Near the church is the former vicarage. The future First World War poet Wilfred Owen lived here from September 1911 to February 1913 when he served as a lay assistant to the parish priest, Rev. Herbert Wigan. The Dunsden Owen Association has been formed to commemorate the poet's links with the area, and a smartphone app can be downloaded which provides an interactive guide to the sites with which he was connected.[2]

The village school was built in 1848. It closed in December 1973[3] and is now the village hall.

In 2002 the microbrewery Loddon Brewery was established in a converted 18th century brick and flint barn at Dunsden Green Farm.

In November 2007 a new community orchard was established by the planting of a Blenheim Orange apple tree on the village green by Lord Phillimore, the main local landowner.[4] The orchard is beside the village green.

Pictures

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material
about Green Dunsden Green)

References

  1. Nikolaus Pevsner: The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire, 1974 Penguin Books ISBN 978-0-300-09639-2page 590
  2. The Dunsden Owen Association
  3. Law, Brian R. (2001). Eye and Dunsden. Two centuries of change in an Oxfordshire parish. Dunsden: Brian R. Law. p. 130. ISBN 0-9540199-0-3. 
  4. Eye & Dunsden Community Orchard