Woodside, Berkshire
Woodside is a hamlet in Berkshire, England, within the civil parishes of Winkfield and Sunninghill and Ascot in the boroughs of Bracknell Forest and Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead.
The settlement lies near to the A332 road and is approximately 1.5 miles (2.4 km) north-east of Ascot Racecourse and largely surrounded by Windsor Great Park. In the early Twentieth Century the south of the hamlet was the site of the Ascot Brick Works. It has two pubs The Rose and Crown and the Duke of Edinburgh but no shops or church, as such it is probably best described as a hamlet not a village. It features several historic houses and buildings (mostly in the northern part of the hamlet)
In the 19th and early 20th Century there were two distinct hamlets
1) Woodend (to the southern end) and there was a huge country house called Woodend House (last reference to this country house is on an 1886 map and now completely demolished. This former estate location is now Crown Land nearby Searchlight Gate). Woodend is in the Parish of Ascot and Sunninghill and today 2020, there are a few cottages called Woodend Cottages along the Windsor Rd towards Ascot.
2) Woodside (to the northern end up to the Mounts Hill roundabout better known as The Peanut Roundabout due to its shape). Woodside is in the Parish of Winkfield, Bracknell Forest.
Nowadays the name Woodend has all but disappeared as a descriptor of any part of the hamlet and Woodside is applied to the whole hamlet. The Parish and Borough boundaries still run through the middle of the Woodside and right through the centre of the Duke of Edinburgh public house. This boundary also runs along a bridleway called Hodge Lane and the old granite boundary markers are still there to be seen, they reflect the historic boundary between the Royal land (now Windsor & Maidenhead) and the East Hampstead land (now Bracknell Forest)
The Thatched Cottage in Woodside Village is said to have once been the residence given to the Headmaster of Cranbourne School.
