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Fernham is a cluster of houses, two farms and a pub, clinging onto a bend in the
B4508 road. It was frequently used as a short cut by Oxford! Swindon traffic.
Now Faringdon has a bypass the road is slightly more peaceful.
The village presently consists of 67 homes. At one time mainly agricultural, it
is now very varied with most people working out of the village and a high
proportion of retired people. The part time post office and stores housed in an
old stable at the Woodman Inn was closed by the Post Office without warning a
while ago. Thankfully for a country village, there is still a bus service. The
village hall and youth club is no more, the old chapel is now a house and the
parish business is conducted in St John’s church. The church, consecrated in
1861, was built at the instigation of Rev John Hughes, vicar of Longcot with
Fernham, and still serves the faithful with at least one service almost every
Sunday.
The village green is just a name only since the council laid a tarmac road
across it as access to the sewerage pumps. Left with two wide grass verges, no
longer do the villagers congregate at the village pump on the green to gossip or
play at tossing horse shoes at an iron pin. The pump cover erected over the well
has recently been restored but the pump is a symbol only, although the old eight
ft deep stone-lined bottle well is still intact underneath, safely capped off.
The bakehouse behind the original manor house, which was justly famous for its
bread and cakes, is gone, the site cleared and three large houses erected on it.
At one time Fernham could boast three general stores, one with a post office, a
shoemaker’s shop, a coal, oil and candle merchant, a smithy, a hurdle maker, a
small market garden, a wagon builder and undertaker, and the obligatory pub.
Before that there were two pubs; the house now known as Forge House and
previously as The Red House, is thought to have been the Black Horse pub. It’s
the only house in the village with a cellar! There could also have been a rope
maker, with his premises in Baganetts Alley perhaps? Sad to relate now, all that
is left is a pub, the Woodman Inn, a free house dating from the early 1700s and
a very popular haunt summer and winter.
Fernham residents could look forward to an annual flower show, harvest suppers,
a Christmas party for the children and old people at Ringdale Manor and the
summer spent cheering on the village cricket team. There was a dame school by
the church, the children paying ld on a Monday for a week’s tuition — no penny
no admittance! Now the only organisation is the Women’s Institute, supported by
the neighbouring village of Shellingford. The social highlight of the year is
the village walk in June, started a few years ago to keep the local footpaths
open and finishing up with a tea at the Woodman barn.
Fernham has some outlying guardians at ‘Nightingale’ along the Longcot road, the
community of Benedictine nuns at the priory. At one time this was the original
Ringdale manor house, but it is now overlooked by the later Ringdale manor,
built on the edge of an ancient British camp similar to the one on White Horse
Hill. From Ringdale Hill there are some wonderful views of White Horse Hill and
the vale directly below, and long may the county planners let this remain so.
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