This had been created under the Public Health Act 1872, giving public health and local government responsibilities for rural areas to the existing boards of guardians of poor law unions.

[3] These boundaries were used to define the new rural district from its creation on 28 December 1894, but the process of formally adjusting the county boundaries to match took a little longer, so for the first few months of its existence Hungerford Rural District straddled Berkshire, Hampshire, and Wiltshire, but by October 1895 it was entirely in Berkshire.

[4] The link with the poor law union continued, with all the elected councillors of the Hungerford and Ramsbury rural districts together comprising the board of guardians for the Hungerford Poor Law Union, which renamed itself the Hungerford and Ramsbury Poor Law Union in 1896.

He had previously been the chairman of the board of guardians, and was also re-elected to that post on the same day.

[10][11][12][13] In 1953 the council moved to The Priory, a large Victorian house on the south-eastern outskirts of Hungerford, where it remained until its abolition in 1974.