Goring-on-Thames (or Goring) is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

on the

River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the The Isis, River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the Longest rivers of the United Kingdom, se ...

South Oxfordshire South Oxfordshire is a local government district in the ceremonial county of Oxfordshire, England. Its council is temporarily based outside the district at Abingdon-on-Thames pending a planned move to Didcot, the district's largest town. The a ...

, England, about south of Wallingford and northwest of

Reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters, symbols, etc., especially by sight or touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process involving such areas as word recognition, orthography (spell ...

. It had a population of 3,187 in the 2011 census, put at 3,335 in 2019.

Goring & Streatley railway station Goring & Streatley railway station is on the Great Western Main Line serving the twin villages of Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire and Streatley, Berkshire in England. The station is in Goring-on-Thames, adjacent to the village centre and some fiv ...

is on the main

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

–

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

line. Most land is farmland, with woodland on the

Goring Gap The Goring Gap is the narrow valley, occupied by the River Thames, between the Chiltern Hills and the Berkshire Downs. It is approximately upstream of Reading and downstream of Oxford. The river here delimits Berkshire from Oxfordshire. The vi ...

outcrop of the

Chiltern Hills The Chiltern Hills is a chalk escarpment in England. The area, northwest of London, covers stretching from Goring-on-Thames in the southwest to Hitchin in the northeast - across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, and Bedfordshi ...

. Its riverside plain encloses the residential area, including a high street with shops, pubs and restaurants. Nearby are the village churches – one dedicated to St

Thomas Becket Thomas Becket (), also known as Saint Thomas of Canterbury, Thomas of London and later Thomas à Becket (21 December 1119 or 1120 – 29 December 1170), was an English nobleman who served as Lord Chancellor from 1155 to 1162, and the ...

has a nave built within 50 years of the saint's death, in the early 13th century, along with a later bell tower. Goring faces the smaller Streatley across the Thames. The two are linked by

Goring and Streatley Bridge Goring and Streatley Bridge is a road bridge across the River Thames in England. The bridge links the twin villages of Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, and Streatley, Berkshire, and is adjacent to Goring Lock. The present bridge was built in 19 ...

Geography

Goring is on the left bank of the

in the

between the

Berkshire Downs The Berkshire Downs are a range of chalk downland hills in South east England split between the counties of Berkshire and Oxfordshire. They are part of the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The western parts of the downs ...

and

, about north-west of

and south of

. Across the river is the

Berkshire Berkshire ( ; in the 17th century sometimes spelt phonetically as Barkeshire; abbreviated Berks.) is a historic county in South East England. One of the home counties, Berkshire was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II as the Royal County of Ber ...

village of Streatley, often seen as a twin village. They are linked by

and its adjacent lock and weir. The

Thames Path The Thames Path is a National Trail following the River Thames from its source near Kemble in Gloucestershire to the Woolwich foot tunnel, south east London. It is about long. A path was first proposed in 1948 but it only opened in 1996. The ...

Icknield Way The Icknield Way is an ancient trackway in southern and eastern England that runs from Norfolk to Wiltshire. It follows the chalk escarpment that includes the Berkshire Downs and Chiltern Hills. Background It is generally said to be, wi ...

and the Ridgeway cross the Thames at Goring. The

Great Western Main Line The Great Western Main Line (GWML) is a main line railway in England that runs westwards from London Paddington to . It connects to other main lines such as those from Reading to Penzance and Swindon to Swansea. Opened in 1841, it was the o ...

serves

with

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran ...

trains between

London Paddington Paddington, also known as London Paddington, is a Central London railway terminus and London Underground station complex, located on Praed Street in the Paddington area. The site has been the London terminus of services provided by the Great We ...

and

Didcot Didcot ( ) is a railway town and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county of Oxfordshire and the Historic counties of England, historic county of Berkshire. Didcot is south of Oxford, eas ...

Early history

The name Goring first appears in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

of 1086 as ''Garinges'', then as ''Garingies'' in a charter once held in the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

. It translates as "Gara's people".

Religious sites

The

Church of England parish church A parish church in the Church of England is the church which acts as the religious centre for the people within each Church of England parish (the smallest and most basic Church of England administrative unit; since the 19th century sometimes ca ...

St Thomas of Canterbury Thomas Becket (), also known as Saint Thomas of Canterbury, Thomas of London and later Thomas à Becket (21 December 1119 or 1120 – 29 December 1170), was an English nobleman who served as Lord Chancellor from 1155 to 1162, and then ...

displays

Norman architecture The term Norman architecture is used to categorise styles of Romanesque architecture developed by the Normans in the various lands under their dominion or influence in the 11th and 12th centuries. In particular the term is traditionally used f ...

of the early 12th century,Sherwood & Pevsner, 1974, p. 614. with the bell-stage of a

bell tower A bell tower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a Christian church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell tow ...

added in the 15th century. This has a ring of eight bells, one dating from 1290. The wood for the

rood screen The rood screen (also choir screen, chancel screen, or jubé) is a common feature in late medieval church architecture. It is typically an ornate partition between the chancel and nave, of more or less open tracery constructed of wood, stone, o ...

was taken from HMS ''Thunderer'' (1783), one of Nelson's fleet at Trafalgar. A church hall was added in 1901.Sherwood & Pevsner, 1974, p. 615. The Anglican Churches of Goring, Streatley and South Stoke form a united

benefice A benefice () or living is a reward received in exchange for services rendered and as a retainer for future services. The Roman Empire used the Latin term as a benefit to an individual from the Empire for services rendered. Its use was adopted by ...

. A

priory A priory is a monastery of men or women under religious vows that is headed by a prior or prioress. Priories may be houses of mendicant friars or nuns (such as the Dominicans, Augustinians, Franciscans, and Carmelites), or monasteries of ...

of Augustinian nuns was built late in the 12th century with its own priory church adjoining St Thomas's. This survived until demolished with the early 16th-century Dissolution of the Monasteries. The foundations of the priory church,

cloister A cloister (from Latin ''claustrum'', "enclosure") is a covered walk, open gallery, or open arcade running along the walls of buildings and forming a quadrangle or garth. The attachment of a cloister to a cathedral or church, commonly against ...

, dormitory,

vestry A vestry was a committee for the local secular and ecclesiastical government for a parish in England, Wales and some English colonies which originally met in the vestry or sacristy of the parish church, and consequently became known colloquiall ...

chapter house A chapter house or chapterhouse is a building or room that is part of a cathedral, monastery or collegiate church in which meetings are held. When attached to a cathedral, the cathedral chapter meets there. In monasteries, the whole commun ...

and parlour were excavated in 1892. Goring Free Church belongs to the

Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion The Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion is a small society of evangelical churches, founded in 1783 by Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, as a result of the Evangelical Revival. For many years it was strongly associated with the Calvinist ...

. The congregation was founded in 1788 and its first

chapel A chapel is a Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small. The term has several meanings. Firstly, smaller spaces inside a church that have their own altar are often called chapels; the Lady chapel is a common type ...

built in 1793. At its centenary in 1893, a new church building was added and the original chapel converted into a church hall. It holds two Sunday services. The

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide . It is am ...

of Our Lady and St

John the Apostle John the Apostle ( grc, Ἰωάννης; la, Ioannes ; Ge'ez: ዮሐንስ;) or Saint John the Beloved was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus according to the New Testament. Generally listed as the youngest apostle, he was the son of Zebede ...

was designed by the architect William Ravenscroft and built in 1898. It now forms a single parish with the Roman Catholic Church of Christ the King in

Woodcote Woodcote is a village and civil parish in South Oxfordshire, about southeast of Wallingford and about northwest of Reading, Berkshire. It is in the Chiltern Hills, and the highest part of the village is above sea level. Woodcote lies betwe ...

Amenities

Goring United

Football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly ...

Club plays in the

Reading Football League The Thames Valley Premier Football League is a football competition based in England. It has a total of five divisions – the Premier Division, then Divisions One to Four. It was founded in 1989 as the Reading Senior League, as a merger of the ...

. Goring-on-Thames

Cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by st ...

Club, founded in 1876, has two teams in the Berkshire Cricket League. Goring has a lawn

tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball cov ...

club with teams that play in two local leagues.

Goring and Streatley Golf Club Goring & Streatley Golf Club is a golf course in the village of Streatley, in the English county of Berkshire. It takes its name partly from that village, and partly from the adjoining village of Goring-on-Thames in the county of Oxfordshire. Th ...

is located in adjoining Streatley. Goring on Thames Decorative and Fine Arts Society, founded in 1987, belongs to the

National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies The National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies (NADFAS), operating under the name The Arts Society, is a national organisation in the United Kingdom promoting education in the arts and the preservation of artistic heritage. It was ...

. Goring has a Women's Institute. The local bus service between Goring and Wallingford is run by the Goring-based

community interest company A community interest company (CIC, colloquially pronounced "kick") is a type of company introduced by the United Kingdom government in 2005 under the Companies (Audit, Investigations and Community Enterprise) Act 2004, designed for social ente ...

Going Forward Buses, established in December 2016. Flint House, Goring on Thames, Oxfordshire - geograph

Awards

Oxfordshire Village of the Year 2009

On 10 July 2009, Goring was named

Oxfordshire Oxfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the north west of South East England. It is a mainly rural county, with its largest settlement being the city of Oxford. The county is a centre of research and development, primaril ...

's Village of the Year, ahead of 11 other villages and succeeding

. The £1000 prize was put towards the village's hydro-electric project to generate electricity from the River

Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...

. The competition considered the depth of infrastructure and activity in the village and at Goring's £1 million hydro-electric plans.

Calor success

Goring-on-Thames was the winner in the Sustainability and Communications category and the Overall Regional Winner of the 2011

Calor Village of the Year The Calor Village of the Year comprised 4 annual competitions organised by gas provider Calor to identify the villages that best met the following criteria: "a well-balanced, pro-active, caring community which has made the best of local opportun ...

regional heat for South England.

Britain in Bloom

Goring was a finalist in the small towns category of the

Britain in Bloom Britain most often refers to: * The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands * Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...

contest in 2019.

Notable residents

In the summer of 1893,

Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...

stayed at Ferry House in Goring with

Lord Alfred Douglas Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas (22 October 1870 – 20 March 1945), also known as Bosie Douglas, was an English poet and journalist, and a lover of Oscar Wilde. At Oxford he edited an undergraduate journal, ''The Spirit Lamp'', that carried a homoer ...

. While there, Wilde began writing his play ''

An Ideal Husband ''An Ideal Husband'' is a four-act play by Oscar Wilde that revolves around blackmail and political corruption, and touches on the themes of public and private honour. It was first produced at the Haymarket Theatre, London in 1895 and ran for ...

'', which includes a main character named Lord Goring. An enlarged Ferry Cottage became the retirement home of Sir Arthur Harris, wartime leader of

RAF Bomber Command RAF Bomber Command controlled the Royal Air Force's bomber forces from 1936 to 1968. Along with the United States Army Air Forces, it played the central role in the strategic bombing of Germany in World War II. From 1942 onward, the British bo ...

, from 1953 until his death in 1984. He was buried in Burntwood Cemetery in Goring. The singer

George Michael George Michael (born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou; 25 June 1963 – 25 December 2016) was an English singer and songwriter. He is considered one of the most significant cultural icons of the MTV generation and is one of the best-selling music ...

lived at Mill Cottage close to the river in his later years. He was found dead there at the age of 53 in the early hours of 25 December 2016. In order of birth: *

Sir John Soane Sir John Soane (; né Soan; 10 September 1753 – 20 January 1837) was an English architect who specialised in the Neoclassical architecture, Neo-Classical style. The son of a bricklayer, he rose to the top of his profession, becoming professo ...

(1753–1837), architect, was born in Goring. *

Thomas Rome Thomas Rome (1838 – 14 May 1916) was a member of the Queensland Legislative Council. Rome was born in 1838 in England and ventured to Australia in 1863 with his brother, Charles. He gained pastoral experience working in Taabinga before ...

(1838–1916), Australian politician, died in Goring. * Digby Willoughby (1845–1901), military mercenary, died in Goring. *

Aubrey Strahan Sir Aubrey Strahan KBE FRS (20 April 1852 – 4 March 1928) was a British geologist. He was elected FRS in 1903. He was Director of the Geological Survey of Great Britain from 1914–1920. He won the Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society of ...

(1852–1928), geologist, retired to Goring. *

Noel Denholm Davis Noel Denholm Davis (1876–1950) was a British artist, who worked chiefly as a portraitist. He was born in Nottingham, England, in 1876 and studied at Nottingham School of Art, and then the Royal Academy Schools. He spent a decade working in ...

(1876–1950), portrait painter, died in Goring. * Thomas Miller (1883–1962), first-class cricketer, died in Goring. * C. H. Dodd (1884–1973), theologian who directed the translation of the

New English Bible The New English Bible (NEB) is an English translation of the Bible. The New Testament was published in 1961 and the Old Testament (with the Apocrypha) was published on 16 March 1970. In 1989, it was significantly revised and republished as the R ...

, died in Goring. *

Henry Harwood Admiral Sir Henry Harwood Harwood, KCB, OBE (19 January 1888 – 9 June 1950), was a British naval officer who won fame in the Battle of the River Plate. Early life Following education at Stubbington House School, Harwood entered the Roy ...

(1888–1950), World War II admiral *

Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Travers Harris, 1st Baronet, (13 April 1892 – 5 April 1984), commonly known as "Bomber" Harris by the press and often within the RAF as "Butch" Harris, was Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief (AOC-in-C ...

(1892–1984), World War II RAF air marshal *

William Allmond Codrington Goode Sir William Allmond Codrington Goode was a British colonial administrator who served as Governor of Singapore from 1957 to 1959, and Governor of North Borneo from 1960 to 1963. Early life Goode was born in Twickenham, Middlesex, and attende ...

(1907–1986), first

head of state A head of state (or chief of state) is the public persona who officially embodies a state Foakes, pp. 110–11 " he head of statebeing an embodiment of the State itself or representatitve of its international persona." in its unity and ...

of Singapore, died in Goring. * Ken Walker (1922–1989), first-class cricketer, died in Goring. * Anton Rogers (1933–2007), actor * Sir John Thomson (1941–1994), RAF Air Chief Marshal *

Jon Lord John Douglas Lord (9 June 194116 July 2012) was an English orchestral and rock composer, pianist, and Hammond organ player known for his pioneering work in fusing rock with classical or baroque forms, especially with the British rock band Deep ...

(1941–2012), composer, pianist and rock/classical pioneer, lived in Goring in later life. *

Pete Townshend Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend (; born 19 May 1945) is an English musician. He is co-founder, leader, guitarist, second lead vocalist and principal songwriter of the Who, one of the most influential rock bands of the 1960s and 1970s. Towns ...

(born 1945), musician (

The Who The Who are an English rock band formed in London in 1964. Their classic lineup consisted of lead singer Roger Daltrey, guitarist and singer Pete Townshend, bass guitarist and singer John Entwistle, and drummer Keith Moon. They are considered ...

) * Pete de Freitas (1961-1989), musician ( Echo & the Bunnymen), ashes buried in Goring. *

(1963–2016), musician, vocalist and producer

Freedom of the parish

The privilege of Freedom of the Parish of Goring on Thames has been awarded to: *Stephanie Bridle, 16 October 2017, for work as a parish councillor *

Janet Hurst Janet Hurst (born c. 1947) is a British microbiologist, editor and science educator. She worked for the Society for General Microbiology (now the Microbiology Society) for twenty years (1990–2010), including as managing editor of its magazine '' ...

: 12 April 2020, for work on the Britain in Bloom competition and

Local History Society

Nearby places

Twin towns

Bellême Bellême () is a commune in the Orne department in northwestern France. The musicologist Guillaume André Villoteau (1759–1839) was born in Bellême, as was Aristide Boucicaut (1810-1877), owner of ''Le'' ''Bon Marché'', the world's first depar ...

since 1979 * Stühlingen

References

Sources

* *

External links

Community of Goring and Streatley - local news and events websiteGoing Forward Buses CICGoring and District Twinning Association

Goring and Streatley Amenity AssociationGoring Civil Parish Council - about Goring-on-ThamesGoring Gap News
{{DEFAULTSORT:Goring-On-Thames Villages in Oxfordshire Populated places on the River Thames Civil parishes in Oxfordshire South Oxfordshire District