Aldworth

Aldworth is a village and mainly farmland civil parish in the English county of Berkshire, near the boundary with Oxfordshire.

Aldworth was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 by scribes whose orthography was heavily geared towards French, lacking k and w, regulated forms for sounds ð and θ and ending many hard consonant words with e, as Elleorde, hinting at El(d)ward, the Old English for Old Ward i.e. Old farmed out (let) land Scribes in the 12th century rendered it at least once as Aldewurda.

King Alfred's defeat of the Danes at the Battle of Ashdown in January 871, is said by some to have occurred near The Ridgeway and Lowbury Hill.

[citation needed] The De La Beche family remained powerful landowners and knights in the 14th century.

[citation needed] The figures are supposed to be life-size representations, but some of the knights are over seven feet tall, which has led to them being known as the Aldworth Giants.

[4] A large number of the effigies were damaged by Parliamentarian iconoclasts during the English Civil War of the 17th century.

[4] By the late 20th century, the trunk was mostly hollow, and it broke during the Gale of January 1976, though some roots survived, enabling the tree to regrow with fresh growth.

Long Copse in the south of the parish, with bluebells .
The Aldworth giants are on all sides of the pews in St Mary's Church, and are effigies to members of the same family.