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Winnersh
Site of Medieval Meetings

Winnersh was originally one of the four liberties of the old parish of Hurst. It was called a 'liberty' rather than a manor because it was under the direct jurisdiction of the Bishop of Salisbury. It was his personal chase in the Bearwood Walke of Windsor Forest where he brought his guests out hunting from Sonning Palace. By the time the bishops sold Sonning in the 16th century, their Winnersh estate had already been broken up into Sindlesham Manor and Hurst Wynhurst which was attached to Hurst Manor. Wynhurst, or Winnersh, means 'Water Meadow Wood' reflecting its position on the banks of the River Loddon, although the main settlement is the ribbon development that grew up on the higher ground further along the main road between Reading and Wokingham. Now called the Reading Road (or the A329), this was originally known as King Street, a name that was adopted by the settlement itself by the 18th century. It consisted of a Post Office and the Pheasant Pub and a few other houses like Kingstreet Farm, Winnersh Lodge, Winnersh Grove and Winnersh Farm, immediately east of Winnersh Crossroads. It was really centred on the, now hardly noticeable, dog-leg crossroads beneath the motorway flyover. Winnersh Lodge was the dower house to Newland House in Arborfield and was the home to Emma widow of the Reading banker, John Simonds, after his death in 1881. Winnersh became part of the ecclesiastical parish of Bearwood in 1846. The North Downs Railway was laid just north of the village in 1849, but Winnersh Station, then known as 'Sindlesham and Hurst Halt' wasn't built until 1910. It was as a direct result of this that the village as we know it today was built during the subsequent decade. There was a huge expansion to the west of the crossroads, with houses down Robinhood Lane too, that joined Winnersh to the little hamlet of Merril Green, now Merryhill Green, on the Old Forest Road to Binfield which has all but disappeared in this area.

At the west end of Winnersh stands, not only the Showcase Cinema, but Loddon Bridge an important crossing point and meeting place in times past, on the border between the Earley region of Sonning parish and the Winnersh area of Hurst. In 1191, when King Richard the Lionheart went off on Crusade, he left the country in the control of his chancellor, William Longchamp, Bishop of Ely. However, already unpopular, his subsequent actions led to the Barons, under Hugh Nonant, Bishop of Coventry and egged on by Prince John, calling upon him to attend what was essentially a trial, a great open-air gathering in the meadows adjoining Loddon Bridge, at Winnersh, on 5th October that year. Longchamp shut himself up in the Tower of London instead, but was besieged and later sent into exile.  

 

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