The South Oxfordshire Chilterns: an Overview
VCH Oxfordshire • Texts in Progress • The South Oxfordshire Chilterns (April 2021) • p. 1 VCH Oxfordshire Texts in Progress The South Oxfordshire Chilterns: An Overview This overview forms the introduction to VCH Oxfordshire XX (The South Oxfordshire Chilterns), which is complete and peer-reviewed, and will be published in 2021–2. The volume as a whole will cover Caversham, Checkendon, Crowmarsh Gifford, Eye and Dunsden, Goring, Ipsden, Mapledurham, Mongewell, Newnham Murren, North Stoke, Shiplake, and Whitchurch. Maps and illustrations in the final version will differ. ___________________________________________________________________ The twelve ancient parishes covered in this volume lie within a loop of the river Thames in the county’s south-east corner, straddling the Chiltern hills’ south-west end, and all formerly bordering Berkshire.1 Most formed long thin ‘strip’ parishes stretching from the river into the hills, encompassing scattered upland settlement and wood pasture as well as nucleated riverside villages – the site, in most cases, of the parish church. Though long interconnected, the hills and the vale still form distinct landscape zones, albeit now with some denser centres of upland settlement compared with earlier. Neighbouring riverside towns – Wallingford to the north-west, Reading to the south, and Henley-on-Thames to the north-east – exerted important influences from the Middle Ages, as did London some 40–50 miles to the east. The economy was predominantly agricultural until the 20th century, with woodland and woodland crafts playing a significant role, and local industry including small-scale brickmaking and quarrying alongside the usual rural trades. Gentrification gained momentum from the mid 19th century, accelerated by the arrival of the railway from 1840 and especially affecting the area’s attractive riverside villages, which saw extensive new building by wealthy incomers.
[Show full text]