The December meeting of the Henley Archaeological and Historical Group on 3rd December featured a talk by Catherine Sampson, a social and local historian based in Reading, on lesser-known Berkshire and South Oxfordshire Churches, including some of their fascinating back stories.
Some churches, like Shifford and Widford, are set in isolated locations in the middle of a field. They were little touched by Victorian restoration and often retain old Catholic elements, such as wall paintings. They were not originally isolated, but their villages became depopulated through, first, the Black Death of the 1340s, and later through the use of the land for the more lucrative grazing of sheep. Another remote church, at East Shefford (pictured), features an access to the former rood screen through an opening placed high up on the wall of the nave and an interesting tomb to the Fettiplace family.
Social trends too played a role in the location of the church in Nuneham Courtenay. The Harcourt family built a new house in 1757 in a setting influenced by the landscape design fashionable at the time. The main road and village needed to be moved by over a mile and a new Georgian church built near the house – all for the convenience of the family. Needless to say, the villagers found this most inconvenient; in the 1870s another church was built closer to their cottages and the Georgian church effectively became the Harcourt’s private chapel.