The Romans built a road through the parish between Silchester to Dorchester-on-Thames and a wealthy Romano-Briton erected a farm and villa alongside this.

[6] Before the Norman Conquest the manor of Basildon was held by a free woman named Aileva.

[citation needed] The present house was built and the park laid out for Sir Francis Sykes in 1776.

[5] The churchyard is notable as the resting place of Jethro Tull, the 18th century agriculturalist, whose modern gravestone can be seen there.

[citation needed] This replaced the temporary place of worship, located on the corner of Bethesda Street and Blandy's Lane, which was built in 1895.

His grandson dissipated his fortune[citation needed] and so mistreated his wife that he ended up caricatured as Bill Sikes in Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist.

The Morrison family built up an art collection which included works by Constable, Da Vinci, Hogarth, Holbein, Poussin, Rembrandt, Reynolds, Rubens, Titian, Turner and Van Dyck.

[citation needed] Part of the surviving collection hangs at Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire, where their descendants live.