Kingham Church
More on its history
EnclosureLainchbury devotes a chapter to the history of Kingham Church (Lainchbury, Jr., E. J., Kingham The Beloved Place, Alden Press (Oxford) Ltd., 1957). The book was privately published and most copies went unsold so it is very rare. The following paragraphs draw heavily from Lainchbury's work.
This drawing from the Bodleian Library was made by Buckler in 1825. The south aisle and porch, erected in 1852, postdate the drawing. Lainchbury: "We also see the 'great window' in the chancel, but the most striking feature is the absence of the bank between the church and the path. This must have been there in 1825 for the tombstones on it bear earlier dates (these tombstones have since been removed and re-erected near the rectory). I suspect Buckler completed his drawing after he got home and forgot the bank, but perhaps the bank is the excavated soil for the south aisle erected 26 years afterwards. And where is the clock? There was certainly one in existence in 1765 for we have read in the Churchwarden's accounts 'John Smiths Bill for mending the Church Clock 4.0.' Possibly it was inside. That the window was in the tower as shown in the drawing there can be no doubt, for the stone hood is still there and the walled-up window can be seen below the clock dial today."
"We will visit the church and take a general look round before going into details. The year may be any between say 1905 and 1910, and as we enter the churchyard through the gate (no Lych Gate then) we find on our left the graveyard opened in 1884, with graves about four rows deep from the road. As we turn the bend we see the school. No modern building this; the old tithe barn converted. Here Kingham lads and lasses received their education. I was one of them from 1902 until the end of 1910. The school had graves on three sides, and one would think that such close proximity to the signs of mortality would have had a depressing effect. Perhaps it did on the teachers, but the children were too busy with their conkers and other delights, and too far away from old age to be affected. Gravestones and the trees were just in the natural order of things. The church tower was covered in ivy, truly an 'ivy-mantled tower' and at times Robert Rawlings could be seen sitting or standing in his seat on the end of a rope as he trimmed the ivy back close to the tower and once more cleared the clock face of its growth.
"John Kibble of Charlbury, who was a stonemason who worked in his younger days about here and lodged with the Brick family, suggests in his book Charming Charlbury that this tower of ours was built by William of Wynford who was the mason of William de Wykeham, who, as we have already seen, bought land here, and this is why New College, which he founded, still owns land here and claim to be Lords of the Manor. This William of Winford was 'architect and chief mason of Windsor Castle Round Tower under William of Wykeham', so Kibble's suggestion may be sound. The tower at this period was in a very dilapidated condition with the pinnacles crumbling away. In the north-west corner of the ancient graveyard is the oldest dated outside tombstone I know, John Clemton, 1764."
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