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Summary

Deer park documented since the 13th century, probably of varying extent but with little known physical evidence

Monument Type(s):

• DEER PARK (13th century to Late 19th century - 1202 AD to 1900 AD?)

Full Description

The pipe rolls of 1202 document that William Achard obtained royal permission to impark his thicket at Aldermaston <1>; in 1292 Edward I granted Robert Achard free warren <2> and a further documentary reference at the end of the 13th century tells that Robert's widow was assigned one third of a pasture in the park. The first mapped depiction of the park appears to be Saxton's <3> although this is very schematic, drawn as an irregular oval southeast of the church, a convention repeated on later 17th century maps <4>. Rocque's 1761 map <5> shows the church, main house and other buildings within a small area of designed landscape close to the village of Aldermaston; to the south is a large area enclosed by roads on the west and east sides, dissected by two separate watercourses flowing north. Running from west to east between the two roads is an avenue of trees, and 'Aldermason Park' is labelled to the south of this drive. The clear boundary between the park and Aldermaston Common to the south might possibly be a mapped earthwork. The boundary is also shown on the 1806 Ordnance Survey Drawing <6>, probably running along the edge of a wood called Birch Copse on the First Edition Ordnance Survey mapping <7>, and excluding Little Heath. By c1800 another avenue of trees had been planted running from north to south of the park <7><8>, intersecting the existing west-east avenue.

The Victoria County History of 1907 <8> noted that the seat of Aldermaston Court stood in a very large park of 758 acres, 125 acres of which were then a deer park, stocked with about 100 fallow deer. The Aldermaston estate was sold in lots in 1939 <9>, and the southern area of its park was used for the construction of an airfield from late 1941 to mid 1942. It then became the site of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment from 1950; these landscape scale 20th century changes mean that any possible park pale earthwork evidence is likely to have been demolished, if it had ever existed.

Sources and further reading

Related Monuments

Associated Excavations and Fieldwork

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