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The prehistoric road, the Icknield Way, crosses the river Thames here at Cholsey.
The people who settled and farmed in the village, well after earlier Roman
occupation, must have found Cholsey attractive with its mixture of arable land,
pasture, marsh and woodlands. By the 7th century the people had been brought to
Christianity by Birinus, the Abbot of nearby Dorchester.
The pride of the village is the church of St Mary, founded in AD 986 on monastic
land donated by Ethelred the Unready. The present attractive building of stone
and flint was erected in the early half of the 12th century and has a fine
dog-toothed Norman doorway and a sanctus bell cast in London between 1290 and
1310. Henry I gave the church lands to the Abbots of Reading, who also owned a
summer residence at Cholsey. A walk around the churchyard reveals a wealth of
wild flowers, especially in the spring. Buried in the north-west corner is
Agatha Christie, author of over 100 crime novels and stories.
Cholsey’s focal point is the village green, long known as ‘The Forty’. Dominated
by magnificent horse-chestnut trees, it has been the centre of Cholsey since the
Middle Ages. There are several local traditions about the origin of the name,
but the most likely explanation is that it is Saxon in derivation, meaning
‘island in the marshland’. An estate map of 1695 clearly shows water around ‘The
Island’.
Take a walk round the village to see the many interesting properties; attractive
flint and brick houses, thatched cottages and barns. Follow the footpath from
Cholsey to Aston Tirrold to see Lollingham House, built in 1516 and the former
home of John Masefield, the Poet Laureate. There are many fine walks around
Cholsey, with a bird sanctuary between Bow Bridge and the river Thames. The
handsome Cholsey Viaduct, designed by the ‘little giant’ Isambard Kingdom Brunel,
forms a distinctive feature in the landscape.
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