Historic Buildings
The Village was recorded in the Domesday Book as Hanstede.
The village is noted for its Norman parish church and the remains of a Norman motte-and-bailey castle in the nearby woods.
The village was also close to the wartime airfield of RAF Hampstead Norris, an RAF Bomber Command Operational Training Unit (OTU) station. The airfield was host to a small number of squadrons of Wellington bombers. The site was bombed on September 16, 1940 by the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. In 1945, the station was used by squadrons of Mosquito fighter bombers and became an ammunition storage depot as part of the Bramley Central Ammunition Depot near Basingstoke after its closure in 1946. Little of the wartime station now remains. There are four remaining pillboxes around where the airfield was and a few air raid shelters in the woods. Part of the bomb storage site remains also. The site still maintains a modern link with aviation with a farm strip used by a Tiger Moth biplane. A light beacon is also situated on the edge of an old airfield peri track as the site is under the flightpath of aircraft flying to and from Heathrow airport. An important VOR beacon is also located here. It is now known as Haw Farm, part of the Yattendon Estate.
Read more about this topic: Hampstead Norreys
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