Childrey is a village and civil parish about 2+1⁄2 miles (4 km) west of Wantage in the Vale of White Horse.

The parish was part of the Wantage Rural District in Berkshire until the 1974 boundary changes transferred the Vale of White Horse to Oxfordshire.

Its highest point is a chalk hill on The Ridgeway about 2 miles (3 km) south of the village, which is at least 750 feet (230 m) high.

On the Berkshire Downs about 1+1⁄2 miles (2.4 km) south of the village are two Bronze Age bowl barrows.

[4][5] The Thames Water company workers and experts from Cotswold Archeology discovered 26 skeletons belong to Iron Age from graves found in Childrey in 2019.

The site called Childrey Warren dates back to the Iron Age of England and is about 3,000 years old.

According to CNN, Cotswold archaeologists have found a woman skeleton with her feet cut off and her arms attached behind her back.

[6][7][8][9] “The discovery challenges our perceptions about the past, and invites us to try to understand the beliefs of people who lived and died more than 2,000 years ago,” Neil Holbrook, head executive of Cotswold Archaeology stated about Childrey graves.

[6][7][8][9] The earliest known records of Childrey Brook are as Cillarīþ in Anglo-Saxon charters from 940 and 944, now reproduced in the Cartularium Saxonicum.

[12] Before the Norman conquest of England the manor of Frethornes was held by an Anglo-Saxon freeman called Brictric.

[2] The manor of Mautravers was held by an Anglo-Saxon freeman called Edmund before the Conquest, and afterwards by Roger de Lacy.

[2] A later John Mautravers supported Roger Mortimer de Chirk in his rebellion against Edward II in 1321–22.

However, in March of that year he was involved in the execution of Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent, for which he forfeited his estates again.

After Maltravers died in 1364, Agnes devoted the manor to the support of three chaplains at a chantry at the parish church of St Mary the Virgin, Lytchett Matravers, Dorset.

[2] Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Waryng married her second husband William Fettiplace, with whose descendants the manor then remained until the 19th century.

The baronetcy became extinct on the death of Sir George Fettiplace, 5th Baronet in 1743, whereupon the manor passed to his sister Diana.

She was married to John Bushel of Cleeve Prior, Worcestershire, but their son Thomas took the surname Fettiplace.

The manor then passed through the families of Dacre, Farmer and Schoolcroft Burton, and in 1924 was owned by a Mr Dunn.

[2] St Mary's is notable for its numerous monumental brasses, including one to William Fynderne (died 1444) and his wife which at 52 inches (1.3 m) long[3] is the largest in old Berkshire.

[18] Samuel Aldworth, a yeoman of Childrey, was apprenticed to the notable clockmaker John Knibb of Oxford in 1673.

Challow railway station was just outside the parish, about on the main road linking Faringdon and Wantage about 2 miles (3 km) north of Childrey village.