West Hagbourne

West Hagbourne is a small village in the south of the county at the foot of the Berkshire Downs about two miles south of Didcot just off the A417. The centre of the village has the usual interesting historic houses, some of them thatched, that are part of the conservation area.

The conservation area extends around the south of the built up part of the village to include an orchard and paddock and, in the east, one of the historic old manor houses of the village, although parts of the land surrounding the manor house now sadly give the appearance of disuse and dilapidation.

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.

In the centre of the village is the village pond, complete with ducks, which is either full of water or dry depending on the time of year.

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.