Faringdon

A town that’s full of local colour

Matthew Rice dissects the architectural properties of the Oxfordshire market town

FARINGDON sits on a ridge looking north over a sweeping vista of the upper Thames Valley; to the south, via the giant barn at Great Coxwell, are the Lambourne Downs and the Ridgeway. The town itself is made more exciting by the slopes on which its pretty square and streets are built.

The houses and shops are composed of pale limestone (it’s only a few miles from the first heave of the Cotswolds) or, if not, of brick or rendered brick. This combination leads to a visual dynamism enhanced by some surprising use of bold colours: a bright-blue chemist’s shop with a frieze of stucco acanthus leaves, for example, or the early-18th-century market hall now colour washed a strong Tuscan orange.

Perhaps this polychrome spirit is a reminder of Faringdon’s most recent notable resident, Lord Berners. That polymath aesthete—he of the brightly coloured fantail pigeons dyed coral, mauve, cornflower or pink—lived in Faringdon House immediately behind the church and traces of his esoteric tastes and jokes remain. A plaque stating ‘Please return the ladder or further steps will be taken’ is embedded in a Regency shop building and, cut in stylish mechanical-looking sans-serif letters in his memory, the following legend runs along a wall by the old pump house: ‘Mistrust a man who never has an occasional flash of silliness.’

This particular flash is a crisply carved bust of a deep-sea diver set firmly into that wall. It commemorates an unlikely fancy-dress visit by Salvador Dalí, guest of Berners.

Contemporary visitors—perhaps in more conventional garb—will find an outstanding butcher’s and wellstocked deli and must not miss the inner courtyard of the Old Crown Coaching Inn.