Two Roman buildings have been discovered in the parish, and there are surface indications of a third. One was certainly a villa. The status of the others is unknown. The parish church is one of the earliest in the county and has Saxon ‘long-and-short’ work still remaining in the chancel.

Rowbury Hill and Farm, in the north of the parish, remind us of the Domesday Hundred of Rowbury that covered Beedon, Boxford, Chieveley, Leckhampstead, Peasemore, Welford, Weston & Winterbourne. The hundred court probably met under an old oak tree somewhere in the region of Courtoak Farm, just to the south.