Cookham, Berkshire, England

Stanley Spencer, artist, [1891-1959] lived and worked in Cookham and The King's Hall† in the High Street contains the Stanley Spencer Gallery. The High Street in 1996 Nikolaus Pevsner* wrote 'has kept its villagey scale well, even if shops have been made in most of the house fronts', and this atmosphere lingers to the present day.

Lying close to the Thames, Holy Trinity Church dates from the Normans. One of the interesting monuments inside the church and highlighted by Pevsner is by Flaxman to Sir Isaac Pocock, drowned in the Thames 1810 in white relief. 'His reclining body in a boat held up by his niece. The oarsman in shallow relief behind. Beautifully executed, and with genuine feeling.'

There is evidence of ancient settlement at the Round Barrows, to the north of Cookham on Cock Marsh, where there are a 'group of four bowl barrows, the largest of which is 90 feet in diameter and 7 feet high. Three of the barrows were excavated in the 19th century. Two yielded Early Bronze Age cremation burials and the third a Saxon inhumation accompanied by a shield and an urn'*.


*Pevsner, Nikolaus 'The Buildings of England:Berkshire' (1966) Penguin Books, page 122-123
† http://stanleyspencer.org.uk/
‡http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/authors/sian_pattenden/