Padworth is built around the Norman church and the manor house, which from 1748 was the home of the Darby-Griffith family but in the 20th century was converted into Padworth College, an independent co-educational day and boarding school for students aged 13–19. The two halves of the parish can be separated thus:
Lower Padworth or Aldermaston Wharf, is mostly concentrated along the A4 Bath Road – this area has the vast majority of homes. It is a built-up nucleated village and low rise locality.
Padworth Common sometimes describes all of the scattered south but strictly speaking only includes land outside of the farmland of the former manor centred on the site of Padworth College.
Riding horses at Padworth College's Riding School at Home Farm.
Economy
Economic history
A 'fishery in the Kenette' was among the possessions of the manor in 1586, and a fishery is mentioned as early as 1378. There is a Scheduled Monument fish-pond north of the former manor house. In 1870 its property was valued at £1,839 (equivalent to £222,258 in 2023 in general expenditure) while its population was much smaller than today, 298, living in 59 houses.[2]
Current economy
The whole parish is noted by the 1920s to be very well watered, and the north-eastern part draws on the natural advantage of a fairly flat landscape and water close to the surface from the River Kennet. The soil retains a strength from its inorganic layers being gravel and the subsoil impermeable clay.[3] The local economy in the 1920s centred on the chief crops: wheat, barley, oats and root vegetables.[3] These remain regular crops in Padworth alongside hay meadows for livestock, horses and donkeys.
Gravel is extracted from land close to the Kennet in Padworth
Gravel extraction, education, agriculture, transport and tourism all provide jobs in Padworth itself. Aldermaston railway station at Aldermaston Wharf serves two of these sectors. Commuting to towns, industrial, logistic and trading business centres is the most common source of employment as at the 2011 census, with for instance Reading and Newbury about 20–30 minutes away whether by rail or by access to the M4 motorway.[1] Tadley, the nearest town, also provides a major source of retail, leisure and general high street service employment.
History
Grim's Ditch which runs from the mid-south of the area 0.5 miles (0.80 km) (into the southern forest of Ufton Nervet) is posited to be a 'sub-Roman' bank and ditch dug to defend Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester) when the Anglo-Saxons began to settle in the area. The place is recorded in such documents as the Assize Rolls and national Feet of Fines (on property sale) as Peadanwurthe (10th century); Peteorde (11th century); Pedewurth (12th century); Padewrd, Padworze (13th century); Padesworth, Pappeworth (14th century).[3]
Manors
A full descent of the manor, including its earliest known grant of 956 and during the Black Death, is provided by the fully referenced text of the Victoria County History for this parish, compiled here in 1923.[3] A secondary manor of Padworth, Hussey's, existed under John de la Husse in the 13th century, after whom it was named. In the Domesday Book, 2½ hides were farmed; which was held by William de Ow and a man named 'Gozelin'. In this instance, its Saxon era owner was recorded as 'Ælfstan', with its nominal dues going to Edward the Confessor.
The period of titled bearers owning either manor was when the main manor was held by the Tichborne baronets and the Forster baronets (1629–1681). The manor house is a Grade II* listed building.[4] It was built afresh in 1769 by the designs of John Hobcraft, and has plasterwork by Joseph Rose. Its entrance is a double-height space, and has a staircase with a wrought iron balustrade to three sides. It has a vaulted 3-bay arched arcade on each floor to one side with Doric columns on the ground floor and columns with Adamesque capitals on the floor above.[4]
An Act for inclosing several Open and Common Fields, Meadows, Pastures; and other Commonable and Waste Lands in the several Parishes of Beenham and Padworth, in Berks.
Place names that were here in the 17th century are: Ball's Pidle, Yew Pidle, Pondes Close, Little and Great Burfeildes, Culmers Wood and Bartholomew's, Brickworth Coppice.[3] The inclosure of the common land at Padworth was by its local act of Parliament, the Beenham and Padworth Inclosures Act 1811 (51 Geo. 3. c. cxlii), under the established limited compensatory procedures of the time.[3]
Church
The Church of Englandparish church of St John the Baptist, is aisleless and built about 1130 with two three-light Tudor styled ornately carved windows, and with its vestry and porch having been added in 1890. A smaller Tudor window, with two lights on the south-east square tower façade, above the font, which does not have the entrance. The roof of the nave was largely replaced in the 19th century.[3] Rare features include the Normanchancel arch and north and south doorways, the semi-domed apse and the 18th-century monuments.[5] It is Grade I listed building.[6]
Land use statistics are not available for this civil parish. These figures under the census heading 'Physical Environment' can be obtained for the broader ward of 'Stratfield Mortimer' from the data pages of the last census from the 2005 Office for National Statistics survey.[1]
2011 Published Statistics: Population, home ownership and area[1]
