Brightwalton

The name of the village is first recorded in a charter in 939, where it was called Beorhtwaldingtune.{{Cite web |title=Electronic Sawyer |url=https://esawyer.lib.cam.ac.uk/charter/448.html |access-date=2024-11-15 |website=esawyer.lib.cam.ac.uk}} It likely meant 'estate associated with Beorhtwald', an Old English personal name.{{Cite book |last=Gelling |first=Margaret |title=The place-names of Berkshire. 1: County, district, road, dyke and river-names, the hundreds of Ripplesmere, Bray, Beynhurst, Cookham, Charlton, Wargrave, Sonning, Reading, Theale, Faircross |date=1973 |publisher=Engl. Place-Name Soc |isbn=978-0-521-08575-5 |series=English Place-Name Society |location=Cambridge |pages=237}}

The Church of England parish church of All Saints existed by the time of Domesday Book of 1086.{{harvnb|Page|Ditchfield|1924|pp=48–51}} During the 19th century, the church was deemed too small to accommodate a growing congregation, the village having reached 470 population, and was demolished in 1861.https://www.brightwalton.org.uk/all-saints-church--aspire.html Philip Wroughton of Woolley Park,https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1117194?section=official-list-entry funded the work, including denotation of a sturdily built tower,https://www.berkshirehistory.com/churches/brightwalton.html and commissioned a replacement, completed 1863 It was built in the Gothic Revival style by G E Street,{{sfn|Pevsner|1966|p=101}} who was architect to the Diocese of Oxford. Street retained and re-used some 13th century Early English Gothic features from the original building.

The parish has a Church of England primary school.[http://www.westberks.org/GroupHomepage.asp?GroupID=2563 Brightwalton CofE Primary School] It too was designed by Street and built in 1863.{{sfn|Pevsner|1966|p=102}}

Bus travel from Newbury is provided by service 107.{{cite web |url=http://www.newburyanddistrict.co.uk/pdf/jan13/Connect-service-107.pdf |title=Connect Service 101 |publisher=Newbury and District |format=pdf |date=January 2013 |access-date=19 October 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130819070623/http://newburyanddistrict.co.uk/pdf/jan13/Connect-service-107.pdf |archive-date=19 August 2013 |url-status=dead }}

In about 1715 the Savo(u)ry family moved to the village from nearby South Moreton. The Savorys were wheelwrights, but William Savory (1768–1824) from a third generation of the family, was apprenticed to David Jones, an apothecary in Newbury, Berkshire. Aged 20, Savory "walked the wards" of St Thomas' Hospital and Guy's Hospital in London. He learned surgery, physic (medicine) and midwifery from the leading practitioners of their day, including the surgeon Henry Cline and physician William Saunders. Some of his student notes and his commonplace book survive.{{cite web |url= http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cgi-bin/vcdf/detail?coll_id=7351&inst_id=6 |title=SAVORY, William (fl 1788-1789) |publisher=AIM25: Archives in London and the M25 area |date=1998–2013 }} Savory became a member of the Company of Surgeons and initially practiced in Newbury. Following bankruptcy in 1795 he re-settled in Brightwalton, where he remained for the rest of his life, passing the mantle to his son, William Savory (1793–1856) who studied at the London Hospital in Whitechapel.See Stuart Eagles, Medicine and Society in Late Eighteenth-Century Berkshire: The Commonplace Book of William Savory of Brightwalton and Newbury (Berkshire Record Society, 2024). See also George C. Peachey, The life of William Savory, surgeon of Brightwalton (J.J. Keliher, 1903).

Sir Samuel Eyre (1638–98), Justice of the King's Bench, lived in the parish, having inherited the manor of Brightwalton in 1694 through his wife Lady Martha Lucy. Their son Robert Eyre, also of Brightwalton, became Lord Chief Justice.

The author Monica Dickens lived in the village in the last years of her life."Latest wills", The Times page 14, 13 August 1993 Prolific children's author Rosemary Hayes went to school locally.

• List of civil parishes in Berkshire
• List of places in Berkshire

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• {{cite book |editor1-last=Page |editor1-first=W.H. |editor1-link=William Henry Page |editor2-last=Ditchfield |editor2-first=P.H. |editor2-link=Peter Ditchfield |others=assisted by John Hautenville Cope |year=1924 |title=A History of the County of Berkshire |volume=4 |series=Victoria County History |place=London |publisher=The St Katherine Press |pages=48–51 |url= http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=62680 }}
• {{Cite book |last=Pevsner |first=Nikolaus |author-link=Nikolaus Pevsner |title=The Buildings of England: Berkshire |year=1966 |publisher=Penguin Books |location=Harmondsworth |pages=101–102 }}

{{Commons category-inline|Brightwalton}}

{{West Berkshire}}

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Category:Villages in Berkshire

Category:Civil parishes in Berkshire

Category:West Berkshire District