Human settlement in England
Dunsden Green or Dunsden is a village in the civil parish of Eye & Dunsden in the South Oxfordshire ward of Sonning Common, about 3 miles (5 km) northeast of
Reading, Berkshire. Until 1866 it was in the Oxfordshire part of Sonning parish.[citation needed]
History
The toponym means "valley of a man named Dyn(n)e". In 1086 the Domesday Book recorded it as Dunesdene, and a document of 1586 records it as Donsden Grene.[citation needed] The Church of England parish church of All Saints[1] was designed by the architect John Turner and built in 1842.[2] Nearby is the former vicarage. The future First World War poet Wilfred Owen lived here from September 1911 to February 1913 when he served as a lay assistant to the parish priest, Rev. Herbert Wigan.[3] The Dunsden Owen Association has been formed to commemorate the poet's links with the area, and a smartphone app can be downloaded which provides an interactive guide to the sites with which he was connected.[4]
The village school was built in 1848. It closed in December 1973[5] and is now the village hall.[6] In 2002 the microbrewery Loddon Brewery was established in a converted 18th century brick and flint barn at Dunsden Green Farm.[7] In November 2007 a new community orchard was established by the planting of a Blenheim Orange apple tree on the village green by Lord Phillimore, the main local landowner.[8] The orchard is beside the village green.
