Author: David Betterton

Churchill Remembrances

A Guest Article from Churchill Village

From time to time, we welcome guest contributions from villages local to the Wychwoods. This article comes courtesy of the Churchill and Sarsden Heritage Centre, the small and unique museum in Churchill Village which celebrates the lives of two of its famous sons: Warren Hastings, the first Governor General of India, and William Smith, famous as the “Father of English Geology”. The Heritage Centre is known to most members of the Wychwoods Local History Society, and especially through a talk given to the group in January 2017 on WIlliam Smith by Owen Green.

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Churchill: Church Street with Chequers Inn on the right

In April 2008, Churchill village lost one of its best-loved residents, David Crudge, who had been born in the village in 1920 and at the time of his death, had been its longest resident.

A farmer, David was interested in all farming and rural activities, in particular a project begun many years earlier by his father in establishing the pedigree herd of dairy shorthorn cattle, which he was proud to exhibit at local and regional agricultural shows.

David was a fount of knowledge about village history too, and regularly wrote in the Churchill newsletter, Roundabout. Here are two of his reminiscences of life in and around the village.

Churchill Village: Top of Kingham Road

David Crudge Remembers: February 1999

Much has changed since local historian Arthur Ward wrote in the 1930s, ‘In practically all the villages in this part of the country, agriculture has been for centuries, and still is, the most important industry and the main source of the livelihood of the bulk of the population.’

Until the end of the 18th century, the landscape was quite different: large open spaces with the arable land cultivated in strips and the stock grazing common land. Our enclosures in 1788 saw the beginnings of fields as we now know them and some still have the names they were given then. Many were obvious choices: ‘Mountfield’, ‘Longround’ and ‘Brookside’, and a glance at the map explains why another is called ‘Crooked Elbow’.

Other interesting names are ‘Challenge’, ‘Hangings’ and ‘Childrens’, while the cow fields behind The Chequers were originally Upper and Lower ‘Football’. Even stranger, Mr Loehnis’ land down Sarsden Road was known as ‘Mouse Pit Ground’ and Sarsden still has a ‘Beggar’s Piece’ and a ‘Witney Gate’.

My favourite is a very small field on The Grange, adjoining the old farm yard, known as ‘Lampacre’. Only in recent years have I found out how it got its name. With very few buildings available then, many animals needing attention during the night – cows due to calve, sheep to lamb or perhaps mares to foal and sick animals – would be put in there before dusk. The farmer could then walk round after dark with his ‘lamp’ – most likely a paraffin lantern, and would soon find and attend to them.

David Crudge Remembers: March 2002

Now that the cattle have gone from the village, I sometimes think back to the 1920s when I was a boy and would walk to school past the busy blacksmith’s shop (now the Forge Guesthouse), the thriving shop and post office and The Chequers, which was then a farm as well as a pub. Jesse Barrett the farmer/landlord walked his cows there twice a day from his grass fields down Kingham Road up through the village to be milked.

There were 4 farms actually in the village and they, like the outlying ones, almost all had pigs, poultry, sheep and cattle as well as a dairy herd. Some 70 or more of the menfolk worked on the land or at the blacksmith’s. There were lots of children about then, the number attending school would be written each day on a blackboard and it would generally be over 90.

The schoolmaster, Mr Anson, was also the church organist and was a fine musician. His village choir won prizes at the local music festivals and his church choir was large and exceptionally good. Many of the village men were in it – the same men who during the week would be doing the ‘ploughing, sowing, reaping and mowing’ and of course milking the cows by hand (milking machines didn’t arrive here till the mid-1930s). The Mount Farm had the largest herd and the most milkers, many of them good singers, so as they worked sitting on their 3-legged stools, they sang and they could be heard from the road.

The most distinguished herd was at Churchill Heath where they bred pedigree dairy shorthorns and owner, Mr Rose, was nationally famous as a judge of them. Mr Martin at Rynehill was a pioneer of clean milk production, while Churchill Farm in the village won the Shorthorn Society’s silver medal for the highest herd average in the county for three consecutive years – one year it was the second highest in the country.

Cows were allowed or even encouraged to eat the grass on the sides of the road and every village garden had a gate, which was kept closed or they would help themselves to the vegetables. It was a different world then; I’m not saying it was better or worse – but shoes certainly needed cleaning a lot more often!

Cotham Cottage, Milton

This article by Norman Frost is taken from Volume 1 of the WLHS Journal Series. It was written in 1985 and in the detail there are charming reminders of 18th Century thrift and customs

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Due to the kindness of the present owners, Mr and Mrs Mattingley, two members of the Society were invited to inspect this cottage when the interior was stripped down to the bare walls, prior to renovation.

Cotham Cottage Milton Under Wychwood
Cotham Gottage, Milton

Without interior partitions and the upstairs floorboards which were obviously later additions, the building itself was just a rectangular 17th century structure. However, surprises were to follow. Firstly, the walls were indented in about forty places with recesses about 18 inches deep and very much wider at the back than at the front or entrance. Reference to the archives at the County Museum showed their purpose; they were roosting holes for doves. The structure was built as a dovecote and perhaps its very name was trying to tell us this in the first place. The museum authorities were most interested in the building as this was only the second example of a square dovecot to be discovered in the county. Most dovecotes are of the familiar round style.

Steven Mattingley had also discovered a child’s shoe hidden in one of the roosting holes when the walls were plastered to convert the building into a dwelling. The shoe was in very good condition for its age and the sole still bore the mud with pieces of straw embedded, exactly as it was when the child came into the house, wearing it for the last time.

Our search for answers led us a little further afield this time – to Julia Swann at the Boot & Shoe Department-, Guildhall Museum, Northampton. The shoe, she told us, was a boy’s shoe made sometime about 1750. For the period it was a very good quality article and very well preserved. In the style of the period shoes were made to be worn on either foot, so that by swapping the shoes around they would last longer. Miss Swann also pointed out a piece of stiff leather stitched around the heel, suggesting that the little boy who wore it did not unfasten his shoes before putting them on and that the leather had been stitched on to prevent him breaking the heels down. The shoe was fastened by two tongues of leather passing across the instep and through a buckle which was not attached to the shoe in any way. The act of holding the two leather tongues firmly together kept the shoe in place.

Concealing a shoe or indeed any other personal article within the walls of a house was a common practice about this period. Almost every old dwelling has or has had some article buried within its walls. There are many reasons for this practice. It could be a good luck symbol; it was thought to identify the occupant with the dwelling and sometimes when the article was buried in the bedroom wall it was thought to ensure the arrival of many children. I suppose it is logical therefore to assume that this building was built in the 17th century and that about 100 years later the owner converted it to a cottage for one of his workers, a use which has continued ever since.

A point of interest does arise, however. A dovecote was the right of the farmer and no one else. His pigeons were for his benefit and could not be touched even when they ate his neighbour’s crops. Was this range of buildings part of an old farmstead? We know that the old dovecote at the end of the Terrace in Milton was part of Hawkes farmstead and we have records of twenty-one of these old farms or homesteads within the old village. There are more than likely many more to be discovered.