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St Mary’s Church, Fairford

Although there has been a church at Fairford since at least 1125, only fragments of an early building now remain, having been incorporated into the magnificent Late Perpendicular church of St Mary the Virgin that we see today. The rebuilding of the church was started by John Tame in the early 1490s after been given permission by the Bishop of Worcester to dismantle the existing church. As Tame’s fortune was acquired through the wool and cloth industry, St Mary’s can be counted as among a number of so-called ‘wool’ churches built in the Cotswolds in the medieval period. The new church at Fairford was consecrated in a ceremony presided over by the Bishop on 20 June 1497, an event marked by a painted Consecration Cross on the wall of the chancel near the vestry door. Although structurally complete, the church was still far from finished at this point and at the death of John Tame in 1500 his son Edmund Tame undertook to complete the work. At about this time work commenced on the production of 28 painted glass windows that would make up a stunning visual account of the Bible story from Adam and Eve through to the Last Judgement and would provide instruction as well as illumination, in both senses of the word. The story that these windows tell also reveals the central role of the Virgin Mary to pre-Reformation English liturgy. Fairford’s windows remain the most complete set of medieval church windows in the country and are therefore of national importance.

St Mary’s church, as rebuilt by the Tames, consists of a central nave flanked by two aisles that each originally terminated in a side chapel. On the north side the Lady Chapel contains the tomb of John Tame and his wife Alice. A monumental brass depicts the pair and the tomb is now surmounted by a beautifully carved wooden screen added in about 1520 and which serves to separate the chapel from the chancel.Also in the Lady Chapel is a chest tomb tomb with life-size stone effigies of Roger Lygon and his wife Katherine, widow of the grandson of John Tame. Beneath the floor of the chapel is a vault containing the remains of Sir Edmund Tame and his wives, Agnes and Elizabeth, all commemorated by a brass on the chapel’s north wall.

The Corpus Christi Chapel on the south side of the church is of less interest but it does have a fine marble monument to Sarah Ready who died in 1731. The almost complete set of wooden screens in the choir is particularly fine and date from around 1520. The wooden stalls are thought to date from around 1300 and may possibly have come from Cirencester Abbey following its dismantling during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in about 1540. The choir also contains a set of 14 misericord seats that incorporate carvings showing various forms of sin or strife, obviously done with a moral intent. The almost perfect symmetry of the Church building plan was spoiled at a later date by the addition of a sacristy or vestry beyond the Lady Chapel, however this does little to mar the visual effect of what is one of the most beautiful churches in the Cotswolds.

Now situated in the middle of Tame’s rebuilt church, the lower portion of the tower is the oldest part of the building. The later work to increase the height of the tower is apparent from the exterior where a change in the stonework and shape of the corner buttresses indicate the newer building. On the interior columns that form the base of the tower can still be seen traces of late medieval wall paintings including several figures (one of which may be St Christopher) and simple patterns. The roof of the church is supported by a total of 69 stone angels that adorn the corbels of the wooden roof beams. There are a number of wall-mounted monuments to past Fairford citizens including three to the Oldisworth family.

The exterior of the building contains a wealth of decoration and sculpture of great interest. Some of the decoration reflects the patronage of Fairford’s church and includes the gryphon and bear and ragged staff of the Earl of Warwick, an early lord of the manor. The coat of arms of John Tame, consisting of a Wyvern and a lion, can be seen above the door into the church from the porch. A series of curious figures adorn the stringcourse below the embattled parapet that runs all around the outside of the church. These sculptures include a dragon, a lion, a dog, a sheep and, most charming of all, a boy in the act of climbing down from the parapet (right). In addition to these sculptures are figures of a more serious nature including the Christ of Pity at the west end of the church and four fierce guardians standing sentry at the four corners of the tower.

The graveyard of St Mary’s contains some fine examples of Cotswold tombs including several that have Listed Building status as being of historical and architectural importance. There are several examples of large chest tombs, some of them surmounted by semi-circular spiralled slabs once thought to represent bales of wool. One of the earliest monuments in the graveyard is that of Valentine Strong who died in 1662 and was a well-known Cotswold stonemason and architect who built Fairford Park and Lower Slaughter Manor among other buildings. There is also a fine set of three listed tombs of the Morgan family situated outside the end of the Corpus Christi Chapel. Among the grand and ancient tombs in the churchyard is a delightful stone sculpture of ‘Tiddles’, a much-loved Church cat who ‘guarded’ the church and its precincts from 1963 to 1980.

Chris Hobson

 

Further reading:
The Great Storm of 1703 https://dev.fairfordhistory.org.uk/the-great-storm-1703/
The buildings of England. Gloucestershire 1: The Cotswolds by David Verey and Alan Brooks. London: Yale University Press, 2002
Fairford Church and its stained glass windows by Oscar G Farmer. Various editions, 1928-1968
The medieval stained glass of Fairford parish church by Sarah Brown and Lindsay MacDonald. Revised pbk edition. Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2007

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Fairford Branch Railway

The East Gloucestershire Railway Company was formed in 1861 to link Witney to Cheltenham, via Fairford. This original proposal had to be restricted to the 14-mile stretch between Witney and Fairford which was opened on 15th January 1863. In 1890 the East Gloucestershire Railway and Witney Railway (to Oxford) was absorbed into the Great Western Railway, the link to Cheltenham never being completed.

The initial timetable consisted of four passenger trains and two goods trains working each way on weekdays and by 1912 there were six daily passenger trains. At first there were seven intermediate stops between Oxford and Fairford; Kelmscott and Langford were added in December 1907, Cassington Halt in March 1936 and Carterton in October 1944. The branch became very important during the Second World War carrying munitions and troops with the proximity of seven major airfields; the railway actually crosses two of RAF Brize Norton’s taxiways.

After the war and throughout the 1950s there was a gradual decline in traffic on the branch back to four trains each weekday and which eventually culminated in the closure of the railway on 18th June 1962. The last public train running having run two days earlier. Today there is an industrial estate on the site of Fairford railway station now but there are still remains of the line marked by trackways and bridges.

Loco 2236 at Fairford Station

 

 

 

 


The train was so slow building up steam to Lechlade that mushrooms could be gathered in this field on the other side of Fairford Bridge and the train reboarded.
Photographs courtesy of Jean Bennett

Bryworth Bridge near Fairford, 2006

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Railway Bed at Fairford, 2006

Photographs Chris Hobson
Further reading:
Branch Line to Fairford by Vic Mitchell and Keith Smith in association with Richard Lingard. Middleton Press, 1988 ISBN 0 906520 52 5

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk
http://www.fairfordbranch.co.uk

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Farmor’s School and Fairford Community Centre

Farmor’s School opened as Fairford Free School on 24th November 1738. The school’s first schoolmaster was Jacob Kuffeler, a descendant of an ancient and prominent Dutch family. The building cost £543.8s, and consisted of a schoolmaster’s house and 2 classrooms with cellar and outbuildings including a brewhouse and a well in the rear yard. There had previously been several legacies to provide education in Fairford. In 1670 Lady Jane Mico founded a charity to provide apprenticeships for ” 4 poore Boys”, and in 1701 Mary Barker, daughter of Andrew Barker, Lord of the Manor of Fairford, left money for investment to raise funds for teaching poor boys to read and write. Later Elizabeth Farmor, Andrew Barker’s granddaughter, left £1000 in her will, specifically to build a school and pay a schoolmaster. The school originally had accommodation for 60 boys, aged between 5 and 12, and if Fairford children did not fill all the places, numbers could be made up from the surrounding villages. Boys could be “turned away” for bad behaviour, and left school to start work at the age of 12.

From the beginning there were close ties with St. Mary’s Church, the schoolmaster being required to conduct what we would now call a Sunday school and the Vicar giving scripture lessons at the school. The Vicar was usually one of the Governors of the school. The building was also used for Church meetings out of school hours.

The school was so successful that in the early 1800’s it was suggested that Fairford’s girls should also receive an education. At that time it was considered unnecessary to educate girls, and there was considerable opposition to the idea. Eventually the matter went to litigation. The Court made the enlightened decision that the original foundation did not specifically exclude females, and girls could be admitted. The school buildings were extended and a Girls School opened in 1815. It was totally segregated and run separately by a schoolmistress. The boys’ accommodation was upstairs and approached by an outside staircase, and the yard was divided by a stone wall to separate the boys and girls.

In 1871, having been sanctioned by Parliament and approved by the Charity Commissioners, the funds from Lady Jane Mico’s apprenticeship charity were amalgamated with those from Mary Barker and Elizabeth Farmor, to form a new educational charity, administered by trustees, which still continues today.
Co-education came to Fairford in 1922, when the boys and girls schools were combined under one Headmaster, Mr. Herbert Hedges, and the school changed its name to Farmors Free School to honour its major benefactoress. A plaque on the school wall pays tribute to the remarkable service of Herbert Hedges who served as Headmaster of the school for 25 years and Churchwarden for St Mary’s church for 38 years. A second plaque commemorates an earlier Headmaster, Richard Green, who died in 1767, recording “the uncommon assiduity and abilities with which he discharged the duties of his profession”.

From Victorian times, the school was the centre of education in the community, and there are records of the Vicar giving lectures on advanced subjects such as “Electricity”. Adult education classes started officially in the building in 1925, when the Fairford Evening Institute was formed. Initially, only vocational subjects were studied, but later the range was extended to include arts and recreational subjects.
In the post-war period of educational growth, after the Secondary Education Act, the building became the Secondary School for the whole area, including Lechlade and surrounding villages, and became very overcrowded. Gloucestershire County Council, the statutory education authority, built a new secondary school, Farmor’s School, in Fairford Park and in 1961 the pupils moved out of the old school buildings. In return for the new school, the old building passed into the ownership of GCC, and became the centre for all sorts of community activities, meetings, playgroups, old peoples clubs, but particularly the Youth Club. By the mid-1960s, there was a large and thriving Youth Club with a full time Youth Leader living in the building and dividing his time between the Centre and the new school. The Council had an office and the County Library also used part of the building. Unfortunately, GCC was not in a position to spend money on maintenance and modernisation, and, though reports were made on work which needed doing, it was not forthcoming.
In 1977 the people of Fairford decided to make the refurbishment of the Community Centre its official Silver Jubilee project. Money was collected by public appeal, and the old building was redecorated, re-fitted and adapted, and reopened in February 1979. For some time there was a period of greatly increased community activity and enjoyment, new clubs and societies were started to take advantage of the improved facilities, and the usage was high. However, as the years passed, the building once again began to deteriorate. New health and safety regulations meant that the kitchen was deemed inadequate and the heating and electric wiring were unsatisfactory. By the year 2000, the GCC had decided that it would be uneconomical to maintain the building to the standard required, and it was put on the market.

St’ Mary’s PCC and Fairford Town Council were both interested in acquiring the building for largely the same purposes, and it quickly became apparent that co-operation would be more productive than competition. A joint committee was formed to investigate the state of the building and consider its future possibilities, and in November 2002 the building was bought for the town. The PCC and Town Council each purchased part of the building with the intention of raising money for restoration and refurbishment and then managing the building as a whole for the benefit of Fairford and to meet the changing needs of its people for the foreseeable future. After serving the town for almost three centuries the building was completely renovated and extended in a one and a quarter million pound renewal project which brought it up to 21st century standards and gave it yet another new role in the community.

In 2018 Fairford Community Centre celebrated its tenth Anniversary and Farmor’s School celebrated its 280th anniversary.

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19th Century population dynamics of Fairford

Statistics compiled from the national census taken every 10 years from 1801 to 1901, as reported in Volume 2 of the Victoria History of Gloucestershire, show that the total population of the county increased steadily throughout the 19th Century. In 1801 the population of Gloucestershire was 250,723 but by 1901 the figure had increased to 664,843. During the same period the population of Fairford showed a steady rise until the 1850s when it started to decline. The rate of decline was gradual but sustained over the next 50 years so that by 1901 Fairford’s population of 1,403 was only marginally above its 1801 population of 1,326. The reason for this decline is thought to lie in the general decrease in the number of people working in agriculture over the 18th and 19th centuries and the growing number of people moving to towns to work in industry. According to the census figures, Fairford’s peak year in the 19th Century was 1851 with a total of 1,859, a figure not matched again until 1971 when the population was 1,832. By comparison Fairford’s population at the last census in 2011 was recorded as 4,021 and with the recent building of houses on greenfield sites this will have increased, possibly by another 500 or more.

Comparative population graphs for Gloucestershire and Fairford

 

Another aspect of population dynamics is the mortality rate. The National Burial Index for England and Wales produced by the Federation of Family History Societies records a total of 1,419 burials in the churchyard of St Mary the Virgin in Fairford between the years 1813 and 1858. This gives an average of 31 burials each year for an average population during this period of around 1,625. However, the National Burial Index does not record those buried in other churchyards in Fairford nor does it identify people who died in Fairford but were buried elsewhere. The peak year for burials in St Marys was 1845 with 55 burials; the lowest figure was achieved in 1824 with just 14 burials listed.


The burials recorded in the National Burial Index can be sorted by age of the deceased to show the distribution of deaths in particular age groups. This indicates that infant mortality was very high with 333 of the 1,419 total burials being those of infants aged 5 and under. This represents 23% of the total deaths for the period and was significantly higher in the earlier part of the 19th Century than in later years. However, the statistics also show that people lived to a good old age in 19th Century Fairford with a significant number of people living well into their 70s, 80s and 90s.


These notes and graphs were produced by Chris Hobson for a talk given to Fairford History Society on Victorian Fairford on 21 September 2006.

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The Polish Hostel, Fairford, 1947-1959

Many people in Central and Eastern Europe were displaced from their homes during and after World War II. According to some estimates, around 1.2 million Polish people were displaced, many taken at gunpoint from their homes and transported to camps in Germany or Siberia, many thousands ending up in transit camps in India and Africa. Some eventually came to England by boat: through ports such as Tilbury or Liverpool, and were taken to transit camps such as at Daglingworth and from there onto other camps including the one at Fairford.
The camp on land owned by the Ernest Cook Trust, was formerly the American Army’s 32nd Field Hospital. Initially, several families sometimes found themselves in one room, with blankets hung up to give each family a little privacy. They were relieved to later have half a barrack block per family, and in the case of larger families, a whole one.
There was very basic utility furniture and usually a solid-fuel burner which warmed the barracks and on which one-pot cooking could be carried out. Some people also acquired primus stoves for cooking. There were no washing or toilet facilities in the family barracks, only communal ones.
People made the barracks as homely as they could. Without much money to spare, but with a little ingenuity and handiwork, they embroidered and crocheted tablecloths, cushions and net curtains and gradually turned the corrugated iron barracks into more cosy homes. Most of the residents in this camp later moved to Swindon where housing and work was to be found.
By the grotto site at Northwick Camp near Blockley there is a monument to celebrate this and all the former Polish Camps in Gloucestershire. Many of the barracks still exist at Northwick Camp, though the area is now used for light industry.
Alicja Swiatek Christofides, 2009.
All photographs copyright Alicja Swiatek Christofides

If you are interested in finding out about life in other camps, there is a growing number of Internet websites that you can visit. One particular site includes Fairford Camp as well as details of ships and passenger lists. www.northwickparkpolishdpcamp.co.uk

Useful books
‘Fairford Polish Hostel 1947-59: the collected photographs & reminiscences of the former residents of the Polish Hostel in Fairford’ is out of print but available to be consulted in the FHS Archive Room
‘Polish Resettlement Camps in England and Wales’: Written by Zosia Biegus, 2013 available from www.amazon.co.uk and also to be consulted in the FHS Archive Room

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Horcott Quarry

Horcott Quarry – Oxford Archaeology Open Day (15/3/08)
A detailed report of the excavations at Horcott was published by Oxford Archaeology in 2017 titled ‘Horcott Quarry, Fairford and Arkell’s Land, Kempsford’ and can be viewed in the FHS Archive Room in the Community Centre.
On 15 March 2008, FHS members made a second visit to Horcott Quarry to view progress during Oxford Archaeology’s Open Day. Iron Age, Roman and Saxon evidence suggests that the site was occupied from 400 BC to 800 AD. In 2006 FHS members had been able to see the excavation of a large Roman Cemetery but the 2008 tour of the site allowed us to see the imprint of Iron Age, Roman and Saxon settlement on the environment as well as some of the artefacts that had been found.
Sand and gravel has been quarried at Horcott since the 1960s. The gravel seam is about 3 metres deep and mixed with clay. The nature of the soil and sub-soil and agricultural activity from the end of occupation and the beginning of quarrying means that there is very little of any ancient settlement remaining.
Iron Age
There is evidence of 30-40 early Iron Age roundhouses at the Horcott Quarry site. It is thought that approximately 20 existed at the same time which suggests a community of about 100 people. The remains of these roundhouses consist of a circle of post holes. Evidence of fence posts and enclosures also exist. Within the settlement were the vestiges of a large number of four-post structures. These are thought to have been small grain stores as Spelt and Emmer wheat seeds where found in the post holes. Analysis of the Iron Age evidence continues.
Roman:
In addition to one of the largest Roman rural cemeteries in the Upper Thames Valley having been found at Horcott, there is evidence of a Roman farming settlement focused around a small masonry building. This ‘proto-villa’ is thought to predate the cemetery and masonry found in some of the graves is thought to have come from the building suggesting that it was in ruins when the cemetery was in use. The building consisted of a large central room and two wings, with a structure that suggested the back of the house had been extended.
Saxon:
The Saxon settlement at Horcott is one of the largest discovered in the region. There were two types of buildings; rectangular post-built halls and sunken-featured buildings or Grubenhausen (‘Grub Huts’). The sunken-featured buildings, consisting of a building raised on four large posts at each corner of a rectangular hole in the ground, may have been workshops or simple dwellings. The rectangular halls were thought to be houses.
Simple handmade pottery, animal bone and clay spindle whorls for weaving associated with the Saxon period have been found within these buildings. The pattern of the buildings suggests that the settlement moved away from the nearby watercourse upslope over time. The remains of two parallel ditches indicate the site of a track alongside the settlement. A series of pits in amongst the building remains are thought to have been wells.
The Horcott Iron Age settlement is thought to have started as a small community of arable and pastoral farmers who were also producing pottery, metalwork and textiles. The site was originally on a spur of slightly higher land bounded by a watercourse the remains of which can still be traced.
During the Roman period the inhabitants of Horcott were thought to be a prosperous farmer and his family.

Artist’s impressions courtesy of Oxford Archaeology.

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The Fairford Parish Registers

On 29 September1538 a royal injunction was published throughout the realm by Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s Vicar General. This read that:
“The curate of every parish church shall keep one book or register, which book he shall every Sunday take forth, and in the presence of the churchwardens, or one of them, write and record in the same all weddings, christ’nings, and burials made the whole week before; and for every time that the same shall be omitted, shall forfeit to the said church 3s, 4d.”
Initially there was much suspicion, especially by the clergy, that this was just a ruse to collect information for taxation purposes and therefore it would seem not all parished registers were actually commenced as early as 1538. A later injunction in 1597 instructed parishes to keep their records in a parchment book at which point many of the original registers were transcribed from the original paper copies. The following year saw an order that a copy of each parish register was to be sent to the Diocese Office of the appropriate Bishop within a month after Easter. These Bishop Transcripts are a useful check on the parish copy and can sometimes help with transcribing difficult to read handwriting.
It is not known when the Fairford parish register was first started but the existing books kept at Gloucestershire Archives commence in 1617 when the Reverend Christopher Nicholson was the Vicar. The registers could well have been started earlier than 1617 but may have been since lost, which, if so, is a great loss. The registers are all hand written, even up to the 1970s, and the standard of handwriting and clarity varies immensely, although some of the earlier registers are much more legible than many of the later ones!
A series of Acts between 1660 and 1680 instructed that all burials (except plague victims and the destitute) must be buried in ‘pure English woollen shrouds’. This was introduced in order to help England’s declining woollen industry and fines were made against families who did not comply. This accounts for many entries in the Fairford Parish registers which are annotated ‘buried in woollen’. The practice was generally ignored after about 1770.
Unfortunately for the local or family historian the Fairford registers do not often provide much detail other than names and dates. More fortunately however, the Fairford registers continue throughout the turbulent years of the English Civil War, unlike many other parish registers, although marriages are very sparse during this period, possibly because people were being married elsewhere or the marriages were not being recorded by the clergy.
Occasionally, brief notes have been added to the basic entries and some of these are noted below
• 21 Sep 1655 “A strange woman kild with the wagon who lived at Henly” (presumably it was the woman who lived at Henley!)
• 9 Sep 1690 William Robinson “killed by timber”
• 7 Dec 1697 “A stranger drownd near Mr Barkers house”
• 5 May 1734 Henry Fletcher “killed by a bell”
• 9 Oct 1737 Thomas Brown “kill’d by a fall from an apple tree”
• 9 Oct 1884 David Ormrod Archer “drowned whilst bathing at Freshwater, Isle of Wight Sep 27
The parish registers also record many instances where a significant number of people died over a short space of time as well as many instances where several members of the same family died within days or weeks of each other. These events probably indicate an epidemic of some kind; common diseases in the post-medieval era being plague, typhus, smallpox, cholera and consumption (tuberculosis). An example of this is the family of George Browne who lost his wife, two sons and a daughter in the space of a single week in 1621. Sadly, there are many other examples where an unusually large number of people, often from the same family, died over a short space of time.

On the last page of the 18th Century register is the following information:
“December ye 6th 1718 The Yew Tree was planted in Fairford Church-yard by Frampton Huntington A.M. Vicar.
NB: The Wall from ye Parsonage Stable to ye Street was built at ye cost of ye Revnd Mr James Oldisworth Impropriator, but it was pointed & cop’d at ye charge of ye Revnd Mr Frampton Huntington Vicar purely for ye good & benefit of ye trees planted against it.”

This is presumably the yew tree that was recorded in the Parish News as having been blown down in a storm on 16 March 1986. It would be interesting to know which wall this referred to as it would then point to the location of the parsonage stable and the parsonage itself. This was written before the Free School (Community Centre) was built so the wall dividing that plot and the churchyard is probably the most likely candidate.

The Fairford Parish Registers can be consulted in the FHS Archive Room but all are now available at Ancestry.co.uk which can be consulted free at Gloucestershire Archives.

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The Lifehold Estates of John Raymond Barker, Esquire, 1768-1884

The Society has been very fortunate to have been donated a unique historical document relating to Fairford property and people of the 18th and 19th centuries. The foolscap-size notebook is titled “Lifehold Estates belonging to John Raymond Barker Esq” and was donated to the Society by a Fairford resident, whose late husband once worked for the Ernest Cook Trust. The 46-page document records the creation and renewals of leases relating to John Raymond Barker’s property in Fairford, the earliest being dated 1768 and the latest 1884. Over 120 leases are recorded and the details given add greatly to our knowledge of Fairford’s residents and property ownership during the Barker and Raymond Barker family’s time as landlords. Some of the entries are quite revealing; for example the entry for Jonathan Wane’s lease of a house in Milton End on 26 May 1803 gives him the option of paying either four shillings for rent, or just one shilling and “2 couple of fat hens”. In fact poultry seems to have been an alternative form of currency in the 19th Century as six other lessees were given the option of paying part of their rent in chickens!

The book has been transcribed and a copy of the transcription is available in the Society’s Archive Room in the Community Centre for all to see. Many of the old Fairford families are mentioned including the Wanes, Gilletts, Edmonds, Bettertons, Townsends, Beales, Savorys, Radways, Minchins, and many more. We are most fortunate to have been given this unique piece of Fairford history which will now be preserved for posterity. If you have any old documents in your attic or bottom drawer relating to Fairford please consider donating them to the Society where they will be cared for and made accessible for future generations. Alternatively we can take photographs of material so that the originals can be retained by the owners.

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John Keble 1792-1866

John Keble? Who was he? If you like looking at the details in hymn books, you may have noticed his name quite often:
• When God of Old came down from heaven… (A & M revised 154)
• New every morning is the love… (A & M revised 4)
• Sun of my soul, then Saviour dear… (A & M revised 24)
• Blest are the pure in heart… (A & M, revised 335), and others.
The English Hymnal contains many more: numbers 33, 140, 158, 244, 260, 274, 348, 370, and 497.
If you know Oxford, you may know Keble College, his memorial. But who was he? What did he do?

John Keble’s house in Fairford which was called Court Close at the time and in which John Keble senior lived all of his married life.
He was born on St Mark’s Day, 25th April 1792 at the family home in Fairford (now Keble House), the son of another John Keble who was Vicar of Coln St Aldwyns. He was taught at home by his father until in 1806 when he won a scholarship to his father’s old Oxford college, Corpus Christi. In 1810 he took a double first in classics and mathematics: very few had ever managed this before (Sir Robert Peel being one of them) and Keble at just 18 was probably the youngest ever. In 1811 he was elected a Fellow of Oriel College where the Senior Common Room at that time had a reputation for its outstanding intellectual abilities. He was ordained Deacon in 1815 and Priest the following year and was appointed curate of Eastleach Martin and Eastleach Turville. In the university vacations he lived at Fairford and served his parishes from there: in term time, he and his brother Thomas took it in turns to go out to the parishes from Oxford on Sundays, and their father looked after things during the week. He was a College tutor from 1817 until 1823 when his mother died. He took on Southrop as well as the Eastleaches and lived there taking in pupils.
In 1825 he went to be curate of Hursley near Winchester but next year he returned home. His favourite sister Mary Anne had died and Keble served as curate to his elderly father until he died at the beginning of 1835.
In October 1835 he married; and at the end of the year he returned to Hursley as vicar and remained there until his death on 29th March 1866.
Why is Keble important? His hymns have already been mentioned. He was not actually a hymn writer but a poet and compilers of hymn books have generally selected verses from his longer poems. The best known collection is ‘The Christian Year’ first published in 1827. It contains poems for each Sunday of the year and the other Holy Days. Over 100,000 copies were sold in the first 25 years, many more after his death and it is still in print.
Lyra Innocentium followed in 1846; published to pay for the restoration of Hursley Church. It was the National Apostasy Sermon which Keble preached in 1833 in St Mary’s Oxford that John Henry Newman took as marking the beginning of the Oxford Movement. The Movement’s leaders (mainly Keble, Henry Newman took as marking the beginning of the Oxford Movement. The Movement’s leaders (mainly Keble, Newman and Pusey) are also called Tractarians because of Tracts for the Times that they published.
Many think the Oxford Movement was to do with ‘High Church’ and ‘ritualism’. It was not. It was the revival of theology, a re-discovery of our roots in the teachings of the ancient Church fathers (many of whose writings were translated by the Tractarians). It was a revival of discipline and holiness. They were men of great piety and earnestness which makes them seem humourless, which contemporaries tell us they certainly were not.
by John Hunt February 2004

Further reading:
Dictionary of National Biography
John Keble: a study in limitations by G Battiscombe. London: Constable,1963
A glimpse of heaven: the Kebles of Fairford by Hugh Greenhalf. Anglo Catholic History Society, 2005
A Moment in Time: John and Thomas Keble and their Cotswold Life by Allan Ledger, 2017

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The Great Storm, 1703

The Great Storm of 26 November 1703 was one of the most powerful and destructive storms in recorded English history. The storm came in from the Atlantic and cut a swathe of destruction across southern and central England and out into the North Sea. In London about 2,000 chimney stacks were blown down and at least 1,500 men were lost at sea as many ships, including the Royal Navy’s entire Channel Squadron, were sunk. One warship was blown from Harwich all the way to Gothenburg in Sweden before it was able to sail back to England. There was extensive flooding in the West Country where hundreds of people and thousands of livestock were drowned in the Somerset Levels. Other instances of destruction include about 400 windmills which were destroyed, about 4,000 oak trees in the New Forest blown down, and the collapse of the first Eddystone Lighthouse.

Amongst the list of damage done by the storm can be added Fairford’s church and its nationally-important windows. Soon after the storm the author Daniel Defoe (who would later write the novel Robinson Crusoe) asked for first-hand accounts of the effects of the storm with the aim of writing a detailed account of the disaster which was published in 1704. One of the many people who responded to Defoe’s request was the Reverend Edward Shipman, the vicar of Fairford from 1686 to 1711. His letter to Defoe was reprinted in Gloucestershire Notes and Queries:

“Honoured Sir, In obedience to your request I have here sent you a particular account of the damages sustained in our parish by the late violent storm; and because that of our church is the most material which I have to impart to you, I shall therefore begin with it. It is the fineness of our church which magnifies our present loss, for in the whole it is a large and noble structure, composed within and without of ashler curiously wrought, and consisting of a stately roof in the middle, and two isles running a considerable length from one end of it to the other, makes a very beautiful figure. It is also adorned with 28 admired and celebrated windows, which, ‘for the variety and fineness of the painted glass that was in them, do justly attract the eyes of all curious travellers to inspect and behold them; nor is it more famous for its glass, than newly renowned for the beauty of its seats and paving, both being chiefly the noble gift of that pious and worthy gentleman Andrew Barker, Esq.,the late deceased lord of the manor. So that all things considered, it does equal, at least, if not exceed, any parochial church in England. Now that part of it which most of all felt the fury of the winds, was, a large middle west window, in dimension about 15 foot wide, and 25 foot high, it represents the general judgment, and is so fine a piece of art, that £1500 has formerly been bidden for it, a price, though very tempting, yet were the parishioners so just and honest to refuse it. The upper part of this window, just above the place where our Saviour’s picture is drawn sitting on a rainbow, and the earth his footstool, is entirely ruined, and both sides are so shattered and torn, especially the left, that upon a general computation, a fourth part at least is blown down and destroyed. The like fate has another west window on the left side of the former, in dimension about 10 foot broad, and 15 foot high, sustained ; the upper half of which is totally broke, excepting one stone munnel. Now if these were but ordinary glass, we might quickly compute what our repairs would cost, but we the more lament our misfortune herein, because the paint of these two as of all the other windows in our church, is stained through the body of the glass; so that if that be true which is generally said, that this art is lost, then have we an irretrievable loss. There are other damages about our church, which, though not so great as the former, do yet as much testify how strong and boisterous the winds were, for they unbedded 3 sheets of lead upon the uppermost roof, and rolled them up like so much paper. Over the church porch, a large pinnacle and two battlements were blown down upon the leads of it, but resting there, and their fall being short, these will be repaired with little cost.

This is all I have to say concerning our church : our houses come next to be considered, and here I may tell you, that (thanks be to God) the effects of the storm were not so great as they have been in many other places ; several chimnies, and tiles, and slates, were thrown down, but nobody killed or wounded. Some of the poor, because their houses were thatched, were the greatest sufferers; but to be particular herein, would be very frivolous, as well as vexatious. One instance of note ought not to be omitted; on Saturday, the 26th, being the day after the storm, about 2 o’clock in the afternoon, without any previous warning, a sudden flash of lightning, with a short, but violent clap of thunder, immediately following it like the discharge of ordnance, fell upon a new and strong built house in the middle of our town, and at the same time disjointed two chimnies, melted some of the lead of an upper window, and struck the mistress of the house into a swoon, but this, as appeared afterwards, proved the effect more of fear, than of any real considerable hurt to be found about her. I have nothing more to add, unless it be the fall of several trees and ricks of hay amongst us, but these being so common everywhere, and not very many in number here, I shall conclude this tedious scribble, and subscribe myself,

Sir, your most obedient and humble servant,

EDW. SHIPTON, Vicar. [This should be Shipman]
Fairford, Gloucester, Jan., 1704.

The damage to Fairford’s west windows was repaired but some of the glass panels were destroyed and some were put back in the wrong position. It was not until the windows were renovated in the early years of the 20th century that these mistakes were corrected. It was not just Fairford’s church that was damaged, Wells Cathedral also lost part of its great west window and the Bishop of Bath and Wells and his wife died when the chimney stack of the Bishop’s Palace collapsed into their bedroom.
Despite the grievous damage to the church and some of Fairford’s housing at least the storm did not result in any deaths in the town. In all it has been estimated that about 8,000 people died as a result of the Great Storm of 1703 making it the most destructive storm in British history.

This event is also recorded in the book ‘The Greatest Storm: Britain’s Night of Destrution, November 1703 by Martin Brayne, 2003’