Englefield
House was built in the Tudor period; substantial
additions and alterations were made in the 18th
and 19th centuries.
A
battle between the Saxons and the Danes was fought
on the hill behind the house in AD 871.
The Anglo Saxon Chronicle relates:
"In
this year came the host to Reading in Wessex
and three days afterwards two jarls rode up-country;
then ealdorman Aethulwulf opposed them at
Englefield and fought against them and won
the victory.” |
Aethulwulf
and his brother, Alfred, were defeated at Reading
four days later and Aethulwulf was killed but the
Danes’ major push South had been halted.
A
house on this site is recorded in the Domesday Book.
The family of yeoman farmers who lived at Englefield
took the name of the place and were lords of the
manor from the twelfth century and knights of the
shire in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
and became prominent in Tudor times. However the
family were Catholics and lost the Estate, through
their involvement in the Throckmorton plot, to Queen
Elizabeth I in 1589.
The
Queen granted Englefield to her favourite, Sir Francis
Walsingham, from whom the present owner, Sir William
Benyon is indirectly descended. Thus there have
been only two families in ownership since before
the Norman conquest and the property has been held
by the same family for well over three hundred years. |
Englefield House: History of Englefield House
