A farmer has sown a field of maize. I process up a narrow aisle between seven foot plants whose corns are just beginning to show, a jungly, childish pleasure. I enjoy as I've done before the remnants of the old green lane from Warkworth and Banbury as it wends its way between an avenue of low trees on the descent towards Chacombe. In the imagination I'm keeping company with Pride and Prejudice era young ladies out for a walk under parasols, off to do good to the poor folk.
And then I'm caught out as I've been before near here by my faulty direction finding where the path emerges into open pasture. It's the orientation of the South Cherwell Golf Club that does it, this time compounded by the presence of a large herd of frisky, mildly delinquent teenage heifers. I try to steer a path around them, but they're curious and dangerously playful, following too closely on my heels, bounding down the field. I do as you're supposed to do, turn and stare them out, while saying things in tones alternately emollient and authoritative. But this has perils of its own - walking backwards across a tussocky field isn't easy, and falling over would be a very bad idea. For a few moments I'm genuinely frightened. I can't read the heifers' behaviour accurately enough: there's too much head-shaking going on for my liking. I see a patch of worn earth surrounding some dead tree stumps ten yards away, and put these old hedge remains between me and them. The animals do as I hope, and confronted by a psychological barrier they lose interest, returning to making their own entertainment rather than taking the rise out of me. I try to settle my accelerated heart rate. Through a bosky corner, under an ornamental arch and over the next (thankfully livestock-free) field is a cracking view of Chacombe's Big House, half a mile away in the valley.
I like combes. I like the way the word crops up countrywide, and becomes the Welsh 'cwm', denoting a bowl in the landscape at the ending of a valley, often gentle in England as here, but imposing or even minatory in say, Snowdonia. Chacombe is charming and not just because it alliterates. St. Peter and Paul's is hidden behind the shrubbery in Church Lane beside a parcel of common ground. The churchyard is currently being attended to, and pieces of coloured plastic on strings - old supermarket carrier bags - warn the too-casual visitor against falling into the gaping cavity of a broken tomb. The plastic carries odd inter-faith overtones: the scraps superficially resemble Buddhist prayer flags. A notice by the church gate warns me that the path has been treated with a TV-advertised farm grade weedkiller, though it doesn't tell me what I should do about that. I suppose eating my sandwiches off the paving wouldn't be wise. The church is shut. Had it been open I could have seen the wall painting of St. Peter being crucified upside down, one of only two such depictions in the country. Gory stuff, but perhaps painted in gory times.
The New Testament epistles paint a picture of an early church in which individuals have forgotten they're supposed to be following Jesus of Nazareth, and have latched onto a particularly glamorous disciple as the concrete embodiment of their faith. Peter and Paul were two such focuses of attention. I guess churches dedicated to both of these old-timers, such as Chacombe's, are making an ecumenical statement about seeing all sides of an argument. Trouble is, whereas perhaps Jesus continues to exert an attraction to people in every place and time including ours, Peter and Paul are difficult for the contemporary world to identify with - and maybe becoming more hard to understand with every year that Time puts between them and us. Which of the two would have dealt better with Facebook?
Parable of the Sower 2
There was once a priory in Chacombe (the Big House is also called Chacombe Priory but it's a more recent building) and on the web I've seen a suggestion that perhaps the old monks' chapel survives. I plan to go across the field to its likely site, but more cows block the way and with my last close bovine encounter too recent a memory, I decide to pass on the opportunity. Moving up the hill I come to the farm at Coton, once a hamlet of about seventy people until a nineteenth century fire destroyed some of the cottages.. Maybe too many painful memories clung to the place: the inhabitants left. The paths are vague but I pick my way round the farm buildings and rejoin the Jurassic Way as it climbs towards Wardington and the Oxfordshire boundary. I'm making one of my periodic out-of-diocese visits, partly because it suits today's route, but also because Wardington is a gem. It's a village of two halves. The loveliest buildings, including the handsome Manor House, are in Upper Wardington, but the church is in the lower half. Along the back path between the two are some grassy ramparts above the stream. They look like a castle mound. At any rate they're serious fortifications, but I can't find any reference to them in British History Online. There was activity around here in both the Wars of the Roses and the English Civil War: the ramparts might date from either time, but the lack of information's puzzling.
St. Mary Magdalene's church shares a benefice with one in neighbouring Cropredy, where indeed a Civil War battle was fought on the ridge, but that's not the reason the latter village name might sound familiar. Two Sundays ago it was 'Fairport Sunday' in the benefice, because each year the revered elder statesmen of folk-rock 'Fairport Convention' hold a weekend festival there. Bass player Dave Pegg lives and works in the village, and I once recorded a couple of tracks with Stuart Marson at his 'Woodworm' studio. I first saw Fairport at the Corn Exchange Cambridge on firework night 1970 and was transfixed. They were playing a music I recognised from the works of twentieth century classical composers like Britten and Vaughan Williams, but in a new, exciting and loud way. I loved Richard Thompson's dangerous guitar playing and Dave Swarbrick's impish fiddle work. Dave Mattacks' spare and sensitive drumming was a revelation. Sometimes one can be a bit too quick to say that such and such a musical moment sealed one's fate, but this really was an epiphany, and there's been a bit of me that's been walking round with a finger in one ear ever since. (For less musical readers this needs explanation. This digital tic isn't about hearing protection. It's the way folkie singers self-tune when delivering interminable ballads on the usual subjects of traditional music i.e. cuckolding and/or murder. It's usually mandatory to hold a pint of something Old and Peculiar in the other hand.)
Wardington from above
Climbing the steep slope up to the ridge beyond Wardington, I come across Anna who's helping her friend Ellie with some 'A' level geographical fieldwork. When I first see her I think she may be burying a beloved pet but actually she's measuring the water infiltration. The view from the top back towards Banbury is truly lovely in the afternoon sun and the walk along the ridge to the east should be a pleasure. But though the farmer doesn't want us to walk along the track on the northern side of the boundary, he can't be bothered to clear the path to the south, so I have to hack at the nettles and maither when I should be enjoying the vistas beneath me. Things slowly deteriorate from a path maintenance point of view the closer I get to Thorpe Mandeville, and particularly as I drop into the deep railway cutting and try to find a way up through the tangles on the other side. Overhead a single-engined jet plane performs some gentle aerobatics - an old Canberra or a Jet Provost? - something relatively ancient with straight wings. I chunter at the sheep who very sensibly run away so that they don't have to hear me swear. It's the combination of farmer behaviours I object to. If you can't be bothered to support me in my best efforts to keep to the rights of way, don't waste your money on notices telling me how private your land is while you neglect the proper care of finger posts and stiles.
At Thorpe Mandeville I head for a restorative GB at the Three Conies pub, served to me by Siobhan. She asks me if I'm walking and I explain. She remembers a church in her native Cork where everyone likes to get married - St. Finbar's: there's a waiting list of two years. I ask if she's put her name down yet. She says she'll have to find a man first. Amanda is having a drink with her family, overhears our chat and comes to the bar to join in. She's from Culworth, just up the road, and we talk about local churches, and how there's always something to be seen, and how they make us feel. When I say goodbye, I walk the length of the village and enter the little church of St. John the Baptist. A wall painting survives, and it's particularly touching. An infant Jesus is being carried on the shoulders of St. Christopher, who of course is the patron saint of travellers. Thorpe Mandeville sits on the drovers' route known as Banbury Lane, which I encountered twenty-five miles away on the outskirts of Northampton. Each year the sheep-minders would have passed this way, perhaps sheltering overnight at the Three Conies, perhaps taking communion at the church if they were so minded. They would have seen the painting on the north wall of St. John's as they entered by the south door, and perhaps its tender symbolism gave the seventeenth century church-whiteners pause as they stripped the parish church of all other things by their lights idolatrous.
A copy of the church accounts for 2015-16 is attached to the noticeboard in the church porch. There are eleven contributions to the Planned Giving at St. John's totalling some three thousand pounds. Casual giving runs at about eight hundred pounds p.a.. There are a few other contributions to church funds, notably a harvest supper raising four hundred or so. The diocese asks the church for somewhere around £4.5k annually, for which the church will receive about a sixth of a vicar's time. They can only meet their 'parish share' by dipping very slightly into reserves. This is not sustainable.
How could the financial and pastoral resources of a church like Thorpe Mandeville be improved? Without patronising the parishioners, some of whom may be elderly and not so well off, could some church-twinning assist in promoting growth? What about the church and the pub working together? Is the urban scene always the way to think about reviving the Church's fortunes? What if 'Revival' were to come from Britain's villages?
The way back to Middleton Cheney takes me along the 'Millenium Way', a Rotary inspired project from 2000. No doubt it seemed like a good idea at the time, but the waymarking of the path hereabouts has become sketchy with time, and it requires a bit of native wit to work out the walking line. Just a thought, but I wonder if the installation of second-rate 'Long Distance' paths means that less care is taken with the overall pattern of 'rights of way'?
Stats man: 21 km. 6.5 hrs. 22 deg. Breezy. 26 stiles. 21 gates. 3 bridges. Some leaping about. Some scrabbling under. Good rabbiting and craic at the Three Conies .
Lord
Thank you
For sunny summer days
For good people
For the beauty
Of stone and wood
For the sense of physical well-being.
Help me to cling to these memories
In the dark times
When they come.
Amen.
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