Sweaxhibition at Vale & Downland Museum, Wantage
Champion Jockey Lester Piggott Exhibition at The Vale & Downland Museum
This fascinating exhibition explores the life of Wantage born champion jockey Lester Piggott.
Co-curated by racing analyst Neil Morrice and author Sean Magee it will feature images, trophies and artefacts from Lester's illustrious racing career.
Music: bensounds.com
Places to see in ( Wantage - UK )
Places to see in ( Wantage - UK )
Wantage is a market town and civil parish in the Vale of the White Horse, Oxfordshire, England. The town is on Letcombe Brook, about 8 miles south-west of Abingdon, 10 miles west of Didcot, 15 miles (24 km) south-west of Oxford and 14 miles (23 km) north north-west of Newbury.
Historically part of Berkshire, it is notable as the birthplace of King Alfred the Great in 849. In 1974 the area administered by Berkshire County Council was greatly reduced, and Wantage, in common with other territories South of the River Thames, became part of a considerably enlarged Oxfordshire.
Wantage was a small Roman settlement but the origin of the toponym is somewhat uncertain. It is generally thought to be from an Old English phrase meaning decreasing river. King Alfred the Great was born at the royal palace there in the 9th century. Wantage appears in the Domesday Book of 1086. Its value was £61 and it was in the king's ownership until Richard I passed it to the Earl of Albemarle in 1190.
In 1877 he paid for a marble statue of King Alfred by Count Gleichen to be erected in Wantage market place, where it still stands today. He also donated the Victoria Cross Gallery to the town. This contained paintings by Louis William Desanges depicting deeds which led to the award of a number of VCs, including his own gained during the Crimean War. It is now a shopping arcade. Since 1848, Wantage has been home to the Community of Saint Mary the Virgin, one of the largest communities of Anglican nuns in the world. Wantage once had two breweries which were taken over by Morlands of Abingdon.
Wantage is at the foot of the Berkshire Downs escarpment in the Vale of the White Horse. There are gallops at Black Bushes and nearby villages with racing stables at East Hendred, Letcombe Bassett, Lockinge and Uffington. Wantage includes the suburbs of Belmont to the west and Charlton to the east. Grove to the north is still just about detached and is a separate parish. Wantage parish stretches from the northern edge of its housing up onto the Downs in the south, covering Chain Hill, Edge Hill, Wantage Down, Furzewick Down and Lattin Down. The Edgehill Springs rise between Manor Road and Spike Lodge Farms and the Letcombe Brook flows through the town. Wantage is home to the Vale and Downland Museum. There is a large market square containing a statue of King Alfred, surrounded by shops some with 18th-century facades. Quieter streets radiate from it, including one towards the large Church of England parish church. Wantage is the Alfredston of Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure.
Wantage is at the crossing of the B4507 valley road, the A417 road between Reading and Cirencester and the A338 road between Hungerford (and junction 14 of the M4 motorway) and Oxford. Bus services link Wantage with Oxford as well as other towns and villages including Abingdon, Didcot, Faringdon and Grove. Stagecoach in Oxfordshire provide the main services between Wantage and Oxford with up to three buses per hour Monday to Saturday and up to two buses per hour on Sunday's and bank holidays, operated under Stagecoach's luxury Stagecoach Gold brand. Stagecoach provides a late-night service on Friday and Saturday evenings with buses running to Oxford until 2am and buses from Oxford to Wantage until 3am.
Wantage does not have a railway station; Didcot Parkway, 8 miles to the east, is the nearest station, with services towards London, Bristol and Cardiff. The Great Western Mainline is just north of Grove (2 miles North of Wantage) where the former Wantage Road railway station used to be. It was closed during the Beeching cuts in 1964. The Wantage Tramway used to link Wantage with Wantage Road station. The tramway's Wantage terminus was in Mill Street and its building survives, but little trace remains of the route. Wantage has been the site of a church since at least the 10th century and the present Church of England parish church of Saints Peter and Paul dates from the 13th century, with many additions since. SS Peter and Paul also contains seventeen 15th-century misericords.
( Wantage - UK ) is well know as a tourist destination because of the variety of places you can enjoy while you are visiting Wantage . Through a series of videos we will try to show you recommended places to visit in Wantage - UK
Join us for more :
Places to see in ( Wantage - UK )
Places to see in ( Wantage - UK )
Wantage is a market town and civil parish in the Vale of the White Horse, Oxfordshire, England. The town is on Letcombe Brook, about 8 miles south-west of Abingdon, 10 miles west of Didcot, 15 miles (24 km) south-west of Oxford and 14 miles (23 km) north north-west of Newbury.
Historically part of Berkshire, it is notable as the birthplace of King Alfred the Great in 849. In 1974 the area administered by Berkshire County Council was greatly reduced, and Wantage, in common with other territories South of the River Thames, became part of a considerably enlarged Oxfordshire.
Wantage was a small Roman settlement but the origin of the toponym is somewhat uncertain. It is generally thought to be from an Old English phrase meaning decreasing river. King Alfred the Great was born at the royal palace there in the 9th century. Wantage appears in the Domesday Book of 1086. Its value was £61 and it was in the king's ownership until Richard I passed it to the Earl of Albemarle in 1190.
In 1877 he paid for a marble statue of King Alfred by Count Gleichen to be erected in Wantage market place, where it still stands today. He also donated the Victoria Cross Gallery to the town. This contained paintings by Louis William Desanges depicting deeds which led to the award of a number of VCs, including his own gained during the Crimean War. It is now a shopping arcade. Since 1848, Wantage has been home to the Community of Saint Mary the Virgin, one of the largest communities of Anglican nuns in the world. Wantage once had two breweries which were taken over by Morlands of Abingdon.
Wantage is at the foot of the Berkshire Downs escarpment in the Vale of the White Horse. There are gallops at Black Bushes and nearby villages with racing stables at East Hendred, Letcombe Bassett, Lockinge and Uffington. Wantage includes the suburbs of Belmont to the west and Charlton to the east. Grove to the north is still just about detached and is a separate parish. Wantage parish stretches from the northern edge of its housing up onto the Downs in the south, covering Chain Hill, Edge Hill, Wantage Down, Furzewick Down and Lattin Down. The Edgehill Springs rise between Manor Road and Spike Lodge Farms and the Letcombe Brook flows through the town. Wantage is home to the Vale and Downland Museum. There is a large market square containing a statue of King Alfred, surrounded by shops some with 18th-century facades. Quieter streets radiate from it, including one towards the large Church of England parish church. Wantage is the Alfredston of Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure.
Wantage is at the crossing of the B4507 valley road, the A417 road between Reading and Cirencester and the A338 road between Hungerford (and junction 14 of the M4 motorway) and Oxford. Bus services link Wantage with Oxford as well as other towns and villages including Abingdon, Didcot, Faringdon and Grove. Stagecoach in Oxfordshire provide the main services between Wantage and Oxford with up to three buses per hour Monday to Saturday and up to two buses per hour on Sunday's and bank holidays, operated under Stagecoach's luxury Stagecoach Gold brand. Stagecoach provides a late-night service on Friday and Saturday evenings with buses running to Oxford until 2am and buses from Oxford to Wantage until 3am.
Wantage does not have a railway station; Didcot Parkway, 8 miles to the east, is the nearest station, with services towards London, Bristol and Cardiff. The Great Western Mainline is just north of Grove (2 miles North of Wantage) where the former Wantage Road railway station used to be. It was closed during the Beeching cuts in 1964. The Wantage Tramway used to link Wantage with Wantage Road station. The tramway's Wantage terminus was in Mill Street and its building survives, but little trace remains of the route. Wantage has been the site of a church since at least the 10th century and the present Church of England parish church of Saints Peter and Paul dates from the 13th century, with many additions since. SS Peter and Paul also contains seventeen 15th-century misericords.
( Wantage - UK ) is well know as a tourist destination because of the variety of places you can enjoy while you are visiting Wantage . Through a series of videos we will try to show you recommended places to visit in Wantage - UK
Join us for more :
Death Penny Of Local Fallen Solider Displayed In Wantage
To commemorate Armistice this week, The Vale and Downland Museum in Wantage is displaying a Death Penny which was used to honour those who died in the First World War.
This particular Death Penny was awarded to the next of kin of Albert Stoter, who was born in East Hendred in 1892 and died fighting during the war.
The pennies are inscribed around the edge to say 'He Died for Freedom and Honour' and came in a cardboard envelop along with a signed letter from King George the 5th.
Our reporter, Kate Goodyer, went down to the museum to find out more.
Three More Exhibits from the Vale and Downland Museum
The Ducklington Beads
The skeletons are arranged like scribbles,
Skulls facing eastwards, disarticulated
Echoes of the foetus-curve: a boy, aged
Fifteen, front teeth absent; a young woman,
Five feet high; a child of three, in fragmentary
State, sex indeterminate. They have been
Buried with buckets and spindles, a beaver's
Tooth clenched in gold, fragments of bronze.
She wears a necklace. We strip it from her --
Mount it in parts in different museums.
Beautiful beads: how these were treasured!
Count them: eleven. Five like flesh, streaked
With fat, cured on a smoky fire. Two are white
With spots of ochre. One is sky, and clouds --
Another bright as saffron from a rare flower's
Anther. This drab one is green -- as withered
Leaves in winter, covered with mould. The last
Is all eye and lid and spiral, with a watching
Yellow pupil. Watch us out of the dank ground;
Ward off the prying eye. Our words are scribbles.
Poem by Giles Watson, 2012. The beads from the 7th Century Romano-British Ducklington burial can be seen in the Vale and Downland Museum in Wantage. An archaeological report on the finds can be seen at oxoniensia.org/volumes/1975/chambers1.pdf
Chatelaine
It is a happy marriage between beauty and utility.
All the vain and useful things hang from a string
Between her brooches, where her hair can tangle
With them: a fetching little detail, just below
The hollow of her throat. Tweezers, easily detached
For plucking eyebrows, a roll of metal which holds
A brush for blackening lashes, a useful pin,
Beads of animal bone, fingered absentmindedly --
And guarding that secret of her heart, a latched
Padlock, the key long corroded in mould.
Poem by Giles Watson, 2012. Inspired by a display of 5th-7th Century chatelaine items from Didcot and Watchfield, Oxfordshire, in the Vale and Downland Museum, Wantage.
Turnshoe
To walk with God, take shoes which look
Seamless as the robe of Christ
And cross the parched and endless lake.
Leave no footprints in the dust,
And if the stitches chafe your heel,
You must not flag or turn about:
Take off your britches and your cloak,
Pause to don them inside-out.
Walk away, both torn and whole,
From where your bones lie under clods.
All the souls who die and wake
Get blisters when they walk with God.
Poem by Giles Watson, 2012. Turnshoes were turned inside-out after they were made, in order to preserve the stitches from wear. The 9th Century shoe which inspired this poem is in the Vale and Downland Museum, Wantage. Shoes of this design may well have been worn by King Alfred the Great. Anglo-Saxon Christian burials perpetuated the pagan custom of interment with grave goods.
Cafes & Sandwich Bars in Wantage & Grove - Part 1 of 2
Discover Wantage’s wonderful restaurants, cafés, sandwich bars, pubs and bars.
Cafés & Sandwich Bars – part 1 of 2 includes:
Chris’s Sarneys, Market Place, Wantage
The Panini Shop, Market Place, Wantage
The Vale & Downland Museum Café, Church Street, Wantage
The Buzz Café, Mill Street, Wantage
The Beacon Coffee Shop, Portway, Wantage
Also in the Market Place you will find Costa Coffee.
Visit the other restaurants, cafés, sandwich bars, pubs and bars in Wantage:
Restaurants Part 1 of 2 -
Restaurants – Part 2 of 2 -
Café & Sandwich Bars – part 1 of 2 -
Café & Sandwich Bars – part 2 of 2 -
Pubs with Grub -
Pubs & Bars - part 1 of 2 -
Pubs & Bars - part 2 of 2 -
Video produced by for the Wantage Town Team, supported by Vale of White Horse District Council
Wantage Tales
Wantage Tales Documentary Film and Photography is a series of video interviews combined with photo portraits, featuring members of our community and our personal, informal and very local stories. Sylwia Presley is our local exhibiting photographer and active citizen journalist working with various types of visual and audio content.
“I feel it is important to capture and share a more human angle of WantageTales featuring its faces, voices and personal stories. As a blogger, I think technology gives us an amazing opportunity to share more than just text. I live in Wantage and my photography reflects so many of my own stories, favourite places and amazing views. I am sure you have a lot of stories to share too. If I may say so – I think YOU ARE the story of Wantage, here and now, every single day. This is why I feel so strongly about capturing and immortalising the spirit of our town. I am convinced that the best way to do it is through multiple voices from within the community.”
Participants:
Erika Montenegro, Performance Artist and Dancer
Sarah Hobbs, Music Teacher and Singer
Steven, Beeman
Stuart Roper, Artist and Illustrator
Fiona Roper, Mayor of Wantage
John Vandore, Manager at Cryox at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Ed Vaizey, Member of Parliament for Didcot and Wantage, HM Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries
David Elliot, Writer, Author and Publisher
Monika Becker, Practitioner for Alternative Therapies
Flora Nuttgens, Textile Conservator and Mum
Jane Elliot, Art Historian and Editor
Ralph Cobham, Chairman of the Betjeman Park Trust
Dan Braghis, Drupal Developer at Torchbox agency
Dawid Presley, Organiser of Wantage Minecraft Club
Kieran Hearty, professional speaker, executive coach, leadership development expert, author and standup comedian
Dr Dick Squires, retired GP, founder of Vale & Downland Museum and many local community initiatives
Sue Humphries
Roger Humphries, Master Builder
Alison King, Owner of the Buzz Cafe at Mill Street
Sylwia Presley would like to express her gratitude to all participants for their time and support in this project. Thank you!
***
‘Sylwia is intensely curious about the world, even its quieter corners like Wantage. She shows us inspiring qualities and beauties in our familiar town, using digital and social media to engage people, especially children, with their historic surroundings. Her montage of video interviews draws out our common experiences of life here, yet also demonstrates how varied our responses to the town can be. Working with Sylwia on this project has been an energising and fascinating experience.’
Flora Nuttgens, Textile Conservator and Mum, participant
***
‘Well done!’
Dr. Dick Squires, retired GP, founder of Vale & Downland Museum and many local community initiatives, participant
***
‘Just to say again what a great job you’ve done with the film – well done! Such a good idea and very interesting to see what different people think about Wantage.’
Fiona Roper, Mayor of Wantage, participant
***
‘Well done! Glorious!’
Ed Vaizey, Member of Parliament for Didcot and Wantage; HM Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries; participant
***
‘Sylwia, I want to complain. I didn’t have an hour to spend – but I watched it right through just the same. It’s an amazing piece of work. Well done!’
John Vandore, Manager at Cryox at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, participant
***
‘What a wonderful film you’ve made there, with such beautiful, interesting people! Well done! And little Dawid is just too adorable – I like his little musical interludes.’
Monika Becker, Practitioner for Alternative Therapies, participant
***
‘Just a short note to say congratulation on your show, it’s a great success!
I loved the video and the arrangement of the portraits, so very different from the usual exhibitions in the museum.
Brilliant.’
Stuart Roper, Artist and Illustrator, participant
***
‘Fascinating. Good work!‘
Matt Thorne
Community Exhibition Exploring The Life Of Oxfordshire Born Champion Jockey Lester Piggott
The Vale & Downland Museum aim to celebrate and interpret the human and natural history of the local area in their community exhibitions.
With 4,493 wins to his name, including 9 Epsom Derby and 7 Guineas victories, Lester Piggott is regarded as one of the greatest Flat racing jockeys ever. The Wantage born rider is considered a local star and the museum in Wantage have dedicated a exhibition to celebrate his career.
We went to find out how important it is for museums to recognise local people.
Buckles
Buckles
A buckle for a king is no buckle at all:
An ornamental token sewn on where
A buckle might have been. It recalls
A dragon with interlacing scales, eyes
That never tarnish. It takes a whole
Boat to bury its owner, but the tongue
Of his buckle is silent, welded in place.
Lesser buckles have ways of speaking:
Buckles that puckered tucked garments;
Buckles on shoes; functional buckles
At the ends of belts, half way down
Leather straps for slinging satchels;
Buckles for attaching scabbards, closing
Purses, joining mismatched bits
Of leather; burnished buckles; buckles
With a green patina; pock-marked buckles
Six feet under; buckles that stopped
Swords, held babies in place; chafing
Buckles one notch too tight; buckles
At the throats of dogs; dainty buckles;
Buckles strong enough to hold
A heavy horse and never buckle.
Give me a buckle fit for function:
Of bronze or iron – not of gold –
Give me a good black strap of leather,
Punched for snugness, and a buckle
To hold my heart together: to stay
Intact, though I turn cold.
Poem by Giles Watson, 2012. Inspired by a comparison of the entirely ornamental great gold buckle of the Sutton Hoo ship-burial with a small collection of utilitarian buckles from Watchfield and Didcot (5th to 7th Centuries) in the Vale and Downland Museum, Wantage.
Wantage's Neighborhood Plan
Scott Morgan went to talk to residents of Wantage who have devised a town plan for future developments of the town
The Drunks of Morecambe Bay by Pete Orton
Pete Orton singing his own composing at the Music and Laughter concert at Lains Barn 11th February 2011. Pete was the special guest of local folk band Pandemonium. The concert raised £2,000 for The Vale and Downland Museum.
The Hanney Brooch
The Hanney Brooch
The earth is a deep red womb.
They lie her back in it, arms limp
At her sides. Perhaps there is a wound,
Or a blench of disease, a bluing lip,
And beautiful eyes already sinking
In her skull, which will cave in
With the weight of loam. A spindle
Is wrapped in lifeless fingers.
There are glazed pots, jars of glass
And a useful knife. Fertile soil
Clogs her ears, enters her sagging
Mouth. Ground waters leach and spoil
Her braided hair. And when she is reborn
Into air, the brooch that held her cloak
Glints with garnets. The old brown
Dust clogs the cloisons in their concentric
Rings of gold. A boss of cuttlefish bone
Gleams white amongst the mould,
The foil and filigree broken
By the plough. All that heart and mind
Waiting among the worms and mud
To be shovelled up: she was twenty-five.
Will she spin again? Will some smith mend
The gildings, some god make her alive?
Poem by Giles Watson, 2012. The Hanney brooch was found in 2009 amongst the remains of a female aged around twenty-five years in a field near West Hanney, Oxfordshire. It is now housed in the Vale and Downland Museum, Wantage. Its owner lived in the seventh century, and was possibly a high-ranking member of the local Saxon Gewisse tribe. Whilst the pattern on her brooch is cruciform, and conforms to the height of Christian Anglo-Saxon fashion, her mourners also followed the more pagan custom of inhuming a range of other, more useful burial goods alongside her body.
The skeleton in the film is that of a 25 year old Anglo Saxon woman, but is from a different grave from that in which the Hanney Brooch was discovered. Both the brooch and this skeleton are currently on display in the same gallery of the Vale and Downland Museum.
Incisor
Incisor
Precious as amber: a curved tooth
For cleaving timber, notched
As a worn chisel. This sliver
Of calcium peeled the bark,
Sliced the grain, channered
As the tree fell, lopped off branches,
Helped to clasp the limbless
Wooden torso in a chomping
Grip; bore the strain as the whole
Thing was dragged across
The ground, into the river,
Tugged against currents, wedged
The trunk between banks, slung
Down other boles for reinforcement --
And ended up clasped in gold,
Hung from string around a child's
Exposed and breathing throat.
Blood pulsed through the jugular
Just beneath it. Air whistled
Through the trachea. Peristalsis
Was a surge all down the gullet,
Until the child stopped swallowing,
And the breathing rasped its last,
And the corpuscles clumped in clots
All about the valve. Some things
Never change: all the amulets
Strung for luck will not avert
The irreversible felling.
Poem by Giles Watson, 2012. A beaver's tooth in a gold setting was one of the grave goods associated with the remains of a small child at the 7th Century Romano-British Ducklington burial. The amulet can be seen in the Vale and Downland Museum in Wantage.
The Hoodie Song by Pete Orton
Pete Orton singing his own composing at the Music and Laughter concert at Lains Barn 11th February 2011. Pete was the special guest of local folk band Pandemonium. The concert raised £2,000 for The Vale and Downland Museum.
Sweaxhibition: Local Youth club celebrates over 50 years
An exhibition has opened in South Oxfordshire celebrating fifty years of youth club history in Wantage. From Mods and rockers to modern day the exhibition examines the key role the youth club has played in the formative years of generations of people in South Oxfordshire. Our reporter Alex Meakin has more.