Aldworth (St. Mary)

ALDWORTH (St. Mary), a parish, in the union of Wantage, hundred of Compton, county of Berks, 4½ miles (E. by S.) from East Ilsley; containing 314 inhabitants. This place, which is supposed by Hearne to have been a Roman station, comprises 1785a. 3r. 32p., and nearly the whole is cultivated land; the village is situated on an eminence commanding extensive and interesting views. The living is a vicarage, valued in the king's books at £8. 16. 0½.; patrons and impropriators, the Master and Fellows of St. John's College, Cambridge. The great tithes have been commuted for £400, and the vicarial for £100; the impropriate glebe consists of 27, and the vicarial of 16, acres. The church is an ancient structure of simple character, containing eight altar-tombs, on which are nine recumbent figures, under highly enriched arches, elegantly sculptured, supposed to represent different members of the De la Beche family, and to have been executed in the fourteenth century.