ARDINGTON MANOR

Identity: confirmed — The registry location, associated place, Wallingford Honour court-roll references, and medieval evidence all identify the Ardington manor in the historic county of Berkshire, now within Oxfordshire. The manor was held of the Honour of Wallingford and is distinct from similarly named places such as Artington in Surrey.
Representative point: 51.591700, -1.376400
Basis: documented_manor_house — Ardington House, Church Street, is the surviving principal manor/gentry house associated with the Ardington estate. Historic England identifies the building at OS Grid Reference SU4329588273; the coordinates are approximately 51.5917, -1.3764 WGS84.
Point confidence: high
Boundary status: representative_point_only
Boundary period: 1425-1426 medieval inquisition evidence
Boundary confidence: none
Boundary basis: The 1425/1426 inquisition records the manor of Ardington as held of the king's Honour of Wallingford by one-quarter knight's fee and lists approximately 260 acres of arable, 50 acres of meadow, 400 acres of pasture, the manor site, rents, and court perquisites. This establishes the historical manorial landholding and its approximate scale, but does not provide a mapped perimeter or sufficiently explicit boundary landmarks from which a reliable polygon can be reconstructed. The historic parish boundary and the later Lockinge Estate have therefore not been substituted for the manor boundary.
Sources:
- Mapping the Medieval Countryside: Inquisition concerning the manor of Ardington, Berkshire, 1425-1426: https://inquisitionspostmortem.ac.uk/view/inquisition/22-610/612.html — Records the manor of Ardington, its tenure of the Honour of Wallingford, and its component acreage: 260 acres arable, 50 acres meadow, and 400 acres pasture, together with rents and court perquisites.
- Ardington House, Historic England listing no. 1048188: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1048188 — Identifies the surviving Ardington House in the historic Berkshire settlement of Ardington at OS Grid Reference SU4329588273 and describes its history as the principal estate house built for Edward Clarke.
- Ardington House official history: https://www.ardingtonhouse.com/history — Places the surviving house in Ardington and describes its construction in 1719-1721 for Edward Clarke as the historic house of the estate.
- The National Archives: Ardington Manor record F243627: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/c/F243627 — Registry record supplied for the exact manor identification, associated with Ardington, Berkshire.
- The National Archives: court roll reference SC 2/212/2: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/N14276883 — Records a 1422 court roll for Ardington with other manors of the Ewelme and Wallingford Honour, supporting the manor's identification within that honour.
Warnings / uncertainty:
- No defensible historical manor boundary polygon was located in the accessible evidence.
- The 710 acres recorded in the 1425/1426 inquisition is an acreage statement, not a mapped perimeter.
- Do not use the modern civil parish boundary, the former Berkshire county boundary, or the much later Lockinge Estate boundary as the territorial extent of Ardington Manor.
- Ardington is now administratively in Oxfordshire, but the manor record and historical sources correctly refer to historic Berkshire.