The Swan hotelPart of Golf Club course and agricultural and wooded hills with footpaths in background.St. Mary's parish church
History
Being in such a vital crossing point on the Thames, a settlement at Streatley has existed for a long time. The village is mentioned in the Domesday book. Neolithic tools have been found at the base of Lough Down and Bronze Age artefacts in the village. A sarsen stone, traditionally thought to be the remains of a Roman milestone, is still present at the Bull crossroads.[3] Long before the bridge was built a ferry used to operate between the two villages. Sixty people were drowned at Streatley in 1674 when a ferry capsized in the flash lock.[4] The iron wheel pump, on the forecourt of The Bull, was the only reliable water source in the great freeze of 1895, and water was sold from this point for sixpence a bucket.
Two-thirds of Streatley used to be owned by the Morrell family of brewers from Oxford, whose resistance to change enabled the village to withstand the railway line and extra houses that went to Goring-on-Thames. The watermill was originally owned by the nuns of Goring. In later years it was used to drive a generator to provide electricity for the estate. However, it burned down in 1926 and was not rebuilt.[5] On the death of Emily Morrell, in 1938, the estate was sold, and the manor house and some other houses in the village became part of the Royal Veterinary College, which had moved out of London during the Blitz. The college left in 1958.[6] A bomb exploded in a postman's bag on a bicycle in the village in 1979. It was targeted at a retired judge in the village, but went off early, when the postman's bicycle fell over.[7][8] The incident appeared to be the work of the IRA.
Streatley has one public house, The Bull at Streatley on the Reading Road. Its garden is the unusual burial site for a monk and a nun executed in 1440 for "misconduct" and contains an ancient yew tree.[10] Near the Bull is a youth hostel.
Hotel
There is a four-star hotel and restaurant in the village – the Swan at Streatley. During the 1970s, it was owned by the drag artistDanny La Rue. The hotel was then purchased by Diplomat Hotels of Sweden, before being sold in 2001 to Nike Group Hotels, part of the Bracknell-based Nike Group of Companies, whose Chairman is John Nike. Since 2012, the hotel has been owned by Rare Bird Hotels, backed by Punch Taverns and Pizza Express entrepreneur Hugh Osmond. The restaurant area is now branded as Coppa Club. During the summer small electric boats can be rented from here to explore the Thames.
The annual Goring and Streatley Regatta was held each July on the Streatley side of the river. In the 19th century, it was a serious regatta to rival Henley or Marlow, but changed to a local regatta for amateur teams of inhabitants of the two villages. It came to a halt after COVID.[13]
A torchlight procession of villagers and visitors merges with another stream from Goring each Christmas Eve, in a night-time spectacle that continues onto Streatley Recreation Ground for a carol service.
There is a biannual Arts Festival called the Goring Gap Festival.[14]
In literature
The village is the subject of the poem "A Streatley Sonata" by Joseph Ashby-Sterry[15] composed in the late 19th century:
And when you're here, I’m told that you
Should mount the hill and see the view;
And gaze and wonder, if you'd do
Its merits most completely;
The air is clear, the day is fine,
The prospect is, I know, divine –
But most distinctly I decline
To climb the hill at Streatley
But from the Hill, I understand
You gaze across rich pasture-land;
And fancy you see Oxford and
P'r'aps Wallingford and Wheatley:
Upon the winding Thames you gaze,
And, though the view’s beyond all praise,
I'd rather much sit here and laze
We had intended to push on to Wallingford that day, but the sweet smiling face of the river here lured us to linger for a while; and so we left our boat at the bridge, and went up into Streatley, and lunched at the Bull, much to Montmorency's satisfaction....
It is an ancient place, Streatley, dating back, like most river-side towns and villages, to British and Saxon times. Goring is not nearly so pretty a little spot to stop at as Streatley, if you have your choice; but it is passing fair enough in its way, and is nearer the railway in case you want to slip off without paying your hotel bill.
^Golton, Edward (2002). "Roman Milestones near Streatley?". The South Oxfordshire Archaeological Group Bulletin (57). Archived from the original on 24 December 2012. Retrieved 22 October 2009.
^Fred. S. Thacker The Thames Highway: Volume II Locks and Weirs 1920 – republished 1968, David & Charles.
