Shottesbrook

"SHOTTESBROOK, a parish in the hundred of Beynhurst, county Berks, 4½ miles S.W. of Maidenhead, its post town. There was formerly a college for priests, founded by Sir William Trussel in 1337, the revenue of which at the Dissolution was valued at £42. The parish is intersected by the line of the Great Western railway, and is bounded on the S. by a branch of the river Loddon. The land is chiefly arable, with a small proportion of meadow and woodland. The soil is a mixture of earth and loam, resting upon a substratum of chalk. The living is a rectory,* with the vicarage of White-Waltham annexed, in the diocese of Oxford, joint value £610. The church, built in 1337, with the college, by Sir W. Trussel, whose tomb is in the S. transept, is dedicated to St. John the Baptist, and is a cruciform structure, with a tower, spire, and several stained windows. It contains three stone stalls under trefoil arches, a piscina, an octangular font, and several monuments and brasses, including one of a priest and franklin bearing date 1370; another of Lady Pennebrygg, bearing date 1401; and a monument to Henry Dodwell, the first Camden Professor of History at Oxford. The principal residence is Shottesbrooke House. The parochial charities produce about £16 per annum. At White-Waltham are remains of the hunting-seat of Prince Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII, now converted into a farmhouse."

From The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland(1868). Transcribed by Colin Hinson ©2003.

Other descriptions can be found from other periods in various trade directories covering Berkshire from the early 19th century onwards from Berkshire FHS (members only) and from A Vision of Britain Through Time.