Theale

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Theale
Berkshire
Holy Trinity Theale (west).jpg
Holy Trinity, Theale
Location
Grid reference: SU641713
Location: 51°26’13"N, 1°4’37"W
Data
Population: 2,835  (2011)
Post town: Reading
Postcode: RG7
Dialling code: 0118
Local Government
Council: West Berkshire
Parliamentary
constituency: 		Reading West

Theale is a large village in Berkshire. It has a high street of small businesses, large business parks beside its railway station and its own schools.

The village is bounded to the south and south-east by the Kennet and Avon Canal, today mainly a waterway for leisure purposes, and just to the north of the canal is the River Kennet which has within Theale large lakes following extraction of gravel - 11% of Theale's area is fresh water.

Theale is centred five miles southwest of Reading, its nearest major town, and 10 miles east of Thatcham. The north of Theale civil parish is a golf course and the eastern boundary is the M4 motorway where there is a dual carriageway and junction with the local roads. Theale lies in the far east of the West Berkshire authority.

Name

A local tale has it that the name "Theale" comes from the village's inns and that it was the first staging post on the Bath Road from London – literally calling the village "the ale".[1] Given that the name is recorded centuries earlier, and that there has been a Theale Hundred since at least the thirteenth century, this is fanciful. The alternative explanation is that the name comes from the Old English "þelu" meaning "planks". As with the village of Theale in Somerset, this would refer to planks built as a causeway over the marshes.[2]

Parish church

The parish church is Holy Trinity. Designed by Edward Garbet, the church was consecrated on 21 August 1832 by the Bishop of Salisbury, and had taken approximately 15 years to build.[3] The benefactor was the wife of Dr Sheppard, Sophia, who donated £39,000 to the building of a church, rectory and school,[4] though other sources state that the donation was closer to £50,000.[5] Dr Sheppard had died in 1814 and wished a new church to be built to replace the earlier building. Sophia was supported in the founding of the church by her brother, Martin Routh.[4]

Holy Trinity

The church, especially the western façade and the buttresses, bears resemblance to Salisbury Cathedral.[5] Nikolaus Pevsner wrote that the church is modelled on the cathedral.[6] In 1833, John Claudius Loudon described the body of the church as "satisfactory" and said that "the tower, and all the turrets, and terminations to the buttresses, are too short".[7] The steeple is positioned to the south-east of the nave, with suggestions that its building was an afterthought.[8] John Buckler built the tower between 1827 and 1828, with suggestions that he modelled the building on Salisbury's bell tower – demolished approximately 30 years previously – though little artistic and architectural evidence supports this.[8]

Organ

The church's original organ had a single-manual and was built by R.W.Rouse of Somerton, Oxfordshire. It was restored in 1933 by G.H.Foskett of London, with funds donated by the Blatch family.[9] The restoration saw the organ moved from its original position in the church's west end to the nave, with preservation of the pipes. A second restoration was undertaken by Richard Bower of Weston Longville.[9]

History

At the time of the Domesday Book of 1086, Theale was part of the Reading Hundred of Berkshire. The first record of the Theale Hundred is in the thirteenth century, but tHeale was not a great town: until the early 19th century, Theale was part of the Parish of Tilehurst.

There is evidence of a chapel dedicated St John the Baptist in Theale in 1291. The church is recorded to have belonged to the Priory of Goring. In the 19th century, the Berkshire Local History Club wrote that the church was on the same site as the current church, and that the chapel was part of the Englefield estate.[10]

In 1542, after Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries the chapel was granted to Sir Leonard Chamberlain (the High Sheriff of Berkshire[11]) and a Richard Andrews.[10] The following year, the chapel was granted to the Burgoyne family by Chamberlain and a Richard Hayles. The Burgoyne family sold the chapel to Richard Bartlett in 1545, who sold it to Humphrey Forster of Aldermaston in 1587. In 1609, Forster's son sold the property to Anthony Blagrave of Sonning, from whom the Wilder family purchased it in 1632. The last mention of the chapel is in 1675 in the family's deeds.[12] The chapel was reportedly demolished in 1808, with evidence of its foundations being discovered in the building of the present church.[12]

In September 1643, soon after the First Battle of Newbury,[13] Theale was the site of a skirmish between Prince Rupert's Royalist forces and the Earl of Essex's Parliamentarians. Rupert attacked the Earl's forces from the rear as they were returning to London; the Earl's forces – led by Colonel Middleton – held strong and up to 800 Royalist musketeers and 60 horses were killed,[14] and at least 8 Parliamentarian units were killed.[15] and were buried in Dead Man's Lane.[16][17] The Royalist forces retreated, and the Earl left Theale on the morning of 23 September, heading to Reading where his units recovered from fatigue.[13] Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Lord Fairfax of Cameron marched through Theale on 1 May 1645, en route from Windsor to Salisbury.[18]

In 1799, a Dr Sheppard built a chapel of ease when Theale was part of Tilehurst parish. The chapel was built of brick and had a bellcote, and was situated to the south-west of the present church.[10]

In 1802, topographer James Baker chronicled the village en route from Reading to Newbury, and described it as "inconsiderable".[19]

The Gates to the Englefield Estate, Berkshire

As the Bath Road became an established trade route and turnpike from London to the western counties, Theale became known for its numerous coaching inns.[16] On many occasions throughout the 18th century, Dick Turpin is said to have hidden in a secret room in The Old Lamb on Theale's high street.[16]

Geography

There are many wooded areas within the parish.[20] The River Kennet runs south of the village, cutting through meadows and giving wide flood plains.[20] Theale is relatively flat, with expanses of level ground flanking the main road.[19] Theale has one lake within the built up area to the far west of the village, with privately owned houses flanking it the owners and two public south-western lakes. The south-east and south boundary is the Kennet and Avon Canal. Two weirs on the River Kennet are within its extent.

As with other parts of the Kennet Valley, soil in Theale is a variety of chalk, flint, gravel and loam. It has narrow peat marshes against the river.[21] Samples of ochra purpurco-rubra, a purple-red type of ochre used by painters, have been found in clay pits in the village.[22]

Economy

Church Street

Theale has been long-associated with pubs and the brewing trade.[1][23] Many coaching inns were established on the road from London to Bath, though by the 1840s the success of the Great Western Railway considerably affected the level of custom the inns received.[13]

In 1843, when writing about the effect the railway had on local business and environment, J G Robertson hypothesised that "it is probable that, in a few months, the completion of [the Great Western Railway] will totally annihilate the agreeable variety, and the hanging woods of Englefield and Beenham will no longer echo back the nocturnal challenge of the mail-guard's horn".[24]

Theale was once involved in Tilehurst's tile industry; until at least the late 19th century there was a kiln to the north-east of the village.[25]

The village now has three business parks, close by the railway station: 'Theale Business Park', 'Theale Technology Centre' and 'Arlington Business Park'.

Outside links

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 ("Wikimedia Commons" has material
about Theale)

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 South East Rural Towns Partnership (2011)
  2. ↑ Ayto, J; Crofton, I (2005), Brewer's Britain and Ireland, London: Chambers Harrap, ISBN 9780304353859 
  3. ↑ Robertson (1843, p. 96)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Mars (2003, p. 5)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Rose & Maitland (1832, p. 317)
  6. ↑ Pevsner (1966, p. 41)
  7. ↑ Loudon (1833, p. 670)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Mars (2003, p. 2)
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Mars (2003, p. 4)
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Mars (2003, p. 6)
  11. ↑ Ford (2007)
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Ditchfield & Page (1923, p. 329)
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Robertson (1843, p. 95)
  14. ↑ Rushworth (1708, p. 91)
  15. ↑ Whitlocke (1853, p. 215)
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 Ford (2001)
  17. ↑ Dickens (1869, p. 139)
  18. ↑ Rushworth (1701, p. 27)
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Baker (1802, p. 32)
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Knight (1840, p. 102)
  21. ↑ Great Britain Board of Agriculture (1809, p. 18)
  22. ↑ Mendes da Costa (1757, p. 95)
  23. ↑ Defoe (1748, p. 70)
  24. ↑ Robertson (1843, p. 100)
  25. ↑ Geological Society of London (1861, p. 528)
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