During the Civil War, when the King's army were returning from the Battle of Lostwithiel in October 1644, the parliamentary army marched out from Basingstoke and Reading to meet them at the Second Battle of Newbury. Two days before the battle, Major-General Waller's troops arrived in Beenham and camped on the heath west of the village. Strong local tradition has it that the soldiers kept their horses in Fodderhouse Copse and one of them murdered the barmaid at the Black Horse pub (now 2 Forge Cottages near the Six Bells). The locals later strung him up but the girl's ghost still haunts the area.

Beenham Church retains only small details of its 13th century original, for it has been rather prone to fires. It was first burnt down in 1794. After the flames had abated, the villagers collected enough bell metal to considerably reduce the bill for casting six new bells. The Six Bells pub in the village commemorates the event. Luckily, the church's brick tower survived the second disaster in 1859. In the 1730s, the vicar was Thomas Stackhouse , a prominent theologian who wrote 'The History of the Bible from the Beginning of the World until the Coming of Christianity'.

A hundred years later, in 1830, there were ugly scenes at Beenham when 2000 Berkshire machine rioters from Thatcham marched through the village. They gathered new recruits and attacked both Stocks Farm and the Grange, destroying the threshing machines there.

Read more history of Beenham and other nearby settlements, like Lower Padworth, in David Nash Ford's book, 'Mid-Berkshire Town and Village Histories'. Click to Order direct from the Author.

NEW BOOK Whether you are from Mid-Berkshire or just visiting, this book is the place to find out all about the history of some 113 different towns, suburbs, villages and hamlets in the Boroughs of Reading and of Wokingham and the eastern portion of the District of West Berkshire. From Streatley to Padworth and Ruscombe to Finchampstead, join David Nash Ford from berkshirehistory.com in his second volume examining the structures, people and events that have shaped each place. Some of these histories were first published in part here on this website, but they have all been considerably expanded and are joined by many new histories of places often missed by historians, including those which only joined Berkshire in 1911 or later. Click for full details and purchase options.