Tilehurst is a village in Berkshire, England, on the western outskirts of the Reading. The village is administratively split between Tilehurst Within in the Borough of Reading and Tilehurst Without in West Berkshire. Tilehurst Within includes the village centre, known as Tilehurst Triangle.
The village extends from the River Thames in the north to the A4 road in the south. Tilehurst Within includes all or parts of the borough wards of Tilehurst, Kentwood and Norcot. Tilehurst Without forms part of the West Berkshire civil parish of Tilehurst, which also includes the northern part of Calcot and a small rural area west of the village.
Toponymy The name Tilehurst comes from the Old English "tigel" meaning "tile" and "hurst" meaning "wooded hill". Alternative spellings have included Tygelhurst (13th century), Tyghelhurst (14th century), and Tylehurst (16th century). The present spelling became commonplace in the 18th century.
History Tilehurst was first recorded in 1291, when it was listed as a hamlet of Reading in Pope Nicholas III's taxation. At this time, the settlement was under the ownership of Reading Abbey, where it stayed until the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Tilehurst became an extensive parish, which included the tything of Theale as well as the manors of Tilehurst, Kentwood, Pincents and Beansheaf. In 1545, Henry VIII granted the manor of Tilehurst (now Calcot) to Francis Englefield, who held it until his attainder (and forfeiture of the manor) in 1586. The following year, Elizabeth I gave the manor to Henry Forster of Aldermaston and George Fitton. Forster and Fitton possessed the manor until the turn of the century, when Elizabeth sold it to Henry Best and Francis Jackson.
Over the space of five years, the manor passed from Best and Jackson to the son of Sir Thomas Crompton, then on to Dutch merchant Peter Vanlore. Vanlore built a manor house on the estate—Calcot Park. Throughout the 17th century the manor passed through the Vanlore family to the Dickenson family, before being purchased in 1687 by the Wilder family of Nunhide (builders of Wilder's Folly) for £1,075. Page and Ditchfield write that in the early 18th century the manor was also owned by the family of John Kendrick, albeit for a short period.
The manor subsequently passed to Benjamin Child, who married Mary Kendrick, heir of the Kendrick family. After Kendrick's death, Childs sold the manor to descendants of John Blagrave in 1759. The Blagrave family built the present-day Calcot House, which—according to one story—was made necessary by Child's eviction. After Child sold the estate to the Blagraves, he was reluctant to leave the house. The Blagraves were forced to remove the building's roof to "flush" him out of the building, thereby requiring a new building to replace the uninhabitable original house. The manor was retained by the Blagrave family until the 1920s, after which it served as the clubhouse for the estate's golf course and was later converted into apartments.
The manor of Kentwood was owned by Peter Vanlore, before passing through the Kentwood family (taking their name from the manor itself), the Swafield family, the Yate family, the Fettiplace family and the Dunch family. In 1719, the manor was divided between heirs. The manor of Pincents was named after the local Pincent family. Originally from Sulhamstead, the family owned the manor until the end of the 15th century. After this, it was owned by the Sambourne family before they sold it to the Windsor family. In 1598, the manor was sold to the Blagrave family; its succession through the family is identical to that of Calcot Park. In the 1920s, the manor was sold off and later became a wedding and conference venue. The manor of Beansheaf took its name from a 13th-century Tilehurst family. In 1316, John Beansheaf granted some of the manor's land to John Stonor. While it is not recorded how much was granted, it is likely that Stonor inherited the entire estate as the Beansheaf name did not appear in subsequent records.
In 1390, Ralf Stonor gave the manor to William Sutton of Campden and John Frank. Frank later returned his share of the manor to Ralf Stonor, after which the manor was retained by the Stonor family until the end of the 15th century. The manor left the Stonor family when John Stonor died with no heirs. It passed through his sister, Anne, to her husband—Adrian Fortescue. Some of the manor was later reinherited by the Stonors, though the majority was retained by the Fortescues until passing through marriage to the Wentworth family. In 1562 the manor was bought by John Bolney and Ambrose Dormer, after which it was passed into the family of Tanfield Vachell. The manor was inherited by the Blagrave family some time after 1600.
Throughout the 19th century, a number of changes came to Tilehurst. A national school was founded in 1819 to provide education to children not in private schooling. The Great Western Main Line was built through Berkshire in 1841; railway station opened in 1882.
In the 1920s and 30s, many new houses were built in Tilehurst, particularly semi-detached residences. This gave the need for improved utilities; electricity arrived in the 1920s (replacing the gas that fuelled the area from 1906) and Tilehurst Water Tower was built in 1932. After World War II, Tilehurst—like many other settlements—was in need of new housing; from 1950, many houses and estates were built in the area. In the mid-1960s, a prominent Victorian character property, Westwood House with some five acres of open grounds was demolished as part of the ever pressing need for new housing. This site was positioned between Westwood Road and Pierce's Hill and had served well as a venue for occasional local social events.
Governance Tilehurst is divided between the civil parish of Tilehurst in the district of West Berkshire and the electoral wards of Tilehurst and Kentwood (where Tilehurst railway station is located) in the borough of Reading. There are now four ecclesiastical parishes with Tilehurst in their names: Tilehurst St Catherine and Calcot St Birinus, Tilehurst St George, Tilehurst St Mary Magdalen and Tilehurst St Michael (the latter church being the original parish church).
Administrative history Tilehurst was an ancient parish. It historically included Theale to the south-west and also extended eastwards towards Reading as far as the Reading Union Workhouse (which later became Battle Hospital) on Oxford Road, and included Prospect Park. Theale became a separate ecclesiastical parish in 1832, and a separate civil parish in 1894.Vision of Britain website
The eastern end of the parish of Tilehurst around the workhouse and Prospect Park was incorporated into the borough of Reading in September 1887. The civil parish boundary was adjusted to match the new borough boundary eighteen months later in March 1889, with the part of Tilehurst in the borough of Reading being transferred to the civil parish of Reading St Mary. A much larger part of Tilehurst was transferred to the borough of Reading in 1911, including the main village around Tilehurst Triangle (then also known as Tilehurst Common) and Tilehurst's parish church of St Michael at Churchend. The civil parish of Tilehurst was reduced as part of the 1911 changes to just cover the then largely rural west of the old parish that was not incorporated into the borough of Reading.
Reading Borough Council proposed to the government that the increasingly urbanised Tilehurst civil parish (as well as Purley on Thames and the eastern part of Theale) should be transferred into the borough of Reading as part of the major local government reforms of 1974. The government decided instead to leave Reading's boundaries unchanged from when they had last been reviewed in 1911, placing the Tilehurst civil parish in Newbury district, which became West Berkshire in 1998.
Geography
Tilehurst is situated on a hill (approximately AMSL), to the west of Reading. The land is steep to the west and south of the village; the gradient is smoother north (towards the River Thames) and east (descending towards Reading).
Much of Tilehurst was enclosed common land during the 18th and 19th centuries; as this land was developed with housing the commons were lost. Arthur Newbery Park is a surviving area of commonland. Similarly, Prospect Park was enclosed and established before major development of the area was undertaken. Tilehurst is bordered to the west by wood and farmland, to the north by other settlements (such as Purley on Thames and the river itself), to the east by Reading and to the south by the Reading to Taunton line, the M4 motorway and the River Kennet.
Tilehurst is centred around Tilehurst Triangle (known locally as "the village"), a pedestrianised area providing shopping, leisure and educational facilities. Other areas of Tilehurst include Kentwood near the railway station in the north, Norcot in the east, Churchend around St Michael's parish church in the south, and Little Heath in the west. Tilehurst has a Site of Special Scientific Interest just to the west of the village, called Sulham and Tidmarsh Woods and Meadows.Magic Map Application Tilehurst has four local nature reserves called Blundells Copse, Lousehill Copse, McIlroy Park & Round Copse.
Demography For Tilehurst Ward in Reading, the 2011 census recorded 9,185 residents in the ward and an area of . In the 2001 census there were 14,683 residents in the parish of Tilehurst Without.
Economy Until the late 19th century, the majority of working men in Tilehurst were employed in farming or similar agricultural work. The main industry associated with Tilehurst, however, was the manufacture of tiles. This industry was present in the district until recent times. The 1881 UK census listed a number of men as being employed as brickmen in kilns in the area. Written evidence of brickwork can be traced to the 1600s, but with the peak of production at around 1885. Kilns were established at Grovelands and Kentwood—both to the east of the settlement—with clay pits being dug on Norcot Hill in an area now known as The Potteries.
An overhead cable was used to transport the clay-filled buckets between the pits and the kiln across Norcot Road; this was shown on a 1942 map of the area as an "aerial cable" running from the clay pit in Kentwood to Grovelands works approximately away.Pre-WWII – BERKSHIRE 1932–1936 (1:2,500) The cable was also included on the 1940s Ordnance Survey New Popular Edition maps, labelled as an "aerial ropeway".OS NPO (Eng/Wales) 1945–1955 (1:50,000) An 1883 Ordnance Survey map of Berkshire shows a number of kilns in the Grovelands area (on the present-day Colliers Way estate) and one in Norcot near the present-day Lawrence Road. The latter was more specifically named in the 1899 Pre-WWII 1:2,500 scale Berkshire map as "Norcot Kiln, Brick and Tile Works". By the 1920s, Tilehurst Potteries had been formally established at Kew Kiln on Kentwood Hill. By the 1960s, clay business had waned and the pits were closed in 1967.
Architecture
The architecture of Tilehurst ranges from 19th century thatched cottages to late 20th-century housing estates. Victorian and Edwardian terraces (built using bricks from the Tilehurst kilns) are common in the area; streets such as Blundells Road and Norcot Road display this type of architecture.
As the area expanded, a huge number of semi-detached dwellings were built in the mid-20th century, in areas such as St Michael's Road (1930s) and on the Berkshire Drive estate (1950s).
Examples of unique architecture in Tilehurst include two water towers: Tilehurst Water Tower is a 1932 concrete building, open octagonal in design with arcading supporting a cylindrical drum; Norcot Water Tower is an 1890s brick building with tiered blind arcading.