Chilton is a village and civil parish in the Vale of White Horse district of Oxfordshire, England, about southwest of Didcot. The parish was historically part of Berkshire until the 1974 local government reorganisation transferred it to Oxfordshire.
Archaeological evidence from the parish includes a Middle Iron Age settlement and a later Roman villa. Racehorse training became an important local industry during the 19th and 20th centuries, with several training yards established around the village. Much of RAF Harwell was constructed within Chilton parish during the 1930s and played an important role in Allied airborne operations during the Second World War. After the war, the former airfield became the Atomic Energy Research Establishment and subsequently formed part of the present Harwell Science and Innovation Campus.
The A34 passes through the parish, separating the historic village to the east from the newer Chilton Field development to the west. The 2021 Census recorded a population of 1,720, compared with 894 in 2011.
Geography
Chilton is one of a series of spring-line villages at the northern edge of the North Wessex Downs, immediately below the ancient Ridgeway. The civil parish lies within the North Wessex Downs National Landscape.
A section of Grim's Ditch forms part of the southern boundary of the parish, and the Ridgeway National Trail passes to the south of the village. The historic settlement occupies a sheltered position below the downs, while much of the surrounding land is agricultural.
The village has two principal residential areas. The older village lies predominantly east of the A34, while the Chilton Field development lies to the west.
History
Prehistory and Roman period A notable early archaeological discovery was made on nearby Hagbourne Hill in 1803, when prehistoric metal objects were found in several pits. The surviving finds held by the British Museum include Iron Age horse bits, three terrets, a ring-headed pin and coins, together with Bronze Age pins, spearheads and possibly part of a palstave axe. The museum notes that the mixed dating of the objects may indicate two separate hoards or repeated deposition rather than a single assemblage. The 19th-century antiquary William Hewett described the discovery site as about half a mile from Chilton, close to the route then locally known as the Ickleton Way.
Archaeological evidence indicates occupation of the Chilton area long before the development of the present village. Excavations at Chilton Fields before residential development revealed evidence of a Middle Iron Age settlement, including a roundhouse, followed by several phases of Romano-British occupation.
During the Roman period a stone-footed building on the site was enlarged and developed into a modest Roman villa. Its principal building included a central hall measuring about by , with smaller adjoining rooms. A separate two-room building had an arched stokehole and a covered hypocaust for underfloor heating, and fragments of painted wall plaster were also recovered.
Medieval and early modern history Chilton is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086.
The Latton family was associated with the manor of Chilton during the late medieval and Tudor periods. John Latton, who represented Oxford in Parliament in 1529 and later served as treasurer and governor of the Inner Temple, was described as "of Chilton". He died in 1548 and was commemorated by a monumental brass at Blewbury.
Following the Second Battle of Newbury in 1644, Parliamentarian cavalry under William Waller, Oliver Cromwell and Arthur Haselrig pursued the retreating Royalists towards Oxford. Walter Money's history of the campaign records that a force of about 6,000 cavalry reached Blewbury and was subsequently quartered in Blewbury, Hagbourne, Chilton, Harwell and neighbouring villages. The cavalry under Cromwell later lay overnight on Chilton Plain before moving to Compton. Hewett's 1844 account likewise recorded Parliamentarian troops being quartered at Chilton for several days and Royalist forces occupying Chilton Plain shortly afterwards.
The village's neighbourhood plan attributes damage to the tower of All Saints' Church to Parliamentarian troops pursuing the retreating Royalists. Hewett, writing before the Victorian rebuilding of the tower, described it as partially destroyed and surmounted by a wooden structure containing four bells, and considered the damage to have occurred during the Civil Wars. The wooden belfry was later superseded by the present stone tower in the 19th century.
A local history published by Chilton Parish Council records that five houses were destroyed by fire in 1713 and that a royal charitable brief was issued to raise money for those affected. Evidence that the appeal was circulated nationally survives in parish records elsewhere in England: a published transcription of records from Aughton, Lancashire, records a "Withridge and Chilton" fire brief being read there on 21 March 1713/14, with combined losses of £1,116.
Horse racing Racehorse training has a long association with Chilton and the surrounding Berkshire Downs. In the 18th century William, Duke of Cumberland, the second son of George II, was tenant of a mansion at Kate's Gore on Gore Hill, which was used as an important racehorse-training establishment. Kate's Gore lay close to the historic Chilton–East Ilsley parish boundary, along which part of Grim's Ditch ran.
The freely draining chalk turf of the downs was well suited to galloping horses. During the 19th and 20th centuries racehorse training became a significant industry in Chilton, providing employment within the village. An 1899 directory noted simply that "race horses are trained here", while later directories listed several professional trainers in the village.
Another training establishment operated at Lime Tree House in the village. Jack Waugh, who later established the Downs House yard, served part of his apprenticeship there under his uncle Len Cundell.
One of the principal establishments was the Bungalow Stables, established in about 1905 alongside Thorningdown Road. It was reportedly named after its house, said to have been the first bungalow built in Chilton. The establishment included accommodation for about 36 horses, a tennis court and an oval exercise track.
Len Cundell moved his training operation from Lime Tree House to the Bungalow Stables in the latter part of 1923. His most successful period there came in 1930 and 1931 with horses including Oak Ridge and Noble Star. In 1931 Noble Star won the Ascot Stakes, the Goodwood Stakes at Goodwood Racecourse and the Cesarewitch at Newmarket Racecourse. A local history published in 2000 recorded that the horse earned £5,655 in prize money that year and that many Chilton residents also profited from bets placed on him.
In 1935 the Air Ministry compulsorily purchased the Bungalow Stables and surrounding land for £11,650 as part of the site required for construction of RAF Harwell. Cundell subsequently transferred his training operation to Aston Tirrold.
The construction of RAF Harwell did not end racehorse training elsewhere in Chilton. Downs House on Lower Road, built in the early 1930s, was originally associated with its own racing stables. Jack Waugh, who had previously worked with Len Cundell, established a substantial training operation there. During the Second World War his yard accommodated about 40 horses, and its gallops on the surrounding downs were regarded as among the finest in the country. Waugh retired in 1964 after training 870 winners. The future Grand National-winning trainer Gordon W. Richards served part of his apprenticeship at Downs House under Waugh.
Downs House remained a racehorse-training yard after Waugh's retirement. In the 1970s it was occupied by trainer Calverley "Verly" Bewicke, who had trained Kerstin to win the 1958 Cheltenham Gold Cup. Bewicke was subsequently followed at Downs House by trainer James Bethell, who trained Flat horses there before later moving his stable to Middleham, North Yorkshire. The succession of training yards at Lime Tree House, the Bungalow Stables and Downs House meant that professional racehorse training remained a feature of Chilton for much of the 20th century.
RAF Harwell
RAF Harwell was constructed on land to the north-west of Chilton as part of the expansion of the Royal Air Force during the mid-1930s. Construction began in 1935 and the station opened in February 1937. Despite its name, the majority of the airfield lay within Chilton parish, with about a third in East Hendred and the smallest portion in Harwell.
Between 1938 and 1940 the airfield was used to develop the experimental Royal Aircraft Establishment Mark III Catapult, intended to accelerate heavily laden bomber aircraft to flying speed over a short distance. The installation incorporated a rotating turntable, two concrete tracks and an underground pneumatic launching mechanism. Technical problems led to the project being abandoned without an aircraft ever being launched from it. Much of the structure was subsequently buried, and its surviving remains were excavated and recorded by archaeologists in 2023 during redevelopment of the former airfield.
The station was attacked several times by the Luftwaffe during 1940. On 16 August a German aircraft bombed and strafed the airfield, destroying three Vickers Wellington bombers and two petrol bowsers and killing two people. Further attacks followed on 19 and 26 August, with the latter killing six people and injuring ten civilian workers near the station's bomb dump.
In March 1944 Harwell became a base for No. 38 Group RAF and airborne forces preparing for the Normandy landings. On the night of 5 June 1944 the first pathfinder aircraft departed Harwell shortly after 23:00 carrying men of the 22nd Independent Parachute Company to mark landing and drop zones for the 6th Airborne Division. During Operation Tonga, aircraft and Airspeed Horsa gliders operating from Harwell subsequently transported airborne troops, headquarters personnel, vehicles, guns and equipment to Normandy. Harwell was used again on 6 June for Operation Mallard, the reinforcement of British airborne forces in Normandy.
A memorial at the end of one of the former runways commemorates the aircraft of No. 38 Group and the troops of the 6th Airborne Division who departed Harwell on the night of 5 June. The memorial, which lies within Chilton parish, was unveiled in 1955 and remains the site of an annual D-Day commemoration.
RAF Harwell closed at the end of 1945 and the site was transferred to the Ministry of Supply on 1 January 1946 for the establishment of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment. The former airfield subsequently became part of the present Harwell Science and Innovation Campus.
Railway The Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway passed immediately east of Chilton through a deep cutting. The Didcot–Newbury section opened in 1882 and was operated by the Great Western Railway. The nearest station to Chilton was Upton and Blewbury, to the north of the village.
Excavation of the railway cutting exposed a distinctive limestone bed which became known as the Chilton Stone. The term was first used by geologist A. J. Jukes-Browne in 1889, and the railway cutting east of Chilton was designated its type section. The bed is about thick at the site and consists of a brownish-grey, gritty limestone containing phosphatic nodules.
Later British Geological Survey work recorded surviving exposures in the disused railway cutting between Chilton and Upton, while another section east of the village had been buried by landfill.