Crowthorne, Berkshire
Historical Description
Crowthorne, a village and ecclesiastical parish formed in 1874 from the civil parish of Sandhurst in Berks. The village is 1 mile from the Wellington College station on the S.E.R., and 4 miles SE from Wokingham. There is a post, money order, and telegraph office at Wellington College station. Population, 2254. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford; endowment, £48 with residence. Patron, the Bishop of Oxford. The church is a building of red brick in the Gothic style, and was erected in 1873 and completed in 1889. There is a Wesleyan chapel. Owlsmoor is an adjacent hamlet. Wellington College here was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1853, for the education of sons of officers in the army, and the first stone was laid by Her Majesty the Queen in 1856. The buildings are of brick in the Louis XV. style, with a chapel in Italian Gothic. The college grounds consist of an estate of about 430 acres, of which 20 acres form a playground. The number of boys in the college is about 400. Another and very different institution here is the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, an extensive range of brick buildings opened in 1863, and which have since been several times altered and enlarged. The total amount expended has been nearly £200,000, and the asylum affords accommodation to about 630 inmates.
Church Records
The parish register dates from the year 1873.
Churches
Church of England
Iron church, Owlsmoor
There is an iron church at Owlsmoor, with 80 sittings.
St. John the Baptist (parish church)
The church of St. John the Baptist, built and consecrated in 1873, is an edifice of red brick in the Gothic style, consisting of chancel, nave, aisles, and a bell-cot; the chancel was added in 1888-9, at a cost of £2,000: there are 400 sittings.
Wellington College chapel
Wellington College chapel, an exquisite building, erected from designs by the late Sir G. Gilbert Scott R.A. stands at the south-east angle of the college, with which it is connected by a cloister: the style is Gothic, with some characteristics of the Gothic of North Italy, and the edifice is remarkable both for the beauty of its proportions & the delicate finish of its details: from the roof an elegant and richly decorated "flêche" of oak and zinc rises to a height of 120 feet: the east end of the chapel terminates in an apse, round which, both within and without, runs an arcade, continued outside along both sides of the chapel: the carving throughout the building is very elaborate, and chiefly represents groups of natural flowers, especially those growing in the neighbourhood: a finely-carved oak screen and stalls were erected in memory of the Prince Consort, one of whose last public acts was to lay the foundation stone of the chapel. In 1885-6 the chapel was enlarged by the addition of a north transept and aisle, from designs by the late Sir A. W. Blomfield M.A., A.R.A., F.S.A. with arcading similar to that on the south side, and in 1898 a similar transept was thrown out on the south side, in memory of the late Archbishop Benson, the first Head Master of the College.
Methodist
Wesleyan Chapel
There is a Wesleyan chapel here.
Civil Registration
Crowthorne was in Easthampstead Registration District from 1894 to 1937 and Windsor Registration District from 1937 to 1967
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Berkshire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Crowthorne are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Berkshire papers online:
Visitations Heraldic
The Visitations of Berkshire 1532, 1566, and 1665-6 is available online.