Aldermaston

The name's Old English, the ealdorman's estate, and in the ninth century the Ealdorman of Berkshire did hold land here. By Domesday in 1086 there were fifty households, a mill, two fisheries and a church.

St Mary's is that church's successor, with a twelfth century nave and thirteenth and fourteenth century paintings on its walls, and the alabaster tomb of Sir George Forster, who died in 1533, and his wife Elizabeth. Since 1957 the village has staged the York Nativity play in it every December.

Aldermaston Court, beside the church, was rebuilt by P. C. Hardwick between 1848 and 1851 and kept its 1636 staircase. It's listed Grade II*, and in 2025 the Victorian Society put it on its list of the ten most endangered buildings in the country. The little brick lock up on The Street was last used in 1865.

The Kennet Navigation reached the wharf in 1723 and the Kennet and Avon Canal was finished in 1810. After the war the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment grew up just south of the village, and at Easter 1958 the first protest march walked here from Trafalgar Square. From 1959 the marches ran the other way, from Aldermaston to London.