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Although historians find it convenient to divide the past into handy chunks – Roman, Saxon, Norman and so on, it is probable that for most people, life went on much the same, with the effects of cultural and military invasions feeding down but slowly to the cottager or ploughman.
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We can imagine that, for the scattered population around Greenham Common, things changed fairly slowly during the so-called Dark Ages after the collapse of the Roman occupation of Britain in 410AD. There is some archaeological evidence to suggest that there was a Christian community in the Roman town of Silchester (about twelve kilometres to the East of Greenham), but this is not likely to have survived the decline of the settlement during the 5th Century. Christianity probably reached the area during the 7th Century, being preached by wandering friars, companions of St. Birinus who was sent to Britain in 634. Birinus preached extensively in the area and is known as "The Apostle of Wessex", eventually becoming Bishop of Dorchester, Oxfordshire, about 30 kilometres north of Greenham.
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By the time King William conducted his Domesday survey of England in 1086, there was a already a church at Greenham, but it was not a separate parish and its church was actually a chapel attached to the 'Mother church' at Thatcham, about three kilometres away. The chapel had the same dedication as the mother church at Thatcham – St. Mary the Virgin.
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Greenham's medieval chapel |
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Thatching certificate |
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There were also a mill, eleven villagers, nineteen smallholders and four slaves. The village was assessed at 10 hides (about 1200 acres) with 120 acres of meadow, so we can imagine that much of the area was 'waste' or common even then. Crookham comprised one hide, with just three villagers and land for one plough.
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We often associate the Middle Ages with the manorial system of local landholding and justice. The origin of manors is unclear, but most were present in the 10th Century and almost all were created by 1289. The Lord of the Manor usually divided his land in two: the demesne, which he cultivated himself for his own profit; and the holdings of tenants, who either paid rent or gave their labour to their Lord. The Lord of the Manor also exercised jurisdiction over his tenants by a system of manorial courts.
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The boundaries of manors did not always coincide with village or parish boundaries, so we find that the area we now know as Greenham and Crookham Commons was part of a number of manors. Crookham Manor dates to the time of Edward the Confessor (1042 to 1066); one notable Lord of the Manor was Piers Gaveston, the favourite of Edward II, who was beheaded because of his bad influence on the king. The original manor house was replaced in about 1730 by a house about one kilometre away. The site was close to the present Crookham House, which replaced it.
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Chamberhouse Manor is named after an early owner, Roger de Chambre, who lived there in 1250. It was part of Crookham Manor until the 15th. Century and the manor house was pulled down in about 1713. It was reunited with Crookham manor by 1798.
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Crookham Manor |
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Greenham Manor was held by Henry de Ferrers in 1086 and by 1199 it had been granted to the Knights Hospitallers. Over the centuries the manor passed through many hands, including Lloyd Baxendale, chairman of the removals firm Pickfords.
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An early plan of Greenham |
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The Manor of Sandleford included a small part of the extreme western end of Greenham Common. It is not recorded in Domesday, but a separate manor of Sandleford was created in 1349 and granted to the Prior and Canons. In due course, lordship of the manor passed to the Dean and Canons of Windsor.
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Religious Life in the Middle Ages
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The Middle Ages were a time of religious fervour; in addition to Greenham Chapel there were several other places of worship in the area. A chapel adjoining Crookham Manor is recorded as early as 1307, whilst another had existed at Chamberhouse since 1397; its use by John and Isabel Pury and their household was confirmed in a mandate dated 1453 from Pope Nicholas V to the Bishop of Salisbury, which permitted all the sacraments to be performed there except for burials.
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Immediately to the west of Greenham Common was Sandleford Priory and
there is some evidence of there being a very early religious foundation here.
A document of 1179 refers to a payment being made to the 'Inclusa of Sandraford', this being taken to mean that there was a female recluse living there at the time.
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Typically, such nuns would have lived a solitary life in a cell attached to a larger church, so although it cannot be proved, it seems likely that there was already a church at Sandleford in 1179. Sometime around the end of the 12th Century a priory for Augustinian Canons was founded here, the church being dedicated to St. John the Baptist. The community does not appear to have been large or successful and records suggest that it was abandoned by its monks in 1478.
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Sandleford Priory's former chapel |
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And there were other religious foundations: by 1166, the Lord of the Manor of Greenham, Gervase Paynell, had granted land to the Knights Hospitallers - a military order who nevertheless lived a monastic lifestyle.
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In 1199, King John confirmed the grant and by 1338 the Hospitallers had built a house (or preceptory) in Greenham, where they had 560 acres of arable and pasture land. Newbury's historian, Walter Money, writing in 1887, placed the preceptory close to the River Kennet, not far from where the West Berkshire Museum stands today. Its pastures would have extended eastwards along the river, from where workers in the fields could have looked up to the slopes of Greenham Common rising above them. Although we now associate just the Common with Greenham, these documents remind us that the manor once stretched north and west to Stroud Green, almost into the centre of Newbury itself.
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The Hospitallers' preceptory was swept away in the tide of reform instigated by King Henry VIII; by 1540 the estate had passed to the Crown, one of many seizures of church property which characterised the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
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The old St. Mary's chapel, Greenham |
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Today, there are few visible reminders of those times – the medieval Greenham chapel was demolished more than a century ago and there are few archaeological remains – a medieval seal matrix and die found near Chamberhouse Farm, north of the Common, are among the few tangible survivors of medieval Greenham.
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Whilst Greenham Chapel continued to serve the local community, it, too experienced the upheavals of the Reformation, when the English Church broke with Rome. In 1552, an inventory of church goods listed its few possessions, no doubt as a forerunner to their being confiscated by the State in the name of the new reformed religion. About the same time, the private chapels of Chamberhouse and Crookham fell out of use and into ruin, whilst Sandleford Priory slowly decayed before its rebirth as a fashionable home in the 18th Century.
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Medieval seal matrix |
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Such were the cataclysmic events which marked the transition from medieval to modern times.
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Stone Age to the Romans
Medieval Greenham
