Churchill, Oxfordshire
Churchill | |
---|---|
Chipping Norton | |
Postcode district | OX7 |
Dialling code | 01608 |
Police | Thames Valley |
Fire | Oxfordshire |
Ambulance | South Central |
UK Parliament | |
Website | Churchill and Sarsden |
Churchill is a village and
Toponym
The
The name is derived from Old English. The parish's old church (see below) was not on top of the hill, so the name may not necessarily refer to a hill with or belonging to a church. There is a barrow almost at the top of the hill, so the first part of the name could be derived from the Brythonic word cruoco[3] or crūc,[4] meaning a hill, burial ground, or barrow. But if this is the case, crūc must have become confused with the Old English cirice ("church") at an early date.[3]
History
Churchill was originally at the foot of a hill now called Hastings Hill, but on 31 July 1684 a fire destroyed 20 houses and many other buildings, and killed four people. The village was rebuilt higher up the hill, with stone houses instead of the old timber-framed and thatched cottages. The fire was apparently caused by a baker who, to avoid
The former Chipping Norton Railway, part of the Great Western Railway, passed near Churchill. The line had a small railway station, Sarsden Halt, 1⁄4 mi (400 m) northwest of Churchill. British Railways closed the halt to passengers in 1962[6] and closed the railway in 1964.
Churches
Old parish church
The Heritage Centre is on what is thought to be the site of a
A Preservation Society was formed in 1988 to campaign for its retention as the last medieval building in Churchill and the building was repaired. The Heritage Centre opened in 2001 in the restored chancel which now houses a collection of maps and historical records of the village from 1600 to the present, as well as displays about Warren Hastings and William Smith. Having received a Heritage Lottery Fund grant in 2010, the building has been refurbished with new interactive displays and oral history recordings.
New parish church
The Church of England parish church of All Saints was designed by James Plowman of Oxford in 1826. It is an architectural mixture of imitations. The tower is a two-thirds copy of the tower of Magdalen College, Oxford, its hammerbeam roof a copy of the roof of Christ Church, Oxford, its buttresses are versions of those of the chapel of New College, Oxford,[8] and its windows are based on those from various Oxford Colleges. In a restoration appeal for the tower in 1975, Sir John Betjeman wrote of it:
It is a beautiful landmark and has [...] been an eye-catcher for miles around, and a delightful one. I am sure it was built with this object in view. Although the style is
English landscape gardening. Its disappearance would be a grave loss to a rolling wooded landscape.
The west tower has a ring of eight bells. Robert Taylor and Sons cast the third, fourth, fifth and sixth bells in 1826 at their then bell-foundry in Oxford.[9] Their successors John Taylor & Co of Loughborough cast the treble, second, seventh and tenor bells in 1957.[10] Robert Taylor and Sons also made the clock for the west tower. External stairs lead to the bell-ringers' chamber, with a pulpit at the top of the staircase. In imitation of the May morning celebrations at Magdalen College, villagers gather at sunrise on 1 May each year and sing from the stairs and pulpit.[11] The church was damaged by fire on 11 August 2007. It was reopened 15 months later and repairs were completed in the summer of 2009.[12] It is a Grade II* listed building.[13] All Saints' parish is part of the Benefice of Chipping Norton.[14]
Methodist church
Churchill has a
Monuments
There are three notable monuments in the village. A monolith, made of stone found in nearby Sarsden Wood, was erected in 1891 at the behest of the
Notable people
- British East India Company, becoming Governor-General in 1774. On his return to England his political enemies had him impeached, and although he won his case, it ate up most of his fortune. He did manage, however, to buy back the family estates in Daylesford, a village near Churchill, and died there on 22 August 1818.
- Enclosure Act. His experience of different rock formations led him to develop the theory that the occurrence of different types of fossil could be used to order the geological sequence of rock strata. Although from 1800 he gained a reputation as a civil engineer, he became famous for preparing and producing a series of detailed geological maps of England. He died on 28 August 1839 in Northampton.
- Celebrity chef Rick Stein was born in Churchill.[16]
Amenities
The village has a public house, the Chequers, built in the late 18th or early 19th century.[17] It was controlled by Hunt Edmunds brewery before Mitchells & Butlers Brewery took the company over in the 1960s. It is now a gastropub operated by The Lionhearth Group.[18] The village hall was built in 1870 at the behest of James Langston as a Reading Room for the village. It was converted into the village hall after the Second World War. Bus route X8 serves the village. Buses run peak hours only, Monday to Friday, linking Kingham railway station and Chipping Norton via Churchill. Pulham's Coaches operates the route for Oxfordshire County Council.[19]
Churchill had two primary schools: the "Top School", opposite the church on Junction Road, was the Girls' School, and the "Lower School", further down the hill on the Sarsden Road, was the Boys' School. Their dates are somewhat obscure; the Lower School is said to have been built in 1716, though that seems surprisingly early to some historians, and the deeds of the Top School date it to the 1850s, though its rainwater heads are dated 1870. The Lower School was closed in 1947, the Top School in 1982,[20] and both have been converted and divided into private houses.
See also
References
- ^ Churchill and Sarsden
- ^ "Churchill Parish". nomis. Durham University for the Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 6 September 2020.
- ^ a b c d Gelling 1954, Churchill
- ^ a b Ekwall 1960, Churchill
- ^ Mann 2013, p. 36.
- ^ Jenkins, Brown & Parkhouse 2004[page needed]
- ^ a b Sherwood & Pevsner 1974, p. 545.
- ^ Sherwood & Pevsner 1974, pp. 544–545.
- ^ Anonymous 2010, p. 9.
- Central Council for Church Bell Ringers. Retrieved 13 September 2015.
- ^ Anonymous 2010, p. 18.
- ^ Anonymous 2010, p. 14.
- ^ Historic England. "Church of All Saints (Grade II*) (1053342)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 13 September 2015.
- A Church Near You. Church of England. Archived from the originalon 15 February 2015. Retrieved 13 September 2015.
- ^ "Churchill Methodist Church". West Oxfordshire Methodist Circuit. Retrieved 25 September 2020.
- ^ "Rick Stein signs books in city". Oxford Mail. 23 July 2011.
- ^ Historic England. "The Chequers (Grade II) (1053341)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 13 September 2015.
- ^ The Chequers
- ^ "X8 Chipping Norton, Churchill, Kingham, Kingham Station" (PDF). Pulham & Sons. Retrieved 6 September 2020.
- ^ Churchill and Sarsden School
Sources
- Anonymous (2010) [2000]. All Saints Church Churchill (3rd ed.). Churchill: All Saints PCC.
- Baz (3 June 2004). "Churchill Standing Stone". The Megalithic Portal.
- ISBN 0198691033.
- Gelling, Margaret (1954). Smith, AH (ed.). The Place-Names of Oxfordshire, Part II. Vol. XXIV. based on material collected by Doris Mary Stenton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the English Place-Name Society. Churchill.
- Haddon, Celia (11 February 2011). "Old Vicarage". The Megalithic Portal.
- Jenkins, Stanley; Brown, Bob; Parkhouse, Neil (2004). The Banbury & Cheltenham Direct Railway. Lydney: Lightmoor Press. ISBN 1-899889-15-9.[page needed]
- Mann, Ralph (2013). A History of Churchill and Sarsden. Churchill: Churchill Old Church Preservation Society. ISBN 978-0-9575690-0-3.
- Morton, John L (2001). Strata: How William Smith Drew the First Map of the Earth in 1801 & Inspired the Science of Geology. Stroud: ISBN 0-7524-1992-7.[page needed]
- Sherwood, Jennifer; ISBN 0-14-071045-0.
- Watkins, Alan (1988). Churchill and Sarsden: A Portrait in Old Photographs. Stroud: ISBN 0-9513622-0-8.
External links
- Churchill and Sarsden
- Churchill and Sarsden Heritage Centre
- "Churchill". War Memorials in Oxfordshire. Andy Parsons.