Description
Wokingham, Oakingham, or Ockingham, a municipal borough, a market-town, and a parish in Berks. The town stands within the limits of Windsor Forest, 7 miles SE from Reading, 14 SW from Windsor, and 32 .from London. It has a station, which is the junction of the Reading and Staines loop-line of the South-Western railway, and the Reading, Guildford, and Reigate branch of the S.E.R., and a head post office. It consists of several irregularly-built streets, meeting in a central market-place, and has a good supply of water derived from an artesian well over 400 feet deep sunk into the chalk. The government was formerly vested in an alderman and burgesses, who derived their authority from ancient Saxon charters, which are referred to in the oldest extant charter, granted by Queen Elizabeth in 1582. Another charter, also in existence, was given by James I., and was that by which the borough was worked until 1885, when the old charters were annulled, and the borough reconstituted under the new Act of 1885. The borough now consists of a mayor, 4 aldermen, and 12 councillors. The corporation act as the urban sanitary authority. The town is the head of a union and petty sessional division, and it has a weekly market which is held on Tuesday. The market at one period was celebrated for its supply of poultry, but it is now of little importance. A block of buildings in the centre of the town, occupying the site of the old town-hall, contains the town-hall, market-house, police station, and reading-room. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Oxford; gross value, £300, in the gift of the Bishop of Oxford. The church is a fine ancient building of stone, chiefly in the Early English style, consisting of chancel, nave, aisles, transepts, S porch, and an embattled western tower. It was partly restored in 1864, and the restoration was completed in 1882. The ecclesiastical parish of St Paul's was formed from the mother parish of All Saints in 1863. The living is a rectory of the gross value of £300. The church, erected in 1864 and enlarged in 1874, is a building of stone in the Decorated style of the 14th and 15th centuries, consisting of chancel, nave, aisles, N porch, and a western tower and spire. The ecclesiastical parish of St Sebastian was formed out of the parishes of All Saints and St Paul's in 1871. The living is a vicarage of the gross value of £250. The church, erected in 1864, is a building of red brick and stone in the Early English style, consisting of chancel and nave only. There are Baptist, Primitive Methodist, and Wesleyan chapels. The charities are numerous, and produce in the aggregate about £450 a year. In 1661 a certain George Staverton left a house at Staines, the rent of which should be applied to the purchase of a bull to be baited at Christmas, and in consequence of this bequest the custom of bull-baiting was carried on until the sport was forbidden by Act of Parliament in 1840. There is an endowed hospital at Chapel Green for twelve poor men, and there are eight alms-houses. The workhouse, erected in 1850, is a plain building of red brick capable of holding 200 persons. Area of the parish, 8487 acres; population, 5314; of the municipal borough, 3254; of the ecclesiastical parish of All Saints, 2912; of St Paul, 1919; of St Sebastian, 379.
Wokingham or Eastern Parliamentary Division of Berks was formed under the Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885, and returns one member to the House of Commons. Population, 60,207. The division includes the following:- Reading (part of)-Swallowfield (East), Swallowfield (West); Windsor-Clewer (part of), Sunninghill, Windsor (Old); Maidenhead-Bisham, Bray, Cookham, Hurley, Remenham, Shottesbrook, White Waltham, Winkfield; Wokingham (or the Forest)-Arborfield, Barkham, Binfield, Broad Hinton, Earley, Easthampstead, Finchampstead, Newland, Ruscomb, Sandhurst, Sonning, Waltham St Lawrence, Warfield, Wargrave, Whistley, Winnersh, Wokingham, Woodley and Sandford; Maidenhead, municipal borough.
