Windsor, Berkshire
Windsor is a historic town in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in Berkshire, England. It is the site of Windsor Castle, one of the official residences of the British monarch. The town is situated west of Charing Cross, central London, southeast of Maidenhead, and east of the modern county town of Reading. It is immediately south of the River Thames, which forms its boundary with its smaller, ancient twin town of Eton. The village of Old Windsor, just over to the south, predates what is now called Windsor by, possibly, 300 years. Until 1974, Windsor was correctly referred to as New Windsor to distinguish the two.
Etymology
Windlesora is first mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The name has no exact etymology, but the closest estimation is that derives from old English Windles-ore or winch by the riverside. This etymology is shared with Winsor in Hampshire and also Broadwindsor, but topographically all three are different. By 1110, Henry of Huntingdon's chronicle, Historia Anglorum, notes that meetings of the Great Council, which had previously taken place at Windlesora, were taking place at the castle, referred to as New Windsor. By the late 12th century the settlement at Windelsora had been renamed Old Windsor.History
Medieval period
The early history of the site is unknown, although Old English field names in its vicinity that survived to be documented in the medieval period, confirm that a substantial community existed on this site for a considerable time before 1066. By 1070, recognising the strategic importance of the site William the Conqueror had a timber motte-and-bailey castle constructed. The focus of royal interest at that time was not the castle, however, but a small riverside settlement about downstream, possibly established in the late 7th century. From about the 8th century, high status people began visiting the site, although by the ninth, according to the archaeological record, it had been abandoned. From the mid-11th century the site came back into use, and it is occasionally mentioned in the sources, linked with King Edward the Confessor and his love of sports hunting. After the Conquest, royal use of the site increased, probably because it demonstrated royal continuity, and also access to woodlands for hunting, as the use of a short bow on horseback was a valuable military skill.Plantagenet period
The settlement at Old Windsor largely transferred to New Windsor during the 12th century, which required the substantial planning and setting out of the new town, including its parish church, marketplace, and burgage plots. A second development phase took place after the Anarchy, the civil war of King Stephen's reign, when its hospital, c. 1160, hermitage c. 1160 and Thames Bridge c. 1173, came into existence. At about the same time, the castle was rebuilt in stone. Windsor Bridge is the earliest bridge on the Thames between Staines and Reading, built at a time when bridge building was rare; it was first documented in 1191 but had probably been built, according to the Pipe rolls, in 1173. It played an important part in the national road system, before the construction of the Great West Road in c. 1230, linking London with Reading and Winchester. By directing traffic into the new town, it underpinned the success of New Windsor's fledgling economy.The town of New Windsor, as an ancient demesne of the Crown, was a privileged settlement from the start, apparently having the rights of a free borough, for which other towns had to pay substantial fees to the king. It had a merchant guild, a part of civic government, in 1260, this body sometimes incorrectly confused with the 14th century religious Fraternity of the Holy Trinity, based in the parish church.
After receiving its first charter confirming its royal borough status in 1277, Windsor was briefly named as the chief town of the county. Somewhat unusually, however, this charter gave no new rights or privileges, seeming simply to codify rights enjoyed over many years before.
Windsor's position as chief town of Berkshire was short-lived, however, as people found it difficult to reach. Wallingford took over this position in the early 14th century. As a self-governing town Windsor enjoyed a number of freedoms unavailable to other towns, including the right to convene a court of record, the right to inherit land, and the right to elect its corporation. The town accounts of the 16th century survive in part, although most of the once substantial borough archive, dating back to the late 12th century, was destroyed, probably in the late 17th century.
New Windsor was a nationally significant town in the Middle Ages, certainly one of the fifty wealthiest towns in the country by 1332. Its prosperity came from its close association with the royal household. The repeated investment in the castle brought London merchants to the town in the late 13th century and provided much employment for townsmen. The development of the castle under Edward III, between 1350 and 1368, was the largest secular building project in England of the Middle Ages, and many Windsor people worked on this project, again bringing great wealth to the town. Although the Black Death in 1348 had reduced some towns' populations by up to 50%, in Windsor the building projects of Edward III brought money to the town, and possibly its population doubled: this was a 'boom' time for the local economy. People came to the town from every part of the country, and from continental Europe. The poet Geoffrey Chaucer held the honorific post of Clerk of the Works at Windsor Castle in 1391, although there is no record that he ever visited the town.
The development of the castle continued in the late 15th century with the rebuilding of St George's Chapel as a royal mausoleum, as Westminster abbey was considered full and unable to accommodate further royal burials. With this Windsor became a major pilgrimage destination, particularly for Londoners. Pilgrims came to touch the royal shrine of the murdered Henry VI, the fragment of the True Cross and other important relics. Visits to the chapel were probably combined with a visit to the important nearby Marian shrine and college at Eton, founded by Henry VI in 1440, and dedicated to the Assumption; which is now better known as Eton College. Pilgrims came with substantial sums to spend, this providing a substantial boost to the town's economy. From perhaps two or three named inns in the late 15th century, some 30 can be identified a century later. The town again grew in wealth. For London pilgrims, Windsor was probably – but briefly – of greater importance than Canterbury and the shrine of that city's patron saint Thomas Becket.
Tudor and Stuart periods
With the closures of the Reformation, however, Windsor's pilgrims traffic gradually died out, and the town began to stagnate. The castle was considered by royalty to be militaristic and old-fashioned, compared with 'modern' Hampton Court. The early modern period formed a stark contrast to the medieval history of the town. Henry VIII was buried in St George's Chapel in 1547, next to Jane Seymour, the mother of his only legitimate son, Edward. Henry, the founder of the Church of England, may have wanted to benefit from the stream of pilgrims coming to the town. His will gives that impression.Most accounts of Windsor in the 16th and 17th centuries talk of its poverty, badly made streets and poor housing. Shakespeare's play The Merry Wives of Windsor is set in Windsor and contains many references to parts of the town and the surrounding countryside. Since there is no record that Shakespeare ever visited Windsor, and because some of the references in his play are topographically inaccurate, he must have taken his local place-names from a third-party source, perhaps a crude map of the town. The play references the Garter inn, a place that actually existed, but that was destroyed in the Great Fire of Windsor in 1681. The long-standing – and famous – courtesan of king Charles II, Nell Gwyn, was given a house on St Albans Street: Burford House. Her residence in this house, as far as it is possible to tell, was brief however. Only one of her letters addressed from Burford House survives. The house was probably intended as a legacy for her illegitimate son, the Earl of Burford, later the Duke of St Albans.
Windsor was garrisoned by Colonel Venn during the English Civil War. Later it became the home of the New Model Army when Venn had left the castle in 1645. Despite its royal dependence, like many commercial centres, Windsor was a Parliamentarian town. Charles I was buried without ceremony in St George's Chapel after his execution at Whitehall in 1649. The present town hall, colloquially but inaccurately called Guildhall, was built in 1680–91. It replaced the function of a timber -framed market house built on the same site in 1597-9, together with that of Windsor's first, and much larger, guildhall, which faced the castle and had been built around 1350. At this time, the town was extremely poor, and could only just raise the sums required for the new building, part of a much larger scheme, subsequently abandoned, to modernise the medieval town centre, matching the revamping of the castle under Charles II, to a design by Hugh May.
But his successors did not use the place, preferring up-to-date Hampton Court, Windsor castle again falling into disrepair together with its client town. Its population dipped, probably below 1,500 inhabitants, and although some of its building were given new, fashionable front elevations, its housing stock was much decayed and insanitary. The town continued in poverty until the mid 19th century. In 1652 the largest house in Windsor Great Park was built on land which Oliver Cromwell had appropriated from the Crown. Now known as Cumberland Lodge after the Duke of Cumberland's residence there in the mid-18th century, the house was variously known as Byfield House, New Lodge, Ranger's Lodge, Windsor Lodge and Great Lodge.