Churchill, Oxfordshire
All_Saints_Churchill.jpg
| Contents |
History
The village has borne several versions of its name through its history, including Cercelle, Churchell, and Cherchell, but its current form was in use by 1537. The origin of the name is uncertain, though it may come from the Old English cyrc, meaning a hill, burial ground, or barrow. (The village does contain several barrows, suggesting the existence of a settlement here from prehistoric times.) However, the name may come from Cyrc-hill, literally Hill-hill — a common construction formed by Anglo-Saxon incomers who did not understand the meaning of a Celtic root (cf. the etymology of Pendle Hill).
Churchill was originally at the foot of a hill (now known as Hastings Hill), but on 31 July 1684 a fire destroyed twenty 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 chimney tax, had knocked through the wall from her oven to her neighbour's chimney. The old village can still be seen as grassy mounds in the pastures around the Heritage Centre.
Famous Churchillians
- Warren Hastings (1732–1818) — the first Governor-General of British India. He was born in Churchill on 6 December 1732; his mother died within a week of his birth, and he took her maiden name as his Christian name after his father abandoned him; he was brought up by a foster mother (Mary Ellis). He was educated at the village school, and went on to an illustrious career in the 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 against them, 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.
- William Smith (1769–1839) — “Strata Smith”, the “father of English geology”. Smith was born in Churchill on 23 March 1769, the son of a blacksmith. He was educated at the village school until the age of eleven, then went to London for two years. In 1788, when he returned to Churchill, his uncle (a Hook Norton farmer) encouraged his interest in surveying, and together they pursued various schemes for land improvement and drainage. At eighteen he became an assistant surveyor, helping to survey Churchill and Sarsden for the 1788 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 the 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.
Chipping_Norton_-_Oxfordshire_dot.png
Location and Features
Churchill is in north-west Oxfordshire on the Oxfordshire–Gloucestershire border, towards the eastern side of the Cotswolds, in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It stands on a hill some seven miles from Stow-on-the-Wold and three miles from Chipping Norton. Among its features of interest are:
Buildings
Old_Gateway.JPG
- All Saints Church. Designed by James Plowman of Oxford, the building is something of an architectural jumble 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, 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 Perpendicular Gothic, the Tower is in the great tradition of English landscape gardening. Its disappearance would be a grave loss to a rolling wooded landscape.”
- The tower has external stairs which lead to the bell-ringers' chamber, the top of the staircase being in the form of a pulpit. In imitation of the May morning celebrations at Magdalen College, villagers gather at sunrise on 1 May every year and sing from the stairs and pulpit.
- Village Hall. This was originally built in 1870 by James Langston as a Reading Room for the village, and was converted into the village hall after World War II.
- Schools. 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, and both have been converted and divided into domestic dwellings.
Memorials
- A monolith made of stone found in nearby Sarsden Wood, erected in 1891 by the Earl of Ducie to commemorate William Smith.
- A memorial fountain, erected in 1870 by Julia, Countess of Ducie, to her father, James Langston; this is described by Jennifer Sherwood (in The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire by Sherwood and Pevsner, 1974) as: "Memorably ugly. A squat, square tower with obelisks and flying buttresses carrying a dumpy spire. The water drips from a rude spout at the side."
- The village War Memorial.
Printed sources
- All Saints Church, Churchill (booklet by various hands)
- Churchill and Sarsden: A Portrait in Old Photographs Alan Watkins (1988: Alan Sutton Publishing) ISBN 0-9513622-0-8
- Strata John L. Morton (2001:Tempus Publishing) ISBN 0-7524-1992-7
External links
- Churchill & Sarsden on the Internet
- Map sources for Churchill, Oxfordshire
- The War Memorial
- Churchill and Sarsden Heritage Centre
- Standing Stone — page 1
- Standing Stone — page 2