Wallingford, a town of Berkshire, 15 miles NW. of Reading and 13 SSE. of Oxford, on the right bank of the Thames, which is crossed here by a bridge 300 yards long, built in 1809 at a cost of £14,000. It has Roman earthworks, a fragment of a Norman castle, which figured prominently in King Stephen's wars, and was taken by Fairfax, and dismantled (1646); three—formerly thirteen—churches, in one of which Blackstone is buried; a grammar-school; a short branch-line; and a great July wool sale. A borough since Edward the Confessor's time, it returned two members till 1832, and then one till 1885. Pop. 2989.
See Crofts' Chronicles of Wallingford Castle (1870), and J. H. Hedges' History of Wallingford (2 vols. 1882).