Mattingley Village, United KingdomToday, a visitor to Mattingley will find a quiet village with a pub called the "Leather Bottle", a home called "Mattingley Green Cottage", and the "Mattingley Church". The pictures shown below were sent to me in August of 1996 by Spencer Woodford, a graduate student in the College of Aeronautics, Cranfield University in the United Kingdom. Spencer, thank you so very much. I'm including Spencer's description of the village to best capture its charm.
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I was able to visit the village of Mattingley two weekends ago. The village itself is situated about 15 miles south-west of London, just off the M3 Motorway, near the towns of Odiham (RAF base there) and Hook. It is also close to Farnborough (where the airshow is held), and to the M25 Motorway, which is the main London ring-road (as featured in Chris Rea's song, "The Road to Hell", because it's always so busy!). The village is small, and I estimated a population in the hundreds, although these places can be very deceiving. I expect that property prices would be very high due to the location of the village (right on the commuter belt), and because of the rural air about the place. We were really impressed when we went, and were made to feel very welcome in the local Pub (short for Public House), the Leather Bottle. The first pictures show the Pub, and the main road through Mattingley (not a very big road!). The Pub has a large beer garden at the rear, but I didn't take any photos of that, as I had to borrow a camera and was limited on shots - the film was already half-way through. We drove on past the Pub along the main road and soon turned right into the village area itself. The houses are very widely separated by fields and woods, so I couldn't really get any shots of the rest of the village with the camera I had. However, we came across' Mattingley Green Cottage' (sign photographed for authenticity!), which is one of the only cottages with a thatched roof that we saw in Mattingley itself, although there are many others in the surrounding villages. The cottage was really lovely, and the pictures don't really do justice to the feel of the place - it's great, and I want it! Just up the road from the cottage is Mattingley Church, which I was completely taken with. It is a beautiful Tudor wood-frame building, with the characteristic angled brickwork, and the road sign says that the Church is 14th Century. Whatever it's age, the Church is beautiful, and the Church yard was really well kept, too. Inside, there is seating for about 100, with the traditional Old English Layout - altar at the front, side-facing choir pews, organ and pulpit next to this, followed by the congregation pews. The organ is great, too and is at least 100 years old - probably much older than this! The stained glass and beams give it a fantastic feel, and the Bible, and many of the plaques and commemorative stones in the church are from the 1700's. We searched the grave-yard for any of your ancestors, but the earliest identifiable graves were from the mid-to-late 1700's. Many of the others were too badly weathered to make out the inscriptions, so no result for the name "Mattingley". Spencer Woodford, August 6, 1996 |
 Mattingley Village
 Leather Bottle Pub  |
 Mattingley Green Cottage
 Inside of Mattingley Church  |
 Mattingley Church Entrance
 Mattingley Church Rear  |
The village of Mattingley is located about 65 km WSW of London (South of Reading). Two maps from MapQuest.com are included below to show its location (red star in center). The second map can be obtained by clicking that picture and can be used to connect to the MapQuest web site, zoom-in, print, etc.
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WSW of London  |
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