Bledington

Bledington is a village and civil parish in the Cotswold district of Gloucestershire, England, about southeast of Stow-on-the-Wold and southwest of Chipping Norton. The population of the civil parish in 2014 was estimated to be 490.

Bledington lies in the Evenlode valley, and forms part of the Gloucestershire–Oxfordshire boundary and stands on the Oxfordshire Way. There are deposits of alluvial soil, but most of the land is heavy clay, the parish being almost entirely on the Lower Lias.

The village is built round a rectangle of streets, with the church in the south corner, and the green, with most of the older houses near it, on the northwest side. The southern part of the village has been developed extensively since 1920. The village green is a large unenclosed stretch of grass, with a stream running through it.

The parish church dates from the 12th century and was extended in the 15th century. The village has a county primary school which dates from the late 19th century. It has a pub, ''The Kings Head'', on the village green. Its former shop and post office closed in 2006, but a new community run shop was opened in 2019. The village hall, which stands near the centre of the village, is a converted 18th-century barn of rubble with a Cotswold stone roof. A trust was formed and the building was bought in 1920 for the use of the people of Bledington and Foscot hamlet. It was renovated and re-roofed in 2016.

History

Although Roman coins have been found near the centre of the parish, the settlement of Bledington (''Bladinton'', or ''Bladynton'') was probably established in late Saxon times, taking its name from the nearby river Bladon (now the Evenlode), which forms the eastern boundary of the parish (and the county). With its heavy clay soil and poor drainage, Bledington seems to postdate nearby West Saxon manors situated on higher ground. The manor of ''Bladintona'' is recorded as being among the gifts of Coenwulf of Mercia to the abbey of Winchcombe in 798, and they retained the control for over 700 years until the abbey's dissolution in 1539.

There were 22 households in the manor in the Domesday survey in 1086, giving a population of about 100, but with no freemen and no priest (and, by implication, no church). By this time, about half (7 hides) of the 1,539 acres of land in the parish were under cultivation. The first mention of the parish church is in 1175 (see below). Bledington was still small and poor enough to be coupled with Sherbourne in 1303 as forming a knight's fee for the purpose of raising a feudal aid for the wedding of Edward I's daughter.

The Black Death arrived in England in 1348 and manor court records suggest that at least one in three Bledington villagers died. The loss of income caused by the Black Death prompted the Abbot of Winchcombe to apply to the King, the Pope and the Bishop of Worcester for permission to appropriate the rectory in 1402, subordinating the resulting vicarage to the abbey and benefitting from the proceeds of the glebe and tithes. In 1546, following the Dissolution, the rectory, including farm, tithes and offerings, was granted to the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church, Oxford. The dean and chapter remained among the principal landowners in Bledington in the 19th century, but by the mid-20th century most of their land had been sold piecemeal and only part of Village Farm was still owned by them.

In March 1553, the manor was acquired from the Crown for £897.13s.d (25 times its rental income) as part of an investment package by Thomas Leigh, a wealthy London merchant. At one stage the Leigh family owned the manors of Adlestrop, Maugersbury and Longborough, as well as their originating village of Stoneleigh. Before the sale, a detailed survey of the manor was undertaken which reveals that there was pasturage for 870 sheep and 124 oxen. Arable land was being used for wheat, barley and pulse together with some hemp for spinning.

By 1600, Leigh's descendants had begun to sell parts of the estate, principally to its tenants, but these freeholds did not represent contiguous areas of land. A 1710 will reveals that one freeholder had 250 arable strips distributed in 207 locations. The manorial common land was divided into parts, mostly held by yeomen whose ancestors had been customary tenants in the 16th century, but was still used as common pasture.

In 1770 six open fields were enclosed, a total of 1,343 acres, with sixteen landowners receiving allotments. Although there was a certain amount of exchanging of land after enclosure, on the whole, the lands belonging to each farm remained scattered. At a second enclosure in 1831 an area of 179 acres was divided between nine proprietors. In the 19th century, only Bledington Ground, and Village Farm remained large farms. The arable land produced wheat, oats, and barley, and by the late 19th century turnips and cider apples were also being grown. ^{and earlier edns.} By the mid-20th century, this industry had stopped owing to the cost of labour and lack of facilities for making cider locally, but the orchards were still a prominent feature of the landscape.

A mill at Bledington was recorded as part of Winchcombe Abbey's estate in the Domesday Book. There was a miller in Bledington up to 1935.

Parish church

The Church of St Leonard is the parish church dedicated to St Leonard. It is of stone, with roofs of lead and of Cotswold stone, and comprises a chancel with a sanctus bell-cot, clerestoried nave, south aisle, south porch, and embattled west tower. The church was lavishly rebuilt in the 15th century, though it retains earlier parts, and the 15th-century painted glass surviving in some of the windows is a notable feature. The earliest known reference to a church in Bledington is in a confirmation dated 1175 by Pope Alexander III to Winchcombe Abbey of all its churches. The east and west walls of the nave are said to be from this era.

The chancel, the nave arcade of three bays, and the south porch were built in the 13th century, and some new windows were added in the 14th century. Subsequently, a three-stage tower with an external vice was erected: the west wall of the nave serves as the base of the west wall of the tower and arches within the nave support the other walls of the tower.

The main rebuilding in the late 15th century included the raising of the nave roof, the insertion of a clerestory and parapets, and the refenestration of the nave and aisle. Most of the new windows were square-headed, with Perpendicular tracery, and five have canopied image brackets in each reveal. A recess with a three-light window was built leading from the south-west corner of the chancel into an archway to the south aisle. The 15th-century south doorway, with moulded arch an
head stops
retains part of its early door. In 1548 Somerset, the Lord Protector, acting on behalf of the boy king Edward VI, ordered that all imagery should be removed from churches, and by 1650 St Leonards had lost its rood screen and window statues. The hidden remains of the earlier wall decorations are now partially visible, including a stretch of masonry pattern enriched with rosettes and heart-shaped petals dating from the 14th century on the west wall of the chancel and a late medieval figure, in black outline, of a crowned female saint with long hair on the east wall of the nave.

The eight windows of the north wall of the nave and the recessed window in the south wall of the chancel were filled with contemporary painted glass. The glass survives, in some cases as fragments pieced together, but in others as nearly complete panels. It has been suggested that it was made by John Prudde of Westminster, glazier of the similar windows in the Beauchamp chapel in Warwick. Some of the inscriptions and names of donors can still be seen, one dated 1470.

The building was in a very poor state by the mid 19th century. It was restored in 1881 by J. E. K. Cutts and again by F. E. Howard c.1923. The pews were replaced in 1904, but some 15th-century bench ends with decorative blind tracery were retained. The tub-shaped font is 12th-century, the communion rails and altar table are 17th-century, and beside the 20th-century pulpit is an ancient wrought-iron hourglass stand. There are five 17th-century bells and a sixth dated 1811. One bell cast in 1639 bears the inscription ''We are the bells of Bledington and Charles is our King''.

The ecclesiastical parish includes both Bledington and the hamlet of Foscot in Oxfordshire and forms part of th
Evenlode Vale
benefice of the Anglican Church. The patronage remains with the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church.

Inn

There were two "alehouses" in 1775, and there were still two inns in 1870, but by 1889 the 16th-centur
King's Head
was the only survivor. Overlooking the village green, it is a traditional village pub with dining and accommodation and was recognised as one of the ten best inns in the country by the Good Pub Guide

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