Kempsford

This is one of the occasional series of Parish Notes complied by Sue Ross and first published on our Facebook group. You are welcome to comment with further information about the parish.

Kempsford lies on the River Thames, on the south side of Fairford Airfield.

Unusually, although its situation is on a ford over the Thames, the eponymous ford, and in fact the river itself, are not apparent to visitors to the village, as it passes behind the houses on the village street, and there is no access to them.

The Reverend AB Mynors wrote a history of the village, and describes the ford thus

From 1789 – 1927 Kempsford was a major stop on the now defunct Thames/Severn canal.

All that remains is Wharf House, built on the site of – yes – a wharf, and Oatlands Bridge, marooned in a field just outside of the village.

The route of the canal, where it crosses the parish street, can still be seen, but is now private land.

Since 1972, the Cotswold Canals Trust has been working to restore both the canal and the Stroudwater Navigation to navigably re-link the Thames and the Severn, but the new route will not necessarily follow the older one through the village.

This photograph of the route of the canal is copyright Charles Lynne and is from CanalPlanAC. It is Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence

The Church of St Mary the Virgin

It is sometimes difficult to describe parish churches – they are so often a ‘gem’ and I have yet to find one that isn’t interesting.

The first word that comes to mind, when approaching this church, is ‘imposing’. In the words of Arthur Mee, written in 1938 ‘The tower is one of the finest in Gloucestershire, arising in three stages…it rises from a noble church, with much to see and enjoy, and its elaborate vaulted roof inside is rich with modern colouring’.

On the east wall, inside the porch, is a curiosity that we have come across before at Aldbourne and Bibury, and it seems peculiar to the area. The elaborate niche holes for candles in the base, and one can see where the hinges of a grill were placed. It was possible a shrine, but this is uncertain.

There are several well-preserved tombstones in the churchyard.

The remarkable roof of the crossing was painted in 1862. The tower was built by John of Gaunt, who married Blanche of Kempsford in 1359. She was the heiress of the Duke of Lancaster, and this is a celebration of the family, with its abundant red Lancastrian roses.

The delightful finials of fanned leaves were part of the restoration carried out by GE Street.

The knocked-about tomb, from the perpendicular period houses the tomb from a priest dating from about 1450 (50 years earlier than the rest of the tomb.

Nonconformity

The Baptist Missionary Society was the first foreign missionary society created by the Evangelical Revival of the last half of the eighteenth century. They built a Mission Hall in the village in 1879, as a branch of Fairford Baptist Church.

Records of births, deaths and marriages (1780-1905) for Fairford Baptist church are held at Gloucestershire Archives, ref D4278/1-2.

The George Inn

The 19^th century George has a very special place among the 92 pubs owned by Arkell’s brewery. The village was the birthplace of John Arkell in 1802 and there are generations of the Arkell family buried in the village churchyard. It was hardly surprising that John Arkell returned here in 1861 to purchase his third pub, a building he must have been familiar with when he was growing up. It was the first ‘country’ pub that Arkell’s purchased. It has probably got the distinction of being the pub in the county to have served beer from just one brewery for the greatest length of time.

(thanks to gloucestershirepubs.co.uk for the older photo and the information)

Just south of the church, a manor house was built in the 12th Century. 19th Century historians assumed there was a castle here, a belief derived merely from the existence of a large moated manor house.

This was demolished in the 16th century by the Thynne family, who built a large house on the site. In 1790

the then owner, Lord Coleraine ‘through extravagance was reduced to pull down the house which was sold for the value of the materials. The trees were also cut down, the gardens dismantled, and everything allowed to go to ruin. The present manor farm was built out of the materials, but much was also loaded on to barges and floated down the river to Buscot for the building of Mr.Loveden Price’s house there, Buscot Park.

A later owner, George, 4th Lord Coleraine, became notorious. Imprisoned for debt, he traded as a coal merchant. He was a companion to George IV, until ‘his eccentric manners became too free and coarse’. Like other superstitious rakes of the period, he insisted he must be buried above ground to prevent the devil getting to him, but in 1858 his coffin was placed underneath the organ.

The family also were landowners in Driffield, and have monuments in the church. George’s states that ‘ ‘He lived and died a firm Believer in One God and in One God only. He was also a practical Christian as far as his frail nature did allow him to be so’.

The annotated map shows the changes that have occurred in the parish in the last century.

Fairford Airbase is circled in blue. Construction on the site started in 1943 as part of a programme to open fourteen airfields in southern England to be used by British and American troop carrier transports and gliders. It opened on 18 January 1944.

Various gravel pits are shaded in green. The lakes were created in the second half of the 20th century by extraction of glacial Jurassic limestone gravel, which had eroded from the Cotswold Hills, and these filled naturally from rivers and streams after workings began to be exhausted in the early 1970s.

Whelford

The chapel of ease of St Anne was built in 1864 by GE Street, at the same time that he was working at Kempsford Church.

St Thomas’ Catholic Church, Horcott

Following the closure of the recusant chapel at Hatherop Castle in 1844 a church was built at Horcott during the following year for the cost of £700.
The first Mass was celebrated on Sunday, 12th October 1845, and had an average congregation of 60 in 1851. In 1976 it served a parish which included Lechlade, Fairford, and eleven surrounding villages. It was closed in 2003.

The Forge

Francis Collett was a blacksmith, a trade he had learned from his grandfather Francis Collett and from whom he inherited the family business, which can still be seen today.

He was baptised on 8^th July 1711 at Kempsford and was an orphan from the age of five, his mother having died in 1711 and his father in 1716. Francis was raised by his grandparents Francis and Susannah Collett until their deaths in 1729 and 1728 respectively.

He married Catherine Cowling at Highworth in 1835. Catherine’s ancestors were stonemasons who had moved to Kempsford from Oxford to build the church tower in the 1300s, from when they had permanently settled in the village. All of the children of Francis and Catherine were born and baptised at Kempsford

It took almost seven years to resolve and prove the Will of Francis his grandfather, perhaps due to the Will being contested by Francis’ three surviving children each of whom only received one shilling, while his grandson inherited the family business and all the property that went with it.

Francis (the younger) died in Kempsford having lived there all his life and was buried there on 1^st September 1768.

Thanks to www.collettfamilyhistory.net for this information and thanks to Phil Sampson on the Gloucestershire Social History page for the older picture.

Hannington Bridge

Despite its name, the ford does not appear in the later records of Kempsford and all traces of a track connecting with it on the Castle Eaton bank have disappeared. It was apparently a difficult ford to negotiate and flooding of the surrounding land may also have limited its use. The shape of Kempsford village shows that the Cirencester–Highworth road was a more significant factor in its development. The road crosses the Thames at Hannington bridge. A bridge had been built there by 1439, Kempsford and Hannington being responsible for repairing their respective halves. The bridge was rebuilt in 1647 after being destroyed during the fighting in the Civil War, and it was again rebuilt, as three stone arches, in 1841.

Personally, I find it interesting how little we notice bridges now, hardly registering when we drive over an obstacle which would have been considerable in the past.

Thanks to www.archiuk.com for use of the map.

In the Kellys Directory of 1879, a Reading Room was listed in the village. It appears on the 3rd edition of the 25″ scale OS maps, but has since disappeared.

I believe that the corrugated metal building in the right of the picture (from Kempsford.net) could be the building.

Reading rooms offered a much needed alternative to the public house for the working classes, although they tended to appeal more to the lower middle classes, and membership was mostly restricted to males. In the twentieth century, as other diversions appeared and the countryside became more democratised, reading rooms gradually declined. They were an important part of village life and have left interesting evidence of former lifestyles and attitudes.

Whelford Mill

Two Whelford Mills were recorded in 1258 and in 1532 when there were two mills under one roof. They were presumably on the site of Whelford mill. In 1710 Whelford mill was worked in conjunction with a malthouse. The buildings were remodelled and extended in the mid C20 to form a substantial residence.

Photo by permission of millsarchive.org

Cross Tree

The small green at Cross Tree provided a focal point on the Cirencester road. The stocks stood at the green until about 1880.

The older photograph is from www.kempsford.net, which has many interesting older photos. The second photo was from the collection of Elizabeth Jack.

Published: 6 months ago