Fawley is a village and civil parish in West Berkshire, England. The hub of the village is centred east of Lambourn and has a sub-community within its bounds, Little or South Fawley. It includes the depopulated small hill settlement of Whatcombe. Fawley is the inspiration for "Marygreen" in Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure. Geography The area is wholly on part of the escarpment of the highest uplands in the county which cross into south-west Oxfordshire, the Berkshire Downs. The nucleus of the village is "Great Fawley" or "North Fawley" with the other settled place in the parish being South Fawley or Little Fawley, further south. The Ridgeway, an 87-mile path, passes in the neighbouring parish to the north. In the south of the parish is a slight peak of the downs, where there is a trigonometrical point to survey the surrounding landscape. Most of the land to the west, including Lambourn, has only north–south public roads with the area in between, which is made up with high fields, commons and small woods, accessible by bridleways and footpaths. History Some Roman graves were discovered in April 1883 on a hill between North and South Fawley. The area formerly contained a rural area known as the liberty of Whatcombe. This briefly appearedin medieval records as an ecclesiastical parish of its own and to have had a church in the time of Henry II who confirmed its appropriation to Hurley Priory. The north manor house and combined rectory belonged to the nunnery of Ambresbury, also known as Amesbury Abbey. The original foundation was dissolved in 1772 and replaced by nuns from Fontevrault Abbey, in France. The ecclesiastical parish of Fawley once had its own benefice, which following appropriation (which took place before 1086) became a vicarage. However its need for its own minister ceased and the area's Church of England priest today is the rector of Great Shefford ministering to the rural benefice of West Downland. Its patrons were in 1870 Mr. and Mrs. Wroughton. Edmund de Polhampton, lord of the south manor, died in 1353 of wounds received in a quarrel at Enborne and his eldest son Richard sold the manor house in 1364 to Edmund Chelrey or Childrey. A Nicholas Radishe sold the south manor in 1594 to Francis Moore...of East Ilsley...knighted on 17 March 1616...M.P. for Boroughbridge in 1588–9...for Reading in 1597–8, 1601, 1604–11 and 1614. He obtained a grant