Leverton, Berkshire

Leverton is a small hamlet in West Berkshire, England, close to the border with Wiltshire around 2 mi (3 km) north-west of Hungerford.

Leverton was the Berkshire part of the civil parish of Chilton Foliat which was half in Wiltshire and half in Berkshire, until transferred to Hungerford parish in the 1890s.

It is a remarkably complete survival of an 18th/19th century estate village, belonging to the Chilton Lodge estate, and comprises a Model Farm, Gardener's Bothy, Head Gardener's cottage, Kitchen Garden with a full set of boiler houses and potting sheds, thatched Apple Store and a range of six thatched 'pepperpot' cottages originally inhabited by estate workers. The kitchen garden was restored to production in the late 1980s by the BBC for the 'Victorian Kitchen Garden' series and also featured in subsequent spin-offs such as 'The Victorian Kitchen' and 'The Victorian Flower Garden'. The hamlet also retains a set of stocks though the originals were removed to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford in the 1990s and were replaced by a (non-functioning) replica.

Leverton appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 being assessed at 4½ hides, and probably continued as a rural farming village cultivating open fields until the 18th century when the present estate village commenced construction.

Pepperpot Cottages at Leverton Hamlet

External links

• Victoria County History (British History Online)