Blewbury is a village of roughly 1500 people, located at the foot of the Berkshire Downs near Didcot in the Vale of the White Horse, Oxfordshire. It is on the A417 and was part of Berkshire until the county boundary changed in 1974. It is also just off of both the Ridgeway and the Icknield Way. Many writers have lived in Blewbury, including Kenneth Grahame (Wind In The Willows), Barbara Euphan Todd (Worzel Gummidge) and Dick Francis (an ex-jockey and thriller writer). Blewbury has also been the home to several painters, including Clare Bassett and Elphin Lloyd-Jones.

A Downland Village

Blewbury has managed to retain a thriving community despite being a commuter town for London. The church remains a social centre in village life along with the artistic and sporting circles. Blewbury C. of E. Primary is a growing school and often serves as a gallery for the aspiring painters of Blewbury. The outdoor theatre, in the gardens of one of the oldest houses in Blewbury, holds several productions each year, and the recreation ground and Village Hall allow for sporting clubs to thrive. The Blewbury Village Society organises many Blewbury traditions, such as the Bonfire night celebrations, Easter egg rolling and the Boxing Day Walk. This village tradition is essentially a fancy dress pub crawl which has seen individuals and groups of people dressed as pretty much anything you can imagine, including colonies of penguins, 'Blue Birds Over The White Cliffs Of Dover', curling teams, and The Only Gay In The Village. The bi-annual Blewbury Festival attracts visitors from all over the surrounding areas, with the Open Gardens and the art displays attracting people from all over the country.

History

The earliest origins of the village are, unsurprisingly lost in the mists of time. The earliest evidence (unearthed in 1983) was a small cache of flint tools, pottery shards, pieces of bone and nutshells among other things. An arrowhead has been dated to the Late Neolithic, which was roughly four and a half thousand years ago. The peoples would have been nomadic, possibly heading up to the Downs or the Chilterns during the summer and returning in the autumn to see if the crops that they planted had flourished.

There are many Bronze Age burial barrows around the local area, and it is thought that by the Iron Age in the eighth century BC the population had changed from a nomadic to a more settled, agricultural people. It is then that the hill fort on Blewburton Hill (after which the village is named) was built. You can still see the earthworks that provided the 'stepped' appearance today, with rings of wooden fences keeping the people safe and the animals enclosed. It could have provided a measure of defence as well, although there is no evidence that the fort was ever under attack. The Old English name for Blewburton Hill was bleo byrig dun*, and it is from this name that the name Blewbury evolved.

There is no evidence that the site we call Blewbury was settled during the Roman times, although there are plenty of finds in the local area. There have been very few finds from the Anglo-Saxons either, but there is a cemetery located on Blewburton from this time and it could be that the modern village is situated on top of the old one. An axe was found at the turn of the century from this period, in a stream at the bottom of a Blewbury resident's garden!

The first written record of the area exists in an Anglo-Saxon Charter, which described the land granted from King Edmund to Bishop Aelfric in 994AD. By 1086 it was apparently an important local centre, possibly due to its minister church (more like a monastery than a parish church), which could have been founded as early as the mid seventh century when Birinus (c.600-649) was teaching¹. At this time there was much upheaval between the many kings, especially those of Christian Wessex and Pagan Mercia.

The Domesday Book of 1086 finally gives us a clear idea of Blewbury (then called 'Blitberie'). It is recorded that there were twenty four Villeins*, sixty two Cottars*, and zero slaves, and was worth £61. It also recorded the existence of the church. Despite this indicating that there was roughly ninety buildings at this time, no trace of them has yet been found.

There are no references to Blewbury until the Enclosure Acts of 1759 and 1805. We can assume that the village grew, and its growth affected by the farming of the people within it. It is estimated that the population was about four hundred at the time of Domesday. By 1901 it had only six hundred. There are no records of the population changes due to the Black Death (1348-50), but there is a field in the heart of Blewbury that, to this day, is still left to fallow and is known as the Plague Field. There was a close brush with danger during the Civil War, when leaders of the opposing armies ate at the same house within hours of each other, but as there was no destruction we can only assume that the head of the house in question kept his head²!

Since then the introduction of railways, changes in agriculture and the Wars changed Blewbury in the same way that all of England changed. There were soldiers stationed on the plains above Blewbury during the Napoleonic Wars, but these days it is the racing stables that occupy the land along with the farmers.

Modern Blewbury

Blewbury remains one of those pretty villages that you see on postcards, with thatched cottages and winding, tree covered lanes. The village was built around the streams, not the roads, and there are still many places that you cannot get to by car.

Here are some of the places that you could look out for on a trip around Blewbury:

The churches. The largest church is that of St. Michael's and All Angels. It is over 900 years old and still has many original features, including Norman arch windows, flint building work and a full ring of eight bells. The Methodist chapel is a smaller, more intimate building and built in 1869 (replacing a smaller chapel in built 1826). It is located near the Cleve, the Blewbury pond. The Cleve used to house watercress beds, and at the turn of the century Blewbury Watercress used to be sold in London.

The Playclose is the village green, pretty much the centre of the village and just a short walk from St Michael's. It is surrounded by tall hedges screening the houses along two sides, with a stream, The Millbrook, bordering the other looking out over a field usually inhabited by ponies. This is one part of Blewbury that you cannot get to by car however much you wanted to- and is also the scene of the Blewbury Duck Race³, which is held on Easter Day. There is another village green that is much smaller, named The Pound. It is located on the main road (A417) and has the Millennium Stone embedded in the centre.

The pubs. In living memory there used to be five pubs in Blewbury. Now that the Blewbury Inn (formerly the New Inn) has reverted to being a private house and with the Sawyers Arms demolished and replaced with a set-back dwelling decades ago, Blewbury is left with only three.

The Red Lion is your typical crowded village pub where everybody knows everyone else, and is located just off of the Playclose. The Load of Mischief has a more open feel and like the Red Lion serves good food. It is located on South Street, off of the main road. The Barley Mow is next to the Pound and has three bed and breakfast rooms upstairs.

The cob walls are found in the older parts of Blewbury, and its thought that they used to indicate ownership of land. They are thatched walls, with the walls made of clay, straw and mud which is then whitewashed or painted. Despite sounding rather flimsy, if looked after they can survive hundreds of years. The footpaths that run alongside them are usually the main routes through Blewbury.

One thing people will always comment on is the pretty houses. Virtually anywhere you look you will see a house with an endearing feature. It's not just the thatched cottages; the tiled houses are just as pleasant to look at. Gardens are highly prized and Blewbury is usually a riot of colour.

Savages is Blewbury's local greengrocer, plant seller, and Christmas tree merchant. There is also a local petrol station and a Post Office, which opens a couple of times a week out of a small shop at the side of the Village Hall. A surprising number of local businesses operate from this small village.

Local features

Blewbury is at the foot of the Berkshire Downs and has easy access to the ancient Ridgeway. Closer to home are the chalk pits, which are exactly that- pits made by the open mining of chalk. It is here that the Blewbury Egg Rolling championship is held each Easter. How far can you get your hardboiled egg when you use your nose to start it rolling down a hill?

Blewburton hill is accessed through Winterbrook Farm, so please be especially careful and considerate if you have dogs or children with you. Once you are up on the summit, you should only have a cow or two to get in the way of the views. In such a glaciated landscape it is one of only a few hillocks rising above the plain. From Blewburton you can see the chimneys of Didcot Power Station, the hillocks at Wittenham Clumps as well as the rising hills leading to the Downs and the Ridgeway.

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