Twyford is a large village and civil parish in the English royal county of Berkshire, with a population of 6,618 people. It is in the Thames Valley at on the A4 between Reading and Maidenhead, close to Henley-on-Thames and Wokingham. History The village's toponym is Anglo-Saxon in origin, and means double ford. It is a common name in England. Twyford had two fords over two branches of the River Loddon, on the Old Bath Road to the west of the centre. According to the chronicler Geoffrey Gaimar, after King Æthelred of Wessex and his brother, the future King Alfred the Great, were defeated by the Vikings at the Battle of Reading in 871, they escaped by a ford over the River Loddon at Twyford which was not known to their pursuers. William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, who was a well known philanthropist who donated his life savings to Loddon Village Hall, spent the final years of his life in Ruscombe Fields, a property close to Twyford, and is remembered by a residential street named 'Pennfields'. Twyford was primarily an agricultural settlement until the coming of the railway in 1838 put it on the Great Western main line to the west and subsequently made it a junction for the Henley Branch Line. However, its position on the Bath Road had always brought activity which was centred on the King's Arms, an important coaching inn. The opening of a by-pass in 1929 finally ended the east–west flow of main road traffic through the centre, but Twyford is still on a busy north–south route from Wokingham in the south to Henley-on-Thames in the north. The greatest expansion, however, has taken place since the Second World War, particularly in the last 50 years, with the construction of several estates north and south of the village. Today Twyford today is largely a commuter settlement for workers travelling to Reading, Maidenhead, Wokingham and, further afield, London. Local commerce and hence employment is limited by its closeness to the major conurbations of Reading and Maidenhead, where there are major shopping facilities. It does, however, have a large Waitrose supermarket, Tesco Express, and other shops, cafes, restaurants and a post office. This makes it the local centre for the northern part of Wokingham district. The village is considered an affluent area where property prices are significantly higher than the national average (probably due to the fact that Twyford