Notes from churches, wells, villages, and other historical locations around England.
A few miles outside Charlbury, down a lane that gives no warning of what’s at the end of it, sits the chapel of All Saints, Shorthampton. It is easy to miss, and that is rather the point. Shorthampton was built as a chapel-of-ease, a small satellite church granted to communities too far from their parish church to make the journey…
The charming village of Cumnor sits just a few miles southwest of Oxford. An easy bus ride of 20 minutes, but a more complicated bike ride, as it sits atop Cumnor Hill, a two-mile stretch of incline that slows many cyclists to a crawl. I should know, I barely make it up on my electric bicycle. For over five hundred…
Many years ago whilst living in San Francisco, I found a book from the 1980s called “Highgate Cemetery: Victorian Valhalla”, The book was filled with photos of what appeared to be a completely overgrown, if not somewhat abandoned cemetery in London. I fell in love. On my first visit to London, I knew I had to visit. It was clear…
Just south of Oxford is the town of Abingdon on Thames, home of St Ethelwold’s House and Garden. When I was studying English Local History at the Oxford University Department of Continuing Education, I went down to Abingdon to research an unusual piece of stained glass in the Church of St Helen. It was then that I first noticed St…
May 1st is a Big Deal in Oxford. For over 500 years crowds have been gathering before 6am at the foot of Magdalen College tower to hear the choir sing to welcome Spring. Afterwards, there is singing and dancing in the streets as people gather to celebrate. Some, in fact, have been celebrating for hours as many pubs and parties…
Since I first encountered pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago many years ago, I’ve been fascinated with Pilgrimage badges. They began to be used in the 13th century, and were usually displayed as an indication of the completion of a pilgrimage, or as a testament to the miracles performed by a saint or that were supposed to have occurred at…
Take 40 minutes and watch this short film about musician Sam Lee singing with what might be one of the last generations of Nightingales in the UK. A quiet, gentle film which I found both really moving and inspiring.
I remember being a child watching Saturday morning cartoons in California in the 1970s. One of my favourite shows was In Search Of… with Leonard Nimoy. Each week they explored some kind of mysterious phenomenon, from the Bermuda Triangle to Bigfoot, Atlantis to learning ESP. But the episode that caught my imagination most completely was “The Magic of Stonehenge.” From that point…
