Thank you for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page. This is my annual Ride and Stride in aid of the Oxfordshire Historic Churches Trust and St Mary's Cogges. On 9th September 2017 I will be fund-raising by visiting a planned route of churches. Watch this page for the planned itinerary, but at the moment I am looking at a walk which would take me from Witney to Charlbury, calling in on some churches I haven't visited before as well as returning to old favourites. I plan to walk sections of the route before the actual day, and will add accounts of such walks here.

All the generously donated money goes to OHCT who then send 50% to my church. OHCT use their share to award grants to churches across the county towards the cost of fabric repairs and re-orderings.

Saturday 9 September

With a doubtful forecast, and knowing that sections of all
the fieldpaths round Witney would be hock-deep in water and mud, I decided to cut my losses and have a city day. I left home before 7, and walked the A40 cycle path west into Oxford. Getting to the Wolvercote roundabout just after 9, it was a great feeling to have 9 or ten miles under the belt, and the day to explore Oxford churches. 

I headed south down the Woodstock Road, turning off at
Bainton Road down into Jericho. A short stretch of the canal towpath, and I was on the way to a lovely welcome at St Barnabas, a church closely linked with Oxford University Press. It was provided for Jericho by Thomas Combe, Printer to the University, who was a Tractarian and a friend of the Pre-Raphaelites. Its fixtures and fittings are still notable today. Combe was also responsible for St Luke’s Chapel, built for the Radcliffe Infirmary, and as this was Oxford Open weekend I was able to visit it and admire the restoration that has taken place as part of the development of the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter.

Calling in to St Giles’ Church opposite Keble Road, I walked
down to the Weston Library (formerly New Bodley) where I had a bowl of soup. Then I cut across Bodley Quad and Radcliffe Square to the University Church of St Mary Virgin. A good chance to look
properly at the 17^th-century porch, with barley-sugar ‘Solomonic’
pillars, which I learned recently had been installed at the behest of
Archbishop Laud.

The final part of the walk took me out over Magdalen Bridge
and down the Cowley Road. I called in at Cowley Road Methodist (in a link to a well-known Witney family, a 19^th-century memorial marked the laying of the foundation stone by Alderman C. Early), and then to the Anglican church of St Mary and St John. Finally, a little further on, I turned down the unmarked lane with leads to Bartlemas Chapel. This simple 14^th-century stone building was, like St Luke’s Chapel, originally built to serve the sick – the leper community who had to remain outside the walls of the city. It’s an extraordinary survival, and made a fitting completion to a rewarding and fascinating Ride and Stride 2017.

Tuesday 29 August

Back on the planned route. I took an early bus over to Chadlington and followed Horseshoe Lane south until I came to the intersection with the Oxfordshire Way. This time, I turned west, and followed the track over the fields to Ascott-under-Wychwood. Getting near to the village, the track comes down to run beside the river, and I had a glimpse of a kingfisher - not the iridescent blue, but the chestnut underparts as it flew suddenly upwards. I sat on the coping stone of the old stone bridge to check the map, and then walked down to Holy Trinity Church - beautifully set at the heart of the village, with an avenue of limes, and the original pound for stray animals still walled in beside the churchyard. (Today, instead of roaming sheep or cattle, it has stones originally excavated from the Ascott long barrow set out as they were found.) Holy Trinity, like Chadlington and Shorthampton, is part of the Chase benefice, and has the same welcoming feel.

After a welcome coffee at the village shop I took the Wychwood Way along the lane running up out of the village, in the direction of the Wychwood Forest. When I got up to the crest of the hill I could see the Victorian spire of St Michael and All Angels, Leafield, one of the churches I visited last year. I followed the Wychwood Way until it reached the road that curves round the forest, and then walked down into Leafield. With time getting on, I didn't go up to the church this time, but instead took the green tunnel of the  Pay Lane path which cuts through to the main Witney-Charlbury road (definitely not for walkers). Crossing it, and crossing too the line of the Roman road (Akeman Street), I went up St John's Lane  through St John's wood - names presumably associated with St John's Hailey. This got me to the lane through Delly End and back to the main road. Realizing that the X9 back to Witney should be imminent, I waited- but was then most grateful to given a lift home by a friend, one of our TAs at The Blake. So I've now walked the full route from Hailey round to Charlbury, and need only work out what would make the most interesting walk on the day. Very glad meanwhile to have got in three really good walks in excellent weather.

Monday 28 August. 

A change of itinerary, as friends from St Mary's had told me about the churches of Hampton Gay and Shipton-on-Cherwell, just north of Thrupp, which sounded well worth visiting. I caught an early bus in to Oseney and set up up the Oxford Canal Path (after a hasty course correction from the Thames Path towards Binsey). A glimpse of the Italianate tower of St Barnabas in Jericho was a useful landmark, and confirmation I was on the right track (lit. and fig.). Definitely more autumnal now, but there are still signs of summer, with vivid magenta spikes of loosestrife, and a honeysuckle with a few fragrant white and pink blossoms as well as a fall of luminous scarlet berries.

The canal path runs up through Wolvercote and Kidlington, and just beyond Thrupp I caught a glimpse of the square stone tower of St Giles Hampton Gay amid the trees.  At Shipton-on-Cherwell (with Holy Cross Church on the left hand bank of the canal) the Oxford Greenbelt Way curves away from the canal and runs over a walkway beneath the railway bridge. St Giles stands by itself on a little knoll in the fields - the village having long since disappeared, and the manor house burned down. I wasn't able to get in, but this website gives some good illustrations of what I might have seen:  http://www.westgallerychurches.com/oxford/hampton_gay/hampton_gay.html. 

Essentially it was a Georgian rebuild, and Pevsner quotes a 19th-century antiquarian as having described it as 'a very bad specimen of the meeting-house style'. It was then Gothicized in the 19th century by the clergyman responsible for it. However, there's something very attractive about it, sitting in its green setting, and the churchyard is carefully mown. The wooden porch has also been renewed, and it has a cared-for air.

I walked back across the fields to the canal, and crossed the grey stone bridge to Holy Cross Church. This was significantly rebuilt in 1831 by William Turner of Oxford (his uncle lived in the manor and paid for the rebuilding), and stands rather impressively above the canal. According to the leaflet provided, the original line of the canal had to be slightly diverted to give the church more stability - it is certainly very close. A vicar of the late 19th century, the Rev. Henry Yule, was apparently convinced of Saxon origins of the building, but it isn't clear how rigorous his scholarship was. In any case, the corbels inside the church are painted with the names and arms of twelve lords of the manor, and at the east end the Duke of Marlborough (1867) faces Harold II (1066) to some effect.

I rejoined the towpath and walked down to Thrupp where I had a sandwich - after which I walked as far as the Langford Lane turning, joined the Banbury Road, and shortly after boarded a bus (N7) back into the city, to catch the S1 home to Witney. A fascinating day, and well worth deviating from the original plan.

Thursday 10 August

I started my first tranche of this year’s Ride and Stride by taking the X9 bus up to Chadlington. I got off by the former Baptist Chapel, built in 1840, and walked back up the road to St Nicholas Church, with its 14^th-century bell tower and north and south aisles. I spent some time inside (fine bay arcades linking the aisles with the nave, and a set of millennium kneelers with designs ranging from symbols of St Nicholas of Myra, to a fox under a full moon, and a barn owl. Outside there are some notable carvings – a handsome ‘green man’, and heads of Queen Victoria and (it’s thought) Bishop Samuel Wilberforce to represent Church and State. There is something from every century.

After some careful consultation of the map, I turned down
what looked an unpromising lane which in fact intersected with the Oxfordshire Way. I took a first detour and walked over to Shorthampton, enjoying the sunlit fields, with gleaming stubble where they had harvested. There were a lot of butterflies out – a lovely red and blue peacock, lots of cabbage white, small blues just the colour of a flourishing patch of chicory, and a primrose-yellow brimstone – the first I’ve seen this year. The Oxfordshire Way intersected with the lane to Shorthampton, and I found a shortcut over a field which brought me out just below the little church.

All Saints looks out over the Evenlode valley, and from the outside unassuming. Inside, it has a treasury of wall paintings spanning centuries, as well as a handsome set of well-fitted box pews. The paintings include representations of a range of saints – St Frideswide, Thomas a Becket, St Zita, patron of domestic servants, and St Eloy, patron of metalworkers and blacksmiths.

I retraced my steps (noticing as I crossed the river that you could just get a glimpse of the tower of St Nicholas above the trees), as far as the original lane. I crossed this for a second detour to All Saints, Spelsbury. This too is impressive, but in a completely different way, since it is notable for the patronage of the owners of Ditchley Park, and has some very fine memorials to members of the Lee and Dillon families. A lot of these are eighteenth century, but there are connections with the Stuart Court. John Wilmot Lord Rochester is buried here (his coffin plate is displayed on the north wall of the tower. He was the author of the verse about Charles II, ‘whose word no man relies on/He never said a foolish thing, and never did a wise one’. Charles’ illegitimate daughter by Barbara Villiers, Charlotte Fitzroy, was married to Edward Henry Lee, Earl of Litchfield,  and lived with him at Ditchley Park. Their baroque Carrara marble monument has a long account of their mutual devotion and happy married life.

After that time was getting on, so I walked back to my
starting point, and followed the Oxfordshire Way down to Charlbury, where I luckily timed my arrival to coincide with an S3 bus, and was able to return to Witney via Oxford.