South Moreton - History

History

Moretune in the Domesday book is ambiguous but four of the five manor houses are identifiable: (1) Saunderville is still known as 'The Manor', and is a moated manor house with horses grazing in the railed paddocks, seen to advantage from the encroaching railway; (2) Huse or Bray is a recently renovated low building nearby, again with a paddock in front of it, at the T-junction at the East end of the village; (3) the only trace of Adresham is the terrace upon which it once stood, opposite the village school - there is a 1950s house on the site; (4) Fulscot is half a mile west of the village, and is still a self-contained manor farm community. The largest house in South Moreton is none of these, but The Hall, very close to the Huse, and the last farm in the village.

Much Victorian history of the village is recorded in The Rector's Book, handwritten around 1905 from memories stretching back to 1845, and now deposited in the Berkshire County Archives at Reading.

At the time of the South Moreton Inclosure Act, 1818 c.18, the dominant landlord was Henry Hucks Gibbs, 1st Baron Aldenham and many of the inclosures were allotted to him. Later in the century a London butcher of the name of Hedges (by coincidence, also the surname of another powerful and extensive Wallingford-based family) used Rich's Sidings of the new Great Western Railway, two miles to the west by Didcot station, to supply much of the London meat trade; Hedges amassed a large fortune and much local land, including the inclosures at Hall Farm and Fulscot Manor, both of which are still owned and farmed by his descendants.