Leverton, Berkshire

Leverton
Berkshire
Pepperpot Cottages in Leverton
Location
Grid reference:	SU333696
Location:	51°25’30"N, 1°31’20"W
Data
Post town:	Hungerford
Postcode:	RG17
Local Government
Council:	West Berkshire

Leverton is a small hamlet at the very western edge of Berkshire, standing on the north side of the multiple streams of the River Kennet. The village is around two miles north-west of Hungerford.

The hamlet is hard by the border with Wiltshire and though a Berkshire village, Leverton is within the ancient parish of Chilton Foliat, a Wiltshire village, and in the Diocese of Salisbury. It shared a cross-border civil parish with Chilton Foliat until the 1890s too.

Leverton is a remarkably complete survival of an 18th/19th century estate village, belonging to the Chilton Lodge estate, and comprises a Model Farm, Gardener's Bothy, Head Gardener's cottage, Kitchen Garden with a full set of boiler houses and potting sheds, thatched Apple Store and a range of six thatched 'pepperpot' cottages originally inhabited by estate workers. The kitchen garden was restored to production in the late 1980s by the BBC for the 'Victorian Kitchen Garden' series and also featured in subsequent spin-offs such as 'The Victorian Kitchen' and 'The Victorian Flower Garden'. The hamlet also retains a set of stocks though the originals were removed to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in the 1990s and were replaced by a non-functioning replica.

Leverton appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 being assessed at 4½ hides, and probably continued as a rural farming village cultivating open fields until the 18th century when the present estate village commenced construction.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Leverton, Berkshire)

• Leverton - Victoria County History