Milton, Berkshire

Milton
Berkshire
Location
Grid reference:	SU4892
Location:	51°37’37"N, 1°17’53"W
Data
Population:	1,206  (2001)
Post town:	Abingdon
Postcode:	OX14
Dialling code:	01235
Local Government
Council:	Vale of White Horse
Parliamentary constituency:	Wantage
Website:	Parish of Milton

Milton is a modest village in Berkshire about three miles west of Didcot and a similar distance south of Abingdon.

Milton has but one public house, the Admiral Benbow. Though the village is small, to the south of the old village, beyond Manor Farm and close to the A4130 and the A34, is the Milton Park Estate, a business estate and science park, larger than the village itself.

Name of the village

From the 10th to the 13th century the village's name was Middeltune. From the 13th to the 15th century it evolved as Middelton and Midelton, and from the 15th century to the 17th century it was Mylton.

Milton Hill

The hamlet of ‘’’Milton Hill’’’ is found a little south of Milton itself, beyond the forbidding A4130-A34 junction. Milton Hill House is now a hotel and conference centre. In its old estate is a research centre spreading over the fields.

Manor

In 956 King Eadwig granted 15 hides of land at Milton to his thegn Ælfwin, who in turn gave the estate to the Benedictine Abingdon Abbey. In the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s the abbey surrendered its lands to the Crown. Milton was among a number of estates that Henry VIII granted to Thomas Wriothesley, 1st Earl of Southampton in 1546. Wriothesley sold Milton that same year to Thomas Calton, a goldsmith of London, whose descendants retained it for the next two centuries. In 1709 Paul Calton married Catherine, daughter of Admiral John Benbow. In 1764 Catherine, Martha and Mary Calton sold the estate to Isaac Barrett, in whose family the property remains.

Milton House is a yellow and red brick manor house built for the Calton family in the 17th century. The actual date is unknown: in 1696 it was described as "newly built" but Sir Nikolaus Pevsner believed that it could not be much later than the 1660s. The original building is of five bays and three storeys and may have been designed by Inigo Jones. In 1796 short two-storey wings designed by Stephen Wright were added to the house for Bryant Barrett. The house, gardens and park are open to the public between 2 pm and 5 pm on certain dates between Easter Sunday and 31 August each year.

There was also a dower house, where Admiral Benbow lived in the 1690s. Peter the Great is said to have stayed at Milton House around this time, probably in order to consult Benbow on shipbuilding. No trace of the dower house remains.

Churches

• Church of England: St Blaise
• Methodist: Milton Methodist Church

Parish church

The parish church is dedicated Saint Blaise as he is the patron saint of the wool industry, which was a major part of Milton's mediæval economy. The church seems to have been built in the 14th century but only the porch, the lower part of the bell tower and part of the nave including the west window survive from this time. The upper part of the tower was rebuilt in the 18th century and the nave, chancel and four-bay north aisle were rebuilt by the Gothic Revival architect Henry Woodyer in 1849-51. Under the chancel arch is the Barrett family vault.

The tower has a ring of eight bells, all cast by Whitechapel Bell Foundry in 2001. Previously there was a ring of six, four of which were cast in 1682. At least three of the 1682 bells were cast by Richard Keene, who had foundries at Woodstock, Oxfordshire and Royston, Hertfordshire. Another of the bells had been cast in 1787 and the tenor was cast by Mears and Stainbank of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in 1906. When the new bells were hung in 2001, five of the old bells were sold to St Michael and All Angels parish church, Hackthorn, Lincolnshire. One of Richard Keene's 1682 bells has been retained at St Blaise but is not used.

Methodist

By 1924 Milton had a corrugated iron nonconformist chapel. Milton Methodist church now has a modern brick building and is a member of the Wantage and Abingdon Methodist Circuit.

Economic and social history

Two watermills in the parish are recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 and again in a record from 1401. There is still a Milton Mill on Ginge Brook.

In about 1770 Thomas Bowles of Abingdon inclosed land on Milton Hill about 1½ miles south of the village as a park and had Milton Hill House built there. His son Thomas (died 1837) enlarged both the park and the house. The library was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott for John Samuel Bowles. It remained the Bowles family seat until 1905 when it was sold by Col. Thomas John Bowles. It is now a DeVere hotel.

An open field system of farming prevailed in the parish until 1808-09, when Parliament passed an Inclosure Act for Milton.

In 1841 the Great Western Main Line was built through the parish about ½ mile south of the village. In 1955 a British Railways excursion train was derailed at Milton, killing 11 people and injuring 163.

During the Second World War the Army had a large depot on land between Milton and the railway line. The site is now Milton Park Business Park.

In the 1970s a new dual carriageway was built through the parish as part of the realignment and enlargement of the A34 road. Milton Interchange was built just south of the railway line as a junction between the A34 and the A4130.

Sources

• Page, W.H.; Ditchfield, P.H., eds (1924). A History of the County of Berkshire, Volume 4. Victoria County History. pp. 361–365. 
• Pevsner, Nikolaus (1966). Berkshire. The Buildings of England. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. pp. 178–179.