Basildon, Berkshire - History

History

Human presence in Basildon dates over 500,000 years, as witness the flint axes that have been found, but the earliest physical remains are two sections of the Bronze Age Grim's Ditch (circa 2,400 BC). The Romans also left their mark, building a road through Basildon running from Silchester to Dorchester-on-Thames. A wealthy Roman or Romano-British citizen also built a villa and farm beside the Roman road, but it was destroyed in 1838, when building Brunel's Great Western Railway. On the frontier between Wessex and Mercia, Basildon was attacked and destroyed twice by the Mercians and Danes in the 9th and early 11th centuries. It was destroyed again by the Normans in 1066, when the bulk of the army crossed the Thames at Streatley after the Battle of Hastings. The ancient manor of Basildon comprised the present-day civil parishes of Basildon and Ashampstead and is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Bastedene. It was an important royal manor at the time of the Norman Conquest with a female Lord of the Manor.

In the 12th century it was caught up in the Civil War between Stephen and Matilda, whilst in 1349 the population was decimated by the Black Death.

Thereafter the Parish remained relatively undisturbed and slowly grew prosperous. By the 17th century it was the seat of the Fane family, who subsequently built the Grotto near the Thames in Lower Basildon. It was also the birthplace (1674) and last resting place in 1741 of Jethro Tull, the agriculturist. In 1770 Francis Sykes, who had made his fortune in India, acquired the Basildon Estate and built the House, which stands today. His grandson dissipated his fortune and so mistreated his wife that he ended up caricatured as Bill Sikes in Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist. In 1838 Sykes sold the Estate to businessman, James Morrison, and the Morrison family held the Estate until 1929. The Morrison family had many interests including an art collection which included works by Constable, Da Vinci, Hogarth, Holbein, Poussin, Rembrandt, Reynolds, Rubens, Titian, Turner and Van Dyck. Part of the remains of their valuable collection hang at Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire, where their descendants live. JMW Turner is known to have stayed at Basildon Park and in 1844 he painted “Rain, Steam and Speed”, showing the GWR and Basildon Railway Bridge, which stands in the valley below the House.

The British stationery company, Basildon Bond founded in 1911, is named after Basildon, taking its name when some of the directors fell to liking the alliteration of "Basildon" and "bond" whilst holidaying at Basildon Park, at the time Major James Archibald Morrison's estate (between 1910 and 1929 when he sold it to Sir Edward Iliffe).