My Adventures 3: Burford, Cotswolds Circular Walk 2nd November 2020

GPX File here

Viewranger File Here

On Monday the 2nd November 2020 I drove down to Burford in The Cotswolds and parked up for free in the car park there at the end of Church Lane.

I left the car park and walked up Church Lane reaching St John The Baptist Church passing the Almshouses.

The most conspicuous charitable act in late medieval Burford was the foundation in 1455–6 of the Great Almshouse (or Warwick Almshouses) near the church, for eight poor persons. The founder was the Burford burgess and wool merchant Henry Bishop, acting in cooperation with the earl of Warwick (who was then lord of Burford). The initiative was part of a broader trend in late medieval England, which saw endowed almshouses founded in several small towns. A 19th-century datestone gives the date 1457.

After the Reformation’s townspeople continued to make charitable provision in a humanistic spirit. The mercer Simon Wisdom endowed Wisdom's Almshouse on Church Lane in the 1580s, and in 1726 the prominent Burford physician John Castle (of The Great House) founded Castle’s Almshouses in Guildenford, to house 4 poor widows. Most gifts for the poor were more modest bequests of money for investment, designed to supplement the parish’s poor rates. Donors often hedged their bequests with particular requirements, designed to target the so-called ‘deserving poor’.

The Church of England parish church is dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, and is described by David Verey as "a complicated building which has developed in a curious way from the Norman". It is known for its merchants' guild chapel and memorial to Henry VIII's barber-surgeon, Edmund Harman, which features South American Indians.

The current building was started in the 12th century. The current configuration of the building was completed by the 15th century as a Wool church.

In 1649, during the English Civil War, a group of Levellers, part of the New Model Army Banbury mutineers, were imprisoned in the church.

It underwent extensive Victorian restoration by George Edmund Street in 1870s and was one of the cases which led to William Morris's founding of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. The restoration included the addition of a tiled floor.

The stone building has a cruciform plan. It consists of a five-bay nave with chapels to the north and south sides. The tower and spire are above the centre of the building.

The interior includes a pulpit which was restored in 1870 and a variety of tomb chests and memorials. Much of the stained glass is by Charles Eamer Kempe.

There are a lot of memorials, the best known of which are to Christoper Kempster (died 1715, a local quarry-man and favourite of Sir Christopher Wren, who used him at St Paul's Cathedral), and the c.1569 Harman memorial, on north wall, which has Gill-like South American Indians in relief. In the Gild Chapel the south wall is lined with roughly similar pedimented tomb-chests mostly to the Sylvester family; there is a similar chest in south choir aisle.

Unfortunately the church was closed today, managed a quick photo from the door before being told it was closed!

I walk on up to High Street and turn right and walk to the bridge that crosses the River Windrush.

I walk on up and reach a roundabout where I take a footpath directly opposite and pass a WWII Pillbox.

The path heads uphill to a track with pretty cottages.

Once up the hill and onto the track, there is a footpath opposite but I'm not going that way and turn right along the track.

At the end of the track I turn left onto the A361 and into Fulbrook.

The Domesday Book of 1086 recorded the village as Fulebroc, possibly meaning "foul brook"

I turn off the main road to walk up to St James The Great Church.

The Church of England parish church of Saint James the Great is Norman. The north aisle was added about 1200, linked with the nave by a four-bay arcade in the Transitional style between Norman and Early English Gothic. In the 13th century the chancel was remodelled and the north transept were added, both in Early English Gothic. The south porch was added later in the same century. The east window of the chancel, the west window of the north aisle and one window in the south wall or the aisle are also 13th century. Later a clerestory was added to the nave and new Perpendicular Gothic windows were inserted in the south walls of the nave and chancel. In the 15th century the bell tower was built into the west end of the nave.

I walk back down to the main road and across the road is a war memorial at the end of Meadow Lane.

I continue walking up the A361 for a way and get another view across to St James The Great Church.

Further up on my left is a footpath across some farmland.

After all the rain we had lately this path was very muddy and slippery and made the walking across very hard.

The path eventually leads me into Widley Copse and I'm thankful to be out of the mud.

I walk through the wood and out onto a track (Cox Rise) that leads to Paynes Farm.

I walk on downhill on Cox Rise.

Further down I turn right and back uphill on a footpath and across Handley Plain.

I now reach a road and I turn right to walk up into Swinbrook.

The Church of England parish church of Saint Mary the Virgin dates from about 1200. Its unusual open-sided bell-tower was added in 1822. The church is noted for its 17th-century Fettiplace monuments.

David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale had Swinbrook House built 1.5 miles (2.4 km) north of the village. Four of his six daughters (the "Mitford sisters") are buried in the parish churchyard: Nancy, Unity, and Diana are buried side by side, while Pamela is buried northwest of the tower. There is a tablet in the church commemorating their only brother, Tom, killed in March 1945 in Burma.

St Mary's also has a monument to the officers and men of the Royal Navy submarine HMS P514, and especially its commander, Lieutenant W.A. Phillimore, whose parents lived at Swinbrook. In 1942 P514 failed to identify herself to the Royal Canadian Navy minesweeper HMCS Georgian. The Canadian ship therefore assumed the submarine to be an enemy vessel and rammed P514, sinking her with the loss of all hands.

I walk through the pretty village and follow the road down to The Swan Inn next to the River Windrush.

It was just 10 to 11 as I reach The Swan, so I decide its a bit early for a pint yet.

The River Windrush was in full flood!

The Swan Inn, Mill Cottage, and Mill

Public house. Probably mid C18. Mill building to left. Probably mid C18.

I walk back up through the village and take a footpath with a view again back to the church.

The path leads along side some houses and out into a field.

Out in the field I reach St Oswald church sitting all alone.

I am now in Widford.

Widford is a deserted medieval village on the River Windrush about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) east of Burford.

Early occupation is evidenced by the remains of a Roman villa. The Church of England parish church of St. Oswald stands on its site, and a small area of Roman mosaic was visible in its chancel, but has been moved to Cirencester museum.

The Domesday book records that by 1086 St Oswald's Priory in Gloucester held the manor of Widford. It was a detached part of Gloucestershire until the 19th century. St Oswald's church in Widford is Early English Gothic and was built in the 13th century. In the 14th century numerous wall paintings were added, remains of which survive. Most of the church's present windows were added in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Widford was a substantial village in the Middle Ages but today only the 16th-century manor house and a few other houses remain. St. Oswald's stands in a field whose cropmarks show the outlines of former buildings.

In 1844 the Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844 transferred Widford to Oxfordshire.

Widford was a civil parish from 1866, but by 1931 its population was only 29. In 1932 the civil parish was merged with the parish of Swinbrook to form the civil parish of Swinbrook and Widford.

Unfortunately the Church was locked so I took a photo through the window.

I walk down into Widford and cross the River Windrusg again.

Next to was the Millhouse.

I then follow the road for a way until I take a path to follow the river.

After stomping through a muddy and water logged path I rejoin the road (Witney Street) that leads me back into Burford.

The name Burford derives from the Old English words burh meaning fortified town or hill town and ford, the crossing of a river.

The town began in the middle Saxon period with the founding of a village near the site of the modern priory building. This settlement continued in use until just after the Norman conquest of England when the new town of Burford was built. On the site of the old village a hospital was founded which remained open until the Dissolution of the Monasteries by King Henry VIII. The modern priory building was constructed some 40 years later, in around 1580.

It started to rain heavily now and my trousers are very wet. I walk out onto The Hill and head down into town.

The town centre also has some 15th-century houses and the baroque style townhouse that is now Burford Methodist Church. Between the 14th and 17th centuries Burford was important for its wool trade. The Tolsey, midway along Burford's High Street, which was once the focal point for trade, is now a museum.

English Civil Wars – the Banbury Mutiny

On 17 May 1649, three soldiers who were Levellers were executed on the orders of Oliver Cromwell in the churchyard at Burford following a mutiny started over pay and the prospect of being sent to fight in Ireland. Corporal Church, Private Perkins, and Cornet Thompson were they key leaders of the mutiny and, after a brief court-martial, were put up against the wall in the churchyard at Burford and shot. The remaining soldiers were pardoned. Each year on the nearest weekend to the Banbury mutiny is commemorated as 'Levellers Day'.

Local legend tells of a fiery coach containing the judge and local landowner Sir Lawrence Tanfield of Burford Priory and his wife flying around the town that brings a curse upon all who see it. Ross Andrews speculates that the apparition may have been caused by a local tradition of burning effigies of the unpopular couple that began after their deaths. In real life Tanfield and his second wife Elizabeth Evans are known to have been notoriously harsh to their tenants. The visitations were reportedly ended when local clergymen trapped Lady Tanfield's ghost in a corked glass bottle during an exorcism and cast it into the River Windrush. During droughts locals would fill the river from buckets to ensure that the bottle did not rise above the surface and free the spirit.

Burford is the main setting for The Wool-Pack, a historical novel for children by Cynthia Harnett.

The Tolsey

The Tolsey Museum is located on Burford's main street in a Tudor market/court house. It is a black and white timber-fronted building on stone pillars. In medieval times, the building was a meeting point for wool merchants. Tolls and taxes were also paid here.

The collection covers local history, culture, and industry. Exhibits at the museum include the town maces, charters and seals of guilds, a doll's house, and objects related to brewing, rope-making, and stone quarrying.