Southcote, Berkshire
| Southcote | |
| Berkshire | |
|---|---|
 Coronation Square in the centre of Southcote | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SU686719 |
| Location: | 51°26’31"N, 1°-0’41"W |
| Data | |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Reading |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Reading West |
Southcote is a Berkshire village which has become a suburb of Reading.
Southcote is bounded to the north by the A4 and Prospect Park, to the west by the more recently developed suburb of Fords Farm, Calcot, to the south by the Holy Brook branch of the River Kennet and the water meadows of the Kennet Valley, and to the east by the railway line from Reading to Basingstoke bordering Coley Park.
Churches
Southcote and Calcot are joined in one ecclesiastical parish with one church in Coronation Square, St Matthew's Church, a 1967-built.
History
The suburb has been built largely on the lands of Southcote Manor. The manor house was demolished in 1921 but was, taken with its remaining outside Lodge, home to John Blagrave, the famous Tudor mathematician, his wealthier older brother Anthony who owned much of Reading and his nephew Daniel Blagrave, a signatory of the death warrant of King Charles I. Several of the family were Members of Parliament for Reading.[1]
Middle Ages
The Domesday Book of 1086 records that Southcote was held by William de Braose, who came over with the Conqueror and became 1st Lord of Bramber. Southcote was a hamlet which had thirteen heads of households and no serfs recorded, a mill, a fishery and three ploughlands.[2]
By the early 13th century it had been attached by the Braoses to the honour of Knepp in Sussex of which it was held by Henry Belet. In 1337 the King made a Grant of free warren to Michael Belet for his demesne lands. In 1365 Southcote was held by Thomas Restwold and Alice his wife. Lucy daughter of Henry Restwold married Lawrence Drew of Seagry, Wiltshire; their son Thomas Drew left a daughter Margaret, born about 1420, who became her father's heir and married Walter Sambourne and died in 1494. The inquisition taken after her death stated that she held the manor of Southcote from Hugh Kenepy by fealty only for all service, and that it was worth £20 on that after her son, Drew Sambourne's death, the manor was held of the Abbot of Reading 'as of Canape Manor.' Drew Sambourne's heir was Margaret Sambourne his granddaughter; who married William second Lord Windsor, (the son of Andrew Windsor, 1st Baron Windsor) whose grandson Henry Lord Windsor sold Southcote to Anthony Blagrave.[3]
Early Modern Period
The foundation of the importance of the Blagrave or Blackgrave family in Reading was the marriage of Robert Blagrave's widow Agnes to William Grey, who in 1545 had been granted extensive property in the town which had belonged to the abbey. Grey died also seised of the east-of-town manor of Bulmershe. Grey settled his estates on his wife Agnes, whose first husband was Robert Blagrave. Her son John became the inheritor all the family property under a settlement made in 1552 on his marriage with Anne daughter of Sir Anthony Hungerford of Down Ampney, Gloucestershire[4] and Little Shefford near Newbury. Anthony, their son and heir, was about forty years old when he bought Southcote and was still alive in 1610. Anthony's eldest son Sir John inherited all this, was knighted and held the property during the Civil War. In 1643, during the Siege of Reading, the Earl of Essex (a leading Parliamentarian) had his quarters
"at the house of one Sir John Blackgrave...with the souldiers in the fields about"[3]
and the owners in 1921 stated that Oliver Cromwell held a council of war in one of the oak-panelled rooms. The sympathies of the Blagraves were with the Roundheads whose key protagonists often fell out of national favour.
Anthony's eldest brother, another John, devoted himself to mathematical studies and was esteemed 'the flower of Mathematicians of his age'; his principal work, A Mathematical Jewel, was published in 1585. He possessed a house at Swallowfield where he sometimes lived, but he usually describes himself as 'of Reading,' and from his will and from other evidences it appears that he lived at Southcote Lodge, which he held under a lease of ninety-six years, dated 1596, from his elder brother Anthony at a rent of £10. After his death it was occupied first by another brother Alexander, and then by a nephew Daniel, from whom the Corporation of Reading had difficulty in getting the rent, £50 a year owed to it under John Blagrave's will, but fortunately secured on it. Daniel Blagrave was one of the regicides, at the Restoration he fled from England and died in poverty at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1668.[3]
The Southcote estate remained with the Blagrave famil as it passed to Anthony Blagrave, the grandson of Sir John Blagrave who, despite and after his associations with Parliamentary forces, was M.P. for Reading 1660, 1679 and 1680–1 and left all to his daughter Frances, who was born in 1761 and who in 1778 married John Blagrave of Watchfield, in the parish of Shrivenham, Berkshire. Their descendant in the male line, Henry Barry Blagrave of Calcot Park in 1921 owned the Southcote property.[3]
Southcote Manor and Lodge
The Manor itself has given way to modern housing with parks and gardens. Its lodge survives, its earlier version was the house of John Blagrave and it is 18th century with part of an older estate wall beside it - a brick in its eight-foot western wall bears the graffito "E B 1720".
Southcote Manor was in 1921 a two-storied brick house, mainly of the first half of the 17th century, much modernized outside and in, that stood on the moated site of an earlier fortified house, of which a tower or guard-house at the north-east angle of the area within the moat, dating from the late 15th century, with a fragment of the brick wall of enceinte, survived until that date. This guardhouse was a square brick building with truncated angles, two storeys in height. The window dressings were of stone, and the upper courses projected on a corbel-table; the whole was crowned by a pyramidal tiled roof. In the ground floor was a deep tank or well, or possibly a cellar, arched over. At the south-west was a doorway with a segmental pointed head, lit by small trefoiled loop panes. The first floor had a doorway in the south wall, once to the original wall, also with small trefoiled loops, and was buttressed in the centre of the east and north walls. A fragment of the northern wall of enceinte remained upon the west face. The mansion itself was a brick house facing north that had two stories above ground with a central entrance hall and apartments on either side and two large wings projecting southwards. At the north-west was an incongruous modern stone tower with a saddle-back roof. The mansion's doorway was in a projection a little to the east of the centre flanked by Doric pilasters and surmounted by a curved pediment. At the east end of this elevation was a square bay. With the exception of the window over the entrance, the windows of this elevation were gothicized. A string-course of moulded brick marked the level of the first floor. A hipped roof with an eaves cornice surmounted the building and projections. Little of interest remained internally and much of the back was modern work. The moat had gained a timber bridge, on the north side of which, placed in line with the entrance was a fine pair of 18th-century wrought iron gates with good scrollwork above, south of the moat was a gate-house on the south, a two-storied 17th-century brick building with a large arched carriageway, the stables east of this forecourt had by 1921 disappeared though not its walled kitchen garden to its west.[3]
About the village
Horncastle is a conservation area in the west of Southcote and a small portion of southern Tilehurst straddling the A4 Bath Road at the tripoint of three suburbs: Southcote, Calcot and Tilehurst.
Outside links
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Southcote, Berkshire) |