Great Bedwyn was once a Parliamentary borough and, in more remote times still, a town of importance. It has a station on the Reading-Taunton Railway and can be reached by circuitous roads from Savernake Forest. Although nominally still a market town, it is really but a large village. It is mentioned in the Saxon records as the scene of a battle between the men of Wessex and those of Mercia in the great struggle for domination in 675. The cruciform church is a fine structure, mostly built of flint and dating from Transitional times. The chancel is Early English and the transepts Decorated, but the nave is of the older style with fine ornamentation. In the chancel will be noticed the effigy of Sir John Seymour (1536), the father of Protector Somerset. A brass commemorates another John Seymour, brother of the Protector. There is also a monument to a daughter of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. In the south transept is an effigy, cross legged, of Sir Adam de Stokke (1312) and a plain slab with an incised cross of another of his family. The church has a quantity of stained glass of much beauty. An ancient Market Hall once stood in the centre of the spacious main street; while it stood the villagers were reminded of the vanished glories of Bedwyn. The road proceeds past Chisbury Hill, a prehistoric camp on the Wansdyke. Within the earthwork is a barn that was once the Decorated church of St. Martin. Mr. A.H. Allcroft thinks that the original building was erected shortly after the drawn battle between Wessex and Mercia that took place on the Downs hereabouts in 675. Froxfield is reached just short of the Berkshire border and the way accompanies the railway and canal through Little Bedwyn, where is a stone-spired church dating from the early thirteenth century. Froxfield Church is outside the village on a hill. It is a small and ancient Norman building, quaint and picturesque. The old Somerset Hospital here was founded in 1686 by Sarah Duchess of Somerset for thirty widows of the clergy and others; about half that number are now maintained in the beautiful old buildings, grouped round a quadrangle high above the road.
At Hungerford, the first town in Berkshire, over nine miles _direct_ from Marlborough, we return to the Kennet. The townsmen are proud of the fact that their liberties were given them by John of Gaunt, who held the Royal Manor, which afterwards became the property of the town, and as proof of the charter they still show the stranger a famous horn presented to the burgesses by the great Duke of Lancaster. A fierce battle is said to have raged on the banks of the Kennet between West Saxons and Danes, where now anglers whip the stream for the fat trout that this part of Kennet breeds. The historic _Bear Inn_ was the lodging of William of Orange on the night of December 6, 1688, when he received the messengers of James II. Hungerford Church is now of small interest. It has been rebuilt within recent times and contains little from the old building. A cross-legged effigy is supposed to represent Sir Robert de Hungerford (1340).