Speen is a village and civil parish in West Berkshire, England. Centred 2 miles (3 km) north west of the largest town in the district, Newbury, Speen has clustered settlements, the largest of which is Speen village, which is contiguous with Newbury, and the others, buffered from the town by the A34 road, are Bagnor, Stockcross, Woodspeen and Marsh Benham. Its other land is an approximately even mixture of woodland and agricultural fields including hay meadows for livestock feed and pasture.[2] The area varies greatly in elevation, having the Reading to Taunton Line alongside the north bank of the River Kennet as its southern boundary and both banks of the River Lambourn in its north with elevated ground in between. Benham Park in the south-west of the area is a listedlandscape garden and house.
The church was built near one of the holy wells of Christendom, which, is as with many wells, an enlarged spring.[7] Tenuous local tradition says its water is able to cure eye diseases and other ills,[8] and there have been reports it is haunted. Some of the village people have seen an old woman with white hair and wearing a blue rain mac wandering around the grave yard and up the path the well is situated on. The Ladywell was fenced off in the Victorian era.[9]
Speen House
Next to the above sites are ramparts around the elevated Speen House, the latest incarnation of Speen manor house, which is mostly late 18th century, but incorporates a minority of building materials from its 17th century predecessor. Early historians have dated a few stones among the foundations to the Roman village of Spinae, but it is more likely that these oldest stones were sourced and hewn for the late medieval manor house, nothing else of which survives.[10]
The A34 road cuts through the middle of the parish in a roughly straight line north–south. It has the nucleus of the village to its east close to one of the three Newbury junctions and the road proceeds to a junction with the M4 Motorway at Chieveley. There are local bus services to Newbury, Lambourn and Hungerford.
Demography
2011 Published Statistics: Population, home ownership and extracts from Physical Environment, surveyed in 2005[1]
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