Human settlement in England
Churchill
is a village and
civil parish
about three miles (five kilometres) southwest of
Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire
in the
Cotswolds
Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
. Since 2012 it has been part of the
Churchill and Sarsden
joint parish council area, sharing a parish council with the adjacent civil parish of
Sarsden
.
[1]
The
2011 Census
recorded the parish's population as 665.
[2]
Toponym
[
edit
]
The
Domesday Book
of 1086 recorded the
toponym
as
Cercelle
. A
pipe roll
from 1168 records it as
Cerzhulla
.
[3]
A charter of the
Priory of St Frideswide, Oxford
from about 1175 records it as
Chirchehull
.
[4]
Other late 11th-century, 12th century and early 13th-century variants include
Cercell
,
Cercell
'
,
Cercella
,
Cerchil
,
Cerchull
and
Cerchulla
. A
Close Roll
from 1220 records it as
Cerceill
'
. An entry in the
Book of Fees
for about 1235?36 records it as
Cershull
'
. An
assize
roll from 1246?47
Latinises the name
as
Sercellis
. A
feudal aid
document from 1346 records it as
Cerccell
.
[3]
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
cr?c
,
[4]
meaning a hill, burial ground, or barrow. But if this is the case,
cr?c
must have become confused with the Old English
cirice
("church") at an early date.
[3]
History
[
edit
]
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
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.
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
[
edit
]
Old parish church
[
edit
]
The Heritage Centre is on what is thought to be the site of a
Saxon
church. In 1348 the church of which the
chancel
? now the Churchill Heritage Centre ? is the last remaining part was built in the
Decorated Gothic
style. At that time it was at the centre of the village, but after the fire of 1684 the village moved up the hill, and the old
parish church
of
All Saints
was left at the edge of the village. By the end of the 18th century the church was said to be in disrepair, and in 1825 James Haughton Langston (1796?1863), who had the living of Churchill & Sarsden, and who owned the Sarsden estate and most of Churchill, built a new one higher up the hill in what had become the centre of the village. The new All Saints was consecrated in 1827. The old church fell into disrepair, but the
chancel
was retained and used as a mortuary chapel and to house the memorials and in 1869 the
Gothic Revival architect
CC Rolfe
added a new east window.
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
[
edit
]
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
,
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 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.
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.
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.
It is a
Grade II* listed building
.
[13]
All Saints' parish is part of the
Benefice
of Chipping Norton.
[14]
Methodist church
[
edit
]
Churchill has a
Methodist
church. It is a member of the West Oxfordshire
Methodist Circuit
.
[15]
Monuments
[
edit
]
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
3rd Earl of Ducie
, commemorates William Smith. A memorial fountain, erected in 1870 at the behest of Julia, Countess of Ducie, commemorates her father,
James Haughton Langston
. Jennifer Sherwood described this fountain 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."
There is also a parish
war memorial
.
Notable people
[
edit
]
- Warren Hastings
(1732?1818) the first Governor-General of
British India
, 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 parish school, and went on to a successful career in the
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.
- William Smith
(1769?1839) "Strata Smith" was the "father of English
geology
". Smith was born in Churchill on 23 March 1769, the son of a
blacksmith
. He was educated at the parish school until he was 11, 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 18 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 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
.
Amenities
[
edit
]
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
[
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]
References
[
edit
]
Sources
[
edit
]
- Anonymous (2010) [2000].
All Saints Church Churchill
(3rd ed.). Churchill: All Saints PCC.
- Baz (3 June 2004).
"Churchill Standing Stone"
.
The Megalithic Portal
.
- Ekwall, Eilert
(1960) [1936].
Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names
(4th ed.). Oxford:
Oxford University Press
. Churchill.
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:
Tempus Publishing
.
ISBN
0-7524-1992-7
.
[
page needed
]
- Sherwood, Jennifer;
Pevsner, Nikolaus
(1974).
Oxfordshire
.
The Buildings of England
. Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books
. pp. 544?545.
ISBN
0-14-071045-0
.
- Watkins, Alan (1988).
Churchill and Sarsden: A Portrait in Old Photographs
. Stroud:
Alan Sutton Publishing
.
ISBN
0-9513622-0-8
.
External links
[
edit
]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to
Churchill
.
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