Leckhampstead is a village and civil parish on the downs between Wantage and Newbury. It was formerly a chapelry of Chieveley.
West of the main settlement is the smaller settlement of Leckhampstead Thicket. The hamlet of Hill Green which lies to the east of the B4494, was the original Leckhampstead until the time of the Black Death, when the few survivors moved to higher ground on the other side of the valley.
Egypt is an old place name in Hill Green.
Farm names in 1851 included: Leckhampstead, Eastley, Rookery and Town Pond.
There is also a Leckhampstead in Buckinghamshire.
Size
1,777 acres (719 hectares)
Population
399 in 1851; 343 in 2011
Poor Law union
Newbury
Registration district
Newbury
Present-day local authority
West Berkshire
Grid reference
SU 42 75
Adjoining parishes in 1851
Boxford, Brightwalton, Chaddleworth, Peasemore, Welford, Winterbourne, Chieveley
Genealogical resources
See Berks FHS Books for coverage of this parish in the society’s range of CDs.
See also Berkshire Record Office holdings.
Links
The parish council website, includes a number of historical pictures.
Published local history
In the Victoria County History Berkshire Leckhampstead is covered under Chieveley.
B H Bravery Atlee Notes on the history of Chieveley with Winterbourne, Oare and Curridge (also of Leckhampstead) together with provisional lists of those from these parishes who served in the Great War (Newbury, Blacket Turner, 1919) is held in West Berks Library.
Anglican church and parochial organisation
Leckhampstead was for centuries a chapelry of Chieveley, served by a curate. Today it is part of the West Downland benefice of Brightwalton with Catmore, Chaddleworth, Fawley, Leckhampstead, Great Shefford with Shefford Woodlands and Welford with Wickham. This benefice lies within the deanery of Newbury and the archdeaconry of Berkshire, which transferred from Salisbury diocese to that of Oxford in 1836.
The church of St James the Less, built 1859, replaced Leckhampstead Chapel. Also known as Leckhampstead Old Church, this was dedicated in about 1050, and stood near Chapel Farm at Hill Green. The chapel was demolished in 1859 when the new church of St James was built, incorporating the Saxon font, the Jacobean pulpit and altar rails, the single church bell (1350) and also the porch timbers from the original chapel.
The war memorial comprises an obelisk on a plinth with two clock faces, one facing north and one facing south. The chains surrounding the monument came from a warship that took part in the Battle of Jutland, and they are supported on spent shell cases. The clock on the memorial has hands made from First World War bayonets, hours made of .303 cartridges and minutes made from .303 bullets.
Other churches
A Wesleyan chapel here, built in 1860, and a Primitive Methodist chapel, erected at the Thicket about 1830 (and rebuilt in 1874) were mentioned in the Victoria County History.
Schools
In 1850 Winterbourne had two schools, one endowed.
Pubs
The Stag was in 1851 a beer-house called the Stag and Stocks.
Other local history
Several large sarsen stones formerly stood in rows at Hill Green, Leckhampstead, and were thought to be the remains of an alignment or avenue. They were removed in the late nineteenth century, though many are lying close by.
English Heritage records a medieval deer park of c1228.
The Hangman’s Stone marks the southern village boundary, and was so called from a local tale in which a sheep rustler was carrying a stolen sheep over his shoulder with a rope held around his neck. The thief fell asleep sitting on a stone beside the road and the sheep, in struggling to get free, hanged the man by the rope around his neck.
The eighteenth-century Malt Cottage at Hill Green is Grade II-listed. In the 1851 census it appears malting was still carried out.
