Village people
The history of families in the village can be explored through the parish records, wills and other documents, particularly the manorial families such as the Dunches.
Records include tax lists (Lay subsidies; Hearth Tax), and population estimates that have been worked out in 1550, and childbirth rates from 1540-1820. Some insight into social life comes from Poor accounts (18th-century) and bastardy certificates, while there are fascinating censuses of village literacy in 1815, and of households receiving a bread dole in 1813.
Little Wittenham Manor
Apsley Cherry-Garrard inherited Little Wittenham Manor in 1907 together with the Denford estate in Berkshire. The manor had been originally acquired by the Cherry family in 1838.
Cherry-Garrard (1885-1959)
He participated in Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole in 1911 and survived to write an account of the epic in 'The Worst Journey in the World'. This brought him fame and the friendship of people like George Bernard Shaw and T.E.Lawrence, but he became increasingly frustrated by the erosion of the privileges of country-landowners and their increasing tax burden.
He lived in Hertfordshire and London but after WWI contemplated a move to Little Wittenham, intending to build a house at the top of a slope called Trotman’s Stairs in Little Wittenham Wood. This never materialised and around 1923 he sold the remainder of the estate.
