Compton Beauchamp

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Compton Beauchamp is a hamlet and civil parish in the Vale of White Horse district of the English county of Oxfordshire (though formerly in Berkshire). It nestles under the Berkshire Downs, near Uffington, which is 2 miles to the north-east.

[edit] Location

The village is located at grid reference SU279869. The parish includes the village of Knighton and the hamlet of Hardwell.

[edit] History

The name Compton ('cum' and 'tun') means 'valley' and 'farm' or 'settlement'. It was held by the Beauchamp family in the 13th century. The church is dedicated to St Swithun. Nearby is the Iron Age hill fort 'Hardwell Castle'.

The moated Compton Beauchamp House was the home of the King's Councillor, Sir Thomas Fettiplace, from about 1507. His only daughter, Elizabeth, the wife of Sir Francis Englefield, had no children and the property passed to her Fettiplace cousins who took little interest in the property. In 1589, it was sold to an in-law, Sir Henry Poole. The old house had deteriorated and Poole appears to have pulled it down and replaced it with the present house, in around 1600. In the early 18th Century, a fashionable Palladian facade was attached to the eastern entrance front of this small Tudor manor house.