WEST HAGBOURNE

West Hagbourne is a small village in the south of the county at the foot of the Berkshire Downs. The centre of the village has the usual interesting period houses, some of them thatched, and a village pond. The pond is complete with ducks and is either full of water or dry depending on the time of year.

The house at York Farm is architecturally important as it is one of the earliest complete timber-framed houses to survive in England. The oldest part of the house is thought to date from 1264/65. The house was modernised in C17 or C18 and, although this destroyed many of the early features, much of the original timber framing remains.

A paved footpath links West Hagbourne with the village of East Hagbourne, about a half mile to the east the other side of a disused railway embankment.

The village pub, the Horse and Harrow, is on the extreme western edge of the village and was one of the very first pubs owned by the Abingdon brewery, Morlands, when John Morland started brewing in West Ilsley, a nearby village in Berkshire. Morlands brewery in Abingdon is sadly now a housing estate and the company itself lives on in name only, having been taken over by another company in 2000.

West Hagbourne is about two miles south of Didcot just off the A417.