Yahoo News 10 things you probably didn't know about Berkshire
Continuing our series on the Home Counties’ secrets, we revel in Berkshire’s hidden side. Previous articles looked at Buckinghamshire, Kent and Essex.
1. It’s home to the National Trust’s oldest tree
Most people are familiar with the events that took place at Runnymede just over 800 years ago. But did you know that just a stone’s throw from the spot where King John sealed Magna Carta there’s a tree whose history stretches back even further? The Ankerwycke Yew may have breathed the same air as Plato, Alexander the Great and the Buddha, with estimates putting its age at up to 2,500 years. According to popular legend, Henry VIII proposed to Anne Boleyn in its vast shadow (its trunk has a girth of eight metres), while some believe Magna Carta was actually sealed here and not on the other side of the Thames. Alongside the mighty tree there’s the remains of a Benedictine priory to discover, built during the reign of Henry II and dedicated to St Mary Magdalene.
2. There’s an island filled with monkeys
In 1738, Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough, acquired Monkey Island, named after the monks from nearby Merton Priory who once visited, and close to the village (and now gastronomic enclave) of Bray. He wanted a quirky fishing retreat so hired architect Robert Morris to build a pavilion and a temple, and commissioned Andieu de Clermont, a French artist, to fill the former with unusual depictions of monkeys taking part in human activities, such as shooting, rowing and smoking. Statues of monkeys were scattered around the grounds tocomplete the theme.
The lodge became a hotel in the 19th century, and over the years has welcomed Edward VII, Edward Elgar, Nellie Melba, Princess Margaret and H.G. Wells, among others. After a period of decline it was saved by a billionaire businessman – Malaysian Yeoh Tiong Lay – and recently reopened following a four-year refit. The Pavilion’s Monkey Room remains (it’s now a bar), while new additions include a floating spa.
3. It witnessed a zombie apocalypse
Not really. But the Berkshire village of Cookham did provide the setting for some of Sir Stanley Spencer’s weird and wonderful theological artwork, in which the dead clamber out of their graves, the living celebrate free love on the local moor, and Jesus and God hang out in the church porch.
The real Cookham, where Spencer spent much of his life, is far less interesting – but undoubtedly pretty. A gallery (stanleyspencer.org) celebrates the artist, it promises riverside rambling, and there is a clutch of good pubs.
4. The world’s biggest lion lives there
We’ll admit that precise statistics are hard to come by, but the colossal Maiwand Lion in Reading’s Forbury Gardens has to be a contender – the cast iron statue weighs 16 tons and measures 31 feet from mane to tail. It was created to commemorate the deaths of 329 men from the 66th (Berkshire) Regiment of Foot who died during the Second Anglo-Afghan War between 1878 and 1880. The majority of those were killed in one bloody battle, when - on July 27, 1880 at the Kandahar village of Maiwand - some 2,300 British soldiers were decimated by 40,000 Afghan troops. Eleven of the regiment, protecting its colours, made such a brave stand before their deaths that an Afghan officer described it as “the wonder of all who saw it”. The lion features on the crest of Reading Football Club.
5. So does Dr Frank N. Furter
Fans of The Rocky Horror Picture Show will no doubt recognise Oakley Court, which hugs the south bank of the Thames a couple of miles upstream from Windsor. The gargoyle-topped Victorian pile features as the abode of the cross-dressing Doctor (played so memorably by Tim Curry). These days it is a hotel and the current residents, being mostly middle-aged couples, overseas tourists, and wedding and conference guests, display a shade more modesty.
6. It was the home of biscuits
There’s much more to Reading, Berkshire’s county town, than meets the eye.
Its 12th-century abbey was once a place of pilgrimage, holding more than 230 relics, including the hand of St James. Today it is an atmospheric ruin with just two surviving buildings, the old dormitory and a gatehouse. The latter structure housed Reading Abbey Girls’ School, whose former pupils include Jane Austen.
Five years after the great author’s death, Huntley & Palmers opened the world’s biggest biscuit factory in the town. Its tins were sent to every corner of the British Empire and accompanied Captain Scott on his 1910 expedition to the South Pole (Reading was known as the “biscuit town” and its football club nicknamed the “biscuitmen”).
You can learn more about Huntley & Palmers and Reading Abbey at the town’s museum, which also contains a replica of the Bayeux Tapestry.
Reading is also the largest urban area in Britain without city status (population: 318,014), was the location of the first Little Chef restaurant (an 11-seat diner caravan which opened in 1958), and has a lovely Edwardian lido, recently reopened after 43 years.
7. There’s a crooked house and a tiny street
Windsor is famous for possessing the largest inhabited castle on the planet (which, strangely, isn’t a World Heritage Site), and a Lego theme park, but it has plenty more to offer. There’s its Crooked House, built in 1687 and home to England oldest tearoom, Britain’s shortest road, Queen Charlotte Street, which measure just 51 feet and 10 inches, and an alterpiece by Thomas Hardy – better known for his Wessex novels – discovered by chance at All Saints Church in 2016.
8. There’s a desert island
Well, not exactly. But Friday Island in Old Windsor is so called because its shape resembles the footprint of Man Friday from Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe. There’s nothing on it besides a two-bedroom cottage hidden by willows, which was – for 30 years, until his death in 1991 – the home of forensics expert Dr Julius Grant, renowned for proving that the Hitler Diaries were forgeries.
9. It inspired Turner
Brunel’s Maidenhead Railway Bridge, completed in 1838, features the widest and flattest arches ever constructed – few believed it would carry the weight of a train. Its wonderful echo (the Thames Path runs beneath it) mean it is now known as the Sounding Arch. The bridge was immortalised by JMW Turner in his painting Rain, Steam and Speed, on display at the National Gallery.
10. You can stay in Britain’s most scandalous hotel
The swimming pool at Cliveden House helped bring down a government. The Telegraph’s Sherelle Jacobs explains: “One evening in July 1961, 19-year-old Christine Keeler, an aspiring model and acquaintance of the owner, Bill Astor, was frolicking in Cliveden’s pool. She was naked, having forgotten her swimming costume. Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, was also a guest.
"The pool had a new bronze statue of Lord Astor’s son riding a dolphin. He went down to take a look. So began the most scandalous affair in British political history. It ended in a suicide and the downfall of the Macmillan government. That sculpture of the little boy on the dolphin still stands over the pool.”
