Highclere1

Highclere is situated in North Hampshire, about 5 miles south of Newbury, the nearest town, on the Newbury to Andover Road (A343).
The village is dominated by Highclere Castle, the traditional home of the Earl of Carnarvon and his family.

Highclere has become, in recent times, a commuter area for the industrial and commercial areas surrounding it - Newbury, Reading and Basingstoke as well as London to which there is a rail link from Newbury.

The general name Clere in Anglo-Saxon documents was used to cover Highclere and Burghclere, so it is difficult to identify the manor of Highclere as distinct from Burghclere. Although in the early thirteenth century the two were separately accounted for on the Pipe Rolls of the Bishopric of Winchester, they followed the same descent. The first Earl of Carnarvon was created Baron Porchester of Highclere in 1780.
The seat of the Earls of Carnarvon is the nineteenth century Highclere Castle, which stands on the site of the palace of the bishops of Winchester, the original owners of the parish. Highclere Park is said to be one of Capability Brown's masterpieces, with a circumference of thirteen miles. On Beacon Hill is the grave of the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, who died in Egypt in 1923 after opening the tomb of Tutankhamen with Howard Carter, another enthusiastic archaeologist. Some say that the Earl died as a result of an ancient curse laid on the tomb centuries ago.
The Earl had expressed a wish to be buried in a coffin made of Highclere oak, so when his body was brought back to England the sixth Earl chose a site on Beacon Hill overlooking the ancestral home.

The present church is the third in Highclere and was built in 1870 by Sir Gilbert Scott for the fourth Earl and his memorial in it is a pair of windows showing a choir of angels.

There are no shops and no post office. In fact, Highclere has almost become a rural commuter suburb with some farming.

There are two private schools in the village.

One is a preparatory school (Thorngrove) for children up to the age of 13 years and the other is a specialist school linked to the Catholic Church. Otherwise, children from the village attend the Infant and Junior schools in Woolton Hill.