Cholsey

Coordinates: 51°34′26″N 1°09′04″W / 51.574°N 1.151°W / 51.574; -1.151
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Cholsey
Shire county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post townWallingford
Postcode districtOX10
Dialling code01491
PoliceThames Valley
FireOxfordshire
AmbulanceSouth Central
UK Parliament
WebsiteCholsey Parish Council
List of places
UK
England
Oxfordshire
51°34′26″N 1°09′04″W / 51.574°N 1.151°W / 51.574; -1.151

Cholsey is a village and

2011 Census recorded Cholsey's parish population as 3,457.[2] Cholsey's parish boundaries, some 17 miles (27 km) long, reach from the edge of Wallingford into the Berkshire Downs
. The village green is called "The Forty" and has a substantial and ancient walnut tree.

Winterbrook was historically at the north end of the parish adjoining Wallingford and became part of Wallingford parish (run by its Town Council) in 2015. Winterbrook Bridge, which carries a by-pass road across the River Thames, is in the parish. Cholsey was one of the two main homes of the late author Dame Agatha Christie (the other being the village of Galmpton on the south Devon coast). John Masefield, poet laureate, lived at Lollingdon Farm in Cholsey from 1915 to 1917.

History

A Bronze Age site has been found beside the River Thames at Whitecross Farm in the northeast of the parish.[3] A pre-Roman road, the Icknield Way, crosses the River Thames at Cholsey. A find announced in 2017 was of a substantial Roman site in Celsea Place.[4] Archaeologists discovered the best examples of corn dryers they have seen, with precision suggesting they were built by an engineer. Sites of burials and cremation pots have also been found. There is also part of a Roman villa, the majority of which appeared to have extended out under the existing road and houses and will have suffered significant unrecorded damage. The section of villa remaining within the archaeologically excavated area has been preserved in situ.

The village itself was founded on an island ("

Ælfthryth on land given by her son, King Æthelred the Unready. The nunnery is thought to have been destroyed by invading Vikings
in 1006 when they camped in Cholsey after setting nearby Wallingford ablaze.

However,

tithe barn was built in the village. It was, at the time, the largest aisled building in the world, being 51 feet (16 m) high, 54 feet (16 m) wide and over 300 feet (91 m) long.[6] It was demolished in 1815. Fair Mile Hospital, a former psychiatric hospital, opened near Cholsey in 1870 and closed in 2003.[7]
In 2011–14 its Victorian buildings were converted to homes and new housing was built in its grounds.

Transport

Cholsey railway station

Cholsey is served by

bank holidays and some weekends. From Mondays to Saturdays Thames Travel bus route 136 links Cholsey with Wallingford and Benson. There is no evening, Sunday or bank holiday service.[8]

Architecture and buildings

Writer and poet

listed grade II since 1986.[9]

Edward Prioleau Warren (1856–1937), lived at Breach House, in Halfpenny Lane, Cholsey, built in 1906, which he designed for himself.[10] The building is grade II listed.[11]

St Mary's churchyard

The grave of novelist Dame Agatha Christie is in the churchyard of St Mary's. She lived with her second husband, archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, at Winterbrook House, formerly in the north of the parish, from about 1934 and died there in 1976.[12] She and her husband had chosen a burial plot in the mid-1960s just under the perimeter wall of the churchyard. About twenty journalists and TV reporters attended her funeral service, some having travelled from as far away as South America. Thirty wreaths adorned her grave including one from the cast of her long-running play The Mousetrap, and another sent "on behalf of the multitude of grateful readers" from the Ulverscroft Large Print Book Publishers.[13]

Gravestone of Dame Agatha Christie at St Mary's church

References

  1. United Kingdom Census 2011
    ; note, reduced figure, less Winterbrook, not known.
  2. Office for National Statistics
    . Retrieved 6 December 2019.
  3. ^ Cromarty et al. 2006[page needed]
  4. ^ Ffrench, Andy (28 March 2017). "Roman villa found at development site in Cholsey". The Herald Series. Retrieved 18 April 2022.
  5. ^ Betjeman 1968, p. 112.
  6. ^ Lysons & Lysons 1806, p. 264.
  7. ^ Sloan, Liam (22 September 2010). "Pictures shed light on history of Cholsey psychiatric hospital". Oxford Mail. Newsquest. Retrieved 21 January 2016.
  8. ^ "route 136" (PDF). Thames Travel. Retrieved 6 December 2019.
  9. ^ "LOLLINGDON FARMHOUSE, Cholsey - 1193791 | Historic England".
  10. ^ Gray 1985, p. 371.
  11. ^ "LOLLINGDON FARMHOUSE, Cholsey - 1193791 | Historic England".
  12. ^ "Dame Agatha Christie (1890–1976) Author, Sir Max Mallowan (1904–1978) Archaeologist". Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Board. Retrieved 21 September 2015.
  13. ^ Yurdan 2010[page needed]

Sources

  • Betjeman, John, ed. (1968). Collins Pocket Guide to English Parish Churches. Vol. The South. London: Collins. p. 112.
  • Cromarty, Anne Marie; Barclay, Alistair; Lambrick, George; Robinson, Mark (2006). Late Bronze Age Ritual at Whitecross Farm, Wallingford. Thames Valley Landscape Series. Vol. 22. Oxford:
    ISBN 0-947816-67-4
    .
  • Ditchfield, PH; Page, William, eds. (1924). A History of the County of Berkshire. Victoria County History. Vol. IV. assisted by John Hautenville Cope. London: The St Katherine Press. pp. 296–302.
  • Gray, A Stuart (1985). Edwardian Architecture: A Biographical Dictionary. London:
    ISBN 978-0715610121
    .
  • Lysons, Daniel; Lysons, Samuel (1806). Magna Britannia: being a concise topographical account of the several counties of Great Britain. Vol. 1: Containing Bedfordshire, Berkshire, and Buckinghamshire.
  • Pevsner, Nikolaus (1966). Berkshire. The Buildings of England. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. pp. 115–117.
  • Yurdan, Marilyn (2010). Oxfordshire Graves and Gravestones. Stroud: The History Press.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cholsey.
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