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Pangbourne is a large village and civil parish on the River Thames in the English county of Berkshire. Pangbourne is the home of the public school, Pangbourne College.
Location
Pangbourne is located at grid reference SU635765, some 5 miles (8 km) from Reading and 20 miles (32 km) from Oxford on the River Thames and is directly across the river from the smaller Oxfordshire village of Whitchurch-on-Thames. The two villages of Pangbourne and Whitchurch are often considered as a single settlement. They are connected by both Whitchurch Bridge and by the weir of Whitchurch Lock. A twenty pence toll is payable to cross the bridge by car. Pangbourne railway station, on the Reading to Oxford railway line, serves both villages. The River Pang also flows through the centre of Pangbourne village before joining the River Thames between the lock and bridge.
Local government
Pangbourne is a civil parish with an elected parish council. It falls within the area of the unitary authority of West Berkshire. Both the parish council and the unitary authority are responsible for different aspects of local government. Pangbourne forms part of the Reading West parliamentary constituency. It is twinned with Houdan in France.
History
Pangbourne's name is recorded from 844 as Anglo-Saxon Pegingaburnan (dative case), which means "the stream of the people of Pǣga". This name was shortened to make the name of the River Pang.
In Norman times, the manor was given to Reading Abbey and the manor house - known as Bere Court - became the Abbot's Summer residence. The last abbot, Hugh Cook Faringdon, was arrested there in 1539 and subsequently executed in Reading. The manor was later purchased by Sir John Davis, the Elizabethan mathematician and the Earl of Essex' fellow-conspirator. His monument is in the parish church which, unusually, is dedicated to Saint James the Less. Other monuments and hatchments there are mostly to the Breedon family, the first of whom bought the manor in 1671. He was High Sheriff of Berkshire and brother of the Governor of Arcadia and Nova Scotia, whose son later succeeded him. The family produced a number of sheriffs and MPs for Berkshire, as well as doctors and rectors of the parish.
Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows, retired to Church Cottage in Pangbourne. He died there in 1932. E. H. Shepherd's famous illustrations of his book are said to have been inspired by the Thameside landscape there.
References
- Ordnance Survey (2006). OS Explorer Map 159 - Reading. ISBN 0-319-23730-3.
External links
