Dunsden Green or Dunsden is a village in the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

of Eye & Dunsden in the

South Oxfordshire South Oxfordshire is a local government district in the ceremonial county of Oxfordshire, England. Its council is temporarily based outside the district at Abingdon-on-Thames pending a planned move to Didcot, the district's largest town. The a ...

ward of

Sonning Common Sonning Common is a village and civil parish in a relatively flat, former common land part of the Chiltern Hills in South Oxfordshire, centred west south-west of Henley-on-Thames and north of Reading. History During the English Civil Wa ...

, about northeast of

Reading, Berkshire Reading ( ) is a town and borough in Berkshire, Southeast England, southeast England. Located in the Thames Valley at the confluence of the rivers River Thames, Thames and River Kennet, Kennet, the Great Western Main Line railway and the M4 mot ...

. Until 1866 it was in the Oxfordshire part of Sonning parish.

History

The

toponym Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of '' toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of ...

means "valley of a man named Dyn(n)e". In 1086 the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...

recorded it as ''Dunesdene'', and a document of 1586 records it as ''Donsden Grene''. The Church of England parish church of All Saints was designed by the architect

John Turner John Napier Wyndham Turner (June 7, 1929September 19, 2020) was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the 17th prime minister of Canada from June to September 1984. He served as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and leader of t ...

and built in 1842. Nearby is the former vicarage. The future

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

poet

Wilfred Owen Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) was an English poet and soldier. He was one of the leading poets of the First World War. His war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was much influenced b ...

lived here from September 1911 to February 1913 when he served as a lay assistant to the parish priest, Rev. Herbert Wigan. The Dunsden Owen Association has been formed to commemorate the poet's links with the area, and a smartphone app can be downloaded which provides an interactive guide to the sites with which he was connected. The village school was built in 1848. It closed in December 1973 and is now the

village hall A village hall is a public building in a village used for various things such as: United Kingdom In the United Kingdom, a village hall is usually a building which contains at least one large room (plus kitchen and toilets), is owned by a local ...

. In 2002 the microbrewery Loddon Brewery was established in a converted 18th century brick and flint barn at Dunsden Green Farm. In November 2007 a new community

orchard An orchard is an intentional plantation of trees or shrubs that is maintained for food production. Orchards comprise fruit- or nut-producing trees which are generally grown for commercial production. Orchards are also sometimes a feature of ...

was established by the planting of a

Blenheim Orange Blenheim Orange (Kempster's Pippin) is a cultivar of apple. It was found at Woodstock, Oxfordshire near Blenheim in England in about 1740. It has been described as a cooking apple. A tailor named George Kempster planted the original kernel and t ...

apple tree on the

village green A village green is a common open area within a village or other settlement. Historically, a village green was common grassland with a pond for watering cattle and other stock, often at the edge of a rural settlement, used for gathering cattle t ...

by Lord Phillimore, the main local landowner.Eye & Dunsden Community Orchard
/ref> The orchard is beside the village green.

Notable people

* Robert Darke (1876–1961), cricketer *

(1893-1918), poet lived here from 1911 to 1913

Gallery

Image:Dunsden Green church.jpg, All Saints' parish church, Dunsden. Image:DUNSDEN.JPG, The green at Dunsden Green.

References

External links

Sonning Villages in Oxfordshire {{Oxfordshire-geo-stub

History

Notable people

Gallery

See also

References

External links