There is no village of St. Sebastians, it is simply part of the large straggling parish of Wokingham Without and lies mostly along each side of Nine Mile Ride, in a kind of nomansland between Crowthorne and Wokingham.
At one time the area was all part of the Great Forest of Windsor and since poverty was rife and forest laws severe - a man could be hanged for killing a deer even if his family was near to starvation - the people were lawless and heathen. The situation became so bad that about the middle of the 19th century, a Wokingham lawyer wrote to the Dean of Sarum appealing to him to help remedy the spiritual destitution of the area. He wrote 'It lies in a wild and remote district and contains a population exclusively labourers or broomdashers who stand in need of regular past superintendence, the want of which must be attended with the growth of irreligion, vice and immorality'. Not a very pretty picture!
The only occupation open to the people at the time was that of broomdashers - cutting twigs in the forest and making them up into brooms or besoms. These were then sold either in Reading or as far afield as Bristol. The first attempt to bring Christianity to St. Sebastians was made by a young man - a Baptist - who worked at the Heelas store in Wokingham, and who held occasional services there. Eventually, in 1864, the Dean of Sarum decided that something more must be done and a chapel of ease to All Saint's church in Wokingham was built.
In 1871, St. Sebastians church was separated from All Saints and the first vicar, The Reverend Hugh Redmond Morres, was appointed.
Q1, Lionel Smith, died ABCD
Q2, George Pratt, died EFGH
Q3, Arthur Gunton died Nov IJ aged KL
Q4, Thomas Brown died May MNOP aged QR
The cache can be found at:
N51 (A+M)(O-P).(H+K)(Q-R)(G+I)
W0 (C+E)(A+N).(B-F)(L-J)(D+G)
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