Enborne is a village and civil parish, in West Berkshire, England. The River Enborne shares its name, although it does not run through the village; rather, it runs through and rises near the nearby village of Enborne Row. The village name has had many variant spellings in the past, including Anebourne in 1086, as well as Enbourne, Enborn and Enbourn in the last 200 years.

Settlements

The parish lies immediately west of Newbury in West Berkshire, and contains the settlements of Redhill, Crockham Heath, Skinner's Green, Wheatlands Lane, Enborne Row and Wash Water. There is no main population centre; the settlements are scattered. It lost some of its eastern land to Newbury's 20th century expansion.

Boundaries

The River Enborne marks the southern boundary of the parish, where Berkshire joins Hampshire. The northern boundary is the railway line. Newbury lies to the east, and the parish of Hamstead Marshall to the west. The Kennet & Avon Canal passes across the northern end of the parish, together with the River Kennet.

Agriculture

The parish has always been, and still is, mostly agricultural in character, with substantial woodland and private parkland. However, in recent years, many of Enborne's former farmsteads have been redeveloped into housing.

Geography

Enborne has a site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) just to the east of the village, called Enborne Copse and another to the south called Avery's Pightle.

Reddings Copse

Early records show, that at one time, up to at least 16 acres of Reddings copse in East Enborne, was held by the family of the barons de Pinkney and was granted by them to William de Clervaux or Nicholas Aufryke. By the middle of the thirteenth century De Clervaux had granted his lands in East Enborne to the Prior of Sandleford, Berkshire who also acquired the lands held by Aufryke. Reddings copse belonged to one or other of these. Sandleford Priory had it until the priory's property was taken over by the Dean and Canons of Windsor of St George's Chapel in the fifteenth century. Various records of the sale of woods or lease of Readings Coppice survive which indicate tenants between 1585 and 1748. In the nineteenth century a railway in a deep cutting was built through its heart and in 1996 the by then disused railway was replaced by a wider four-lane motorway with lay-bys.

Transport

Enborne is served by service 13 from Hungerford to Newbury. Enborne has never had a railway station but the now-closed Woodhay was closer than Newbury's, 2 mi away today. From the 1880s to the 1960s Enborne Junction marked the forking off of the Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway from the Berkshire and Hampshire Line of the Great Western Railway. The route of the disused DN&SR line became much of the Newbury bypass (A34). The protest against the building of the by-pass in the late 1990s was technically in the parish.

Notable buildings

Enborne's parish church is of 12th-century origin, dedicated to St Michael and All Angels, it is a Grade I listed building. There is a Church of England primary school, founded in the 1820s. There is also a pub, the Craven Arms, which certainly dates back to the early 18th century and probably much earlier.

History

Robin Hood

Demography