The canal towpath is a statutory footpath, and also part of the Sustrans National Cycle Route 4 of the National Cycle Network, a long-distance cycle route from London to Fishguard in Wales. The towpath is not a statutory bridle path and has no horses. Education The village has a Church of England primary school, founded in 1814, when the Rev. Thomas Sheppard bequeathed a trust fund generating £20 a year for a school "to learn poor children to read …and to instruct them their duty to God as taught by the church catechism, and our excellent Liturgy", as he wrote. The school had occupied the same site next to the church from 1833 but in 2018 the parish council approved plans by West Berkshire Council to build a larger school on part of the North Street playing fields. The new school opened in the summer of 2020. Theale Green Community School is a comprehensive secondary school and arts college located to the west of the village and has a specialist department catering for students on the autism spectrum. The school's catchment area covers Woolhampton, Bradfield, Beenham, Englefield and Basildon. Places of worship Medieval Chapel of Ease There is documentary evidence from 1291 of a chapel dedicated to St John the Baptist at Theale, belonging to the nunnery of Goring Priory at Goring-on-Thames. This monastery also owned the adjacent manor of Sulham. In the 19th century, villager A. Harrison of the Berkshire Local History Club wrote that the chapel was on the same site as the current church, and that it had some connection with Englefield church. The club was a private antiquarian society, the members of which passed notes about the history of their respective localities to each other. In 1542, after Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, the chapel was granted to Sir Leonard Chamberlain (the High Sheriff of Berkshire) and to Richard Andrews. The following year, it was transferred to the Burgoyne family by Chamberlain and Richard Hayles. In 1545 the Burgoyne family sold the chapel to Richard Bartlett, who in turn sold it to Humphrey Forster of Aldermaston in 1587. In 1609, Forster's son sold the property to Anthony Blagrave of Sonning, from whom the Wilder family purchased it in 1632. The last mention of the chapel as a working place of worship is a reference dated 1675 in the family's deeds. The old chapel edifice was