Friday, June 16, 2023

Berks - Wilts


There's an interesting iron sign on one of the streets in our home town, it shows how the county boundaries have shifted over the years. Currently our town (Wokingham) is well and truly in the county of Berkshire with some distance to both the East and the West before you get to a border, it wasn't always like that however. On the Eastern edge of the town there's a road called "Wiltshire Road" and I'd always assumed that it was named as such because it led (eventually) West to the border with Wiltshire, but no, it was named this way because until 1845 it was actually IN Wiltshire and marked the border with Berkshire. The sign acknowledges this, one side says "Wokingham Berks" and the other "Wokingham Wilts", the Wilts side of the road was, however, only a little enclave, owned by a Wiltshire estate (the Bishop of Salisbury), how confusing! I bet this caused chaos when it came to county fayres and elections, not to mention Cricket teams.

 

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