Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for FARINGDON

FARINGDON, a town, a sub-district, a district, and a hundred in Berks. The town is in Great Faringdon parish; and stands adjacent to Faringdon hill, in the White-Horse vale, at the terminus of a short branch of the Great Western railway, 2¼ miles S of the river Thames, and 36 WNW of Reading. It was anciently called Feardune or Fearndun; and it was a seat of the West Saxon kings, and the death-place of Edward the Elder. An ancient castle stood at it, and was razed by Stephen. A Cistertian priory, subordinate to Beaulieu abbey, was founded on the site of the castle, in 1202, by King John; gave entertainment, for a night, to Henry III. and his queen; was given, at the dissolution, to the Seymours and the Englefields; and has entirely disappeared. Faringdon House, near the church, was built by Henry James Pye, the poet laureate; and is now the seat of D. Bennett, Esq. An ancient mansion, on the same site, belonged to Sir Robert Pye, the son-in-law of Hampden; was garrisoned for Charles I. during the civil war, and put under the command of Sir Marmaduke Rawdon; sustained two attacks by the parliamentarians, one of them headed by Cromwell in person; and was one of the last places to surrender. Faringdon hill commands a brilliant view of the White-Horse vale, and of parts of Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, and Wilts; is crowned by a grove of Scotch pines, which serves as a landmark for a great extent of surrounding country; is a meet for the old Berkshire hounds; and forms the subject of Pye's exaggerated poem of "Faringdon hill." The town is small, but cleanly and pleasant; it has a head post office, ‡ a railway station with telegraph, a banking office, two chief inns, a town-hall, a church, five dissenting chapels, a workhouse, and charities £153; it is a seat of petty sessions and a polling-place, and publishes two weekly newspapers. The town hall is an ornamental edifice of 1864. The church is ancient, large, and cruciform; was recently well restored; shows characters from early English to decorated in its chancel, and characters of late perpendicular in its Pye chapel; has a stunted, late Norman tower, the spire of which was destroyed in the civil war; and contains tombs of Sir Marmaduke Rawdon, Sir Alexander Unton and his lady, and Sir Edward Unton. A weekly market is held on Tuesday; fairs are held on 13 Feb., Whit-Tuesday, the Tuesday before Old Michaelmas, the Tuesday after Old Michaelmas, and 29 Oct.; and a trade is carried on in pork, to the extent of about 4, 000 carcases in the year. Pop., 2, 943. Houses, 596.

The sub-district contains Faringdon town, most of Great Faringdon parish, and all Buscot and Eaton-Hastings parishes in Berks, the parishes of Lechlade in Gloucester, and the parish of Langford and part of that of Broadwell in Oxford. Acres, 19, 738. Pop., 6, 222. Houses, 1, 301.—The district comprehends also the sub-district of Shrivenham, containing the parishes of Shrivenham, Compton-Beauchamp, Ashbury, Great Coxwell, and Coleshill, (the last partly in Wilts, ) and parts of the parishes of Great Faringdon and Uffington; and the sub-district of Buckland, containing the parishes of Buckland, Shellingford, Hatford, Pusey, and Hinton-Waldrist, and parts of the parishes of Uffington, Spars-1iolt, Longworth, and Stanford-in-the-Vale. Acres, 64, 207. Poor-rates in 1862, £8, 213. Pop. in 1851, 15, 732; in 1861, 15, 688. Houses, 3, 126. Marriages in 1860, 108; births, 452, -of which 50 were illegitimate; deaths, 324, -of which 87 were at ages under 5 years, and 12 at ages above 85. Marriages in the ten years 1851-60, 1, 043; births, 4, 898; deaths, 3, 259. The places of worship in 1851 were 27 of the Church of England, with 7, 225 sittings; 6 of Independents, with 1, 350 s.; 7 of Baptists, with 910 s.; 1 of Quakers, with 160 s.; 4 of Wesleyan Methodists, with 389 s.; 6 of Primitive Methodists, with 420 s.; 2 undefined, with 300 s.; and 1 of Roman Catholics, with 150 s. The schools were 29 public day schools, with 1,809 scholars; 21 private day schools, with 350 s.; 31 Sunday schools, with 1,893 s.; and 1 evening school for adults, with 16 s.-The hundred contains three parishes and parts of three others. Acres, 8, 320. Pop., 4, 073. Houses, 835.


(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a town, a sub-district, a district, and a hundred"   (ADL Feature Type: "cities")
Administrative units: Faringdon RegD/PLU       Berkshire AncC
Place names: FARINGDON     |     FEARDUNE     |     FEARNDUN
Place: Faringdon

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