The Established Church
When Margaret Dickins published her pioneering History of Hook Norton in 1928, some local people complained that there was far too much in it about the village church. She replied that the history of St Peter’s is the history of Hook Norton. In important ways she was obviously right. Religion was central to people’s lives: about 1610, in a house close to the centre of the old village, the householder had religious texts painted on the plaster of his bedroom wall, which still survive as a rare (and protected) example of this domestic practice. So too the Church itself was central to the life of the village, for centuries not just the spiritual home of parishioners but a significant legal, social, economic and cultural institution. Only in the nineteenth century did it lose that predominance.
Physically, the church is the single most important surviving expression of past experience; it stands as the most important historical artefact we have. As a building, the church dominates Hook Norton; its tower springs into view from the most surprising angles. It is the only Grade 1 listed building in the parish. It dates back before the Norman Conquest but with little new building after 1500; what we see now is primarily the creation of the fifteenth century. Many things can be learned from the church building, but first and foremost it provides key evidence for what happened in Hooky in the Middle Ages.
For nigh on a thousand years the Church played far more than a religious role in the life of the parish. Great legal authority was exercised by episcopal authority, which through the Middle Ages meant the Bishop of Lincoln and then, after 1542, the Bishop of Oxford. Through the parish’s involvement in the business affairs of first Oseney Abbey and then the Bishop of Oxford, the Church was involved in land management and agricultural production. The church courts exercised considerable influence over secular affairs, especially family life and inheritance; it could also govern the private behaviour of individuals. It was a means of communication whereby leaders of church and state nationally could make their will known to the community. St Peter’s, in short, was central to the social, cultural and political life of the parish.
What follows deals with different periods of the Church’s development in this parish. First, we discuss the building of St Peter’s over six centuries, trying to isolate what the church looked like at particular points down to 1500. More on the medieval church’s role in economic, legal, social and cultural life can be learned from the articles elsewhere on Oseney Abbey, which was the ecclesiastical lord of the manor in Hook Norton down to 1538. Subsequent sections deal with the church from the Reformation to the Toleration Act of 1689; the church as a safe and superior – not to say complacent – establishment between 1690 and 1840; the reforming Victorian Church, which, inspired but arguing with itself, established new traditions in the late nineteenth century that continued until after the Second World War; and, finally, St Peter’s Within Living Memory. Each of these later sections discusses changes to the interior of the building as well as religious and secular developments during its period, and there will be supplementary articles on special features like the font, the wall paintings and, we hope, the bells.
© Donald Ratcliffe
For Further Reading:
The best printed source of information on St Peters before 1928 remains Margaret Dickins’s History of Hook Norton, pages 106-142, though the essays in this section endeavour to improve on it. It may be briefly supplemented by these guides:
Christopher Wigg, St Peter’s Church, Hook Norton (Gloucester, n.d. but after 1949).
Christopher Wigg et al., A Guide to the Churches of Swerford, Great Rollright and Hook Norton (rev. ed., n. p., 1990), with illustrations by Joan Lawrence.
[John Wheatley, Sheila Terry and Sheila Rider], A Guide to St Peter’s Church, Hook Norton, rev. ed. (Hook Norton, 2004).
John Wheatley: “St Peter’s Church, Hook Norton, Oxfordshire” (typescript, Village Museum and Archive).
03/10/15
