Longworth

Longworth
Berkshire
St Mary's parish church
Location
Grid reference:	SU3999
Location:	51°42’18"N, 1°25’37"W
Data
Population:	848  (2001)
Post town:	Abingdon
Postcode:	OX13
Dialling code:	01865
Local Government
Council:	Vale of White Horse
Parliamentary constituency:	Wantage
Website:	Longworth Village on the Web

Longworth is a village in north-western Berkshire found some 7 miles west of Abingdon and a similar distance east of Faringdon.

Longworth parish stretches between the River Thames in the north and the River Ock in the south. Harrowdown Hill, in the north of the parish near the Thames, is a lonely walk amongst the trees.

Sir Henry Marten, a 17th-century Judge of the Admiralty Court, and his son, Henry Marten, the regicide, lived at Longworth House.

Public houses

Longworth has two public houses: the Blue Boar in the village and the Lamb and Flag 2 miles to the south.

The thatched part of the Blue Boar was built 1606 during the Great Rebuilding of England and the two storey part was added about 50 years later. It is not clear however whether it has always been a pub. As it is on the main route out of the village to the River Thames it was popular in the 19th century as a resting stop for horse, cart and drover. The current owner rescued it from dereliction in the late 1970s and has extended and modernised it while retaining the beams and open fires. It is the only one of five original licenced premises surviving within the village boundary and is now a gastropub.

On the Blue Boar pub sign, the white boar and the white rose on the pennant represent the symbols of Richard III. The blue boar was the personal badge of the De Vere family who were the Earls of Oxford. Legend has it that when King Richard III was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, any White Boar pubs were quickly repainted to avoid suggesting support for the dead and condemned king.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Longworth)

Further reading

• Page, W.H.; Ditchfield, P.H., eds (1924). A History of the County of Berkshire, Volume 4. Victoria County History. pp. 466–471. 
• Pevsner, Nikolaus (1966). Berkshire. The Buildings of England. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. pp. 171–172.