Oxfordshire
Penstones Court, Stanford in the Vale
Surrounded by iron age hill forts, overlooked by the White Horse at Urchfont and the ancient Ridgeway track connecting the Marlborough Downs to the Chiltern Hills, Stanford-in-the-Vale takes its name from Saxon times - an ancient stony ford crossing the river Ock where to-day the bridge spans the river. Founded as early as 939, the medieval glory of this agrarian village is the church of St Denys on the green. Largely undisturbed until the Civil War, it almost certainly hosted Cromwell in his failed attempts to capture the royalist stronghold of nearby Farringdon House, legend has it that he stayed in the village. Shortly after, in 1646 the village suffered an attack of the plague which took the lives of 33 local people in under three months. The opening of a turnpike road between Wantage and Farringdon, the opening of the Wiltshire and Berkshire canal (now closed) and the opening of a Great Western Railway station at nearby Challow, led to an expansion of the village but this slowed with the mid 19th century agricultural depression.