Old Windsor is a historic village and civil parish located in the county of Berkshire. Situated approximately 2 miles southeast of Windsor, the town lies on the banks of the River Thames about 20 miles west of the capital. Despite being one of the oldest Saxon settlements in the area, the architecture of the town is currently dominated by detached and semi-detached family homes built after the end of the Second World War. The town is organised along Straight Road, which runs through the middle of the town. To the east lies Saint Peter and Andrew’s Church which is said to have been built in 1218 on the site of a chapel attached to the hunting lodge of Edward the Confessor. To the west of Straight Road you will find the Old Windsor Recreation Ground, which is a perfect spot for kids to play and for dogs to run. Despite most of the town’s medieval past being hidden, this quiet residential area still has a strong sense of community and six pubs to prove it.

Looking further back into the area’s history, the name ‘Windlesora’ first appears in The Anglo Saxon Chronicle, which was written in Wessex during the reign of Alfred the Great who ruled between the years of 871 and 899. The word itself is most likely a bastardisation of ‘Windles-ore’ which means ‘winch by the riverside’ when translated from old English. At the time, this probably referred to Old Windsor but by 1110 meetings of the Great Council, which had previously been described as taking place at Windlesora, were said to take place at the castle, referred to as New Windsor. Soon afterwards, people began referring to Windlesora as Old Windsor.

As mentioned, Old Windsor was once the site of an important palace of the Saxon Kings. While documentation proves the palace was used by Edward the Confessor, archeological evidence leads some to believe that the palace might be as old as the 9th century. You can look at this archeological evidence for yourself at the Reading museum as the site was fully excavated in 1958.

At the southern end of the village sits the historic Beaumont Estate. First mention of the estate is recorded around the year 1300, when much of the surrounding area was under the ownership of Hugo de Remenham. Over the next 400 years the land would change hands numerous times before eventually being bought by the Duke of Roxburghe for his son, the Marquess of Beaumont, who renamed it Beaumont Lodge in 1751. Yet by the mid 1800s the property had been sold to the Society of Jesus, who use the manor house as a Catholic boarding school for boys. In 1967, the school closed, and moved to merge with Stonyhurst College, in Lancashire. The estate was subsequently bought by the computer company ICL, and then by Hayley Conference Centres, in 2003.