The road less travelled by

There are several villages in England called Churchill. One of them, near the Mendips, is associated with the Churchill family, and was used by him in WWII as an archetype of "what Britain is fighting for". This one is much closer to the family seat of Blenheim and Blaydon, but has no connection as far as I can discover

This is the old church, on a site dating back to the Anglo Saxons - or part of it, which explains its odd proportions - now deconsecrated and used as a heritage centre. It is outside the village, on a narrow lane that leads to nowhere except the back entrance to an exclusive school and (as I discovered) an all-but-impassible bridle path (I made it. The bike needs a deep clean). Odd. The road end is on the map as 'Sarsden Halt' - also odd, as Sarsden is the next parish on the other side of the village. There is a 'new' (1826) church in the centre of the village, composed of reproductions of various bits of several Oxford colleges - a kind of architectural tribute act

History is the key. The village suffered a catastrophic fire in 1684, when most of the thatch and timber buildings were destroyed and four people died. This was less than 20 years after London and, just like that conflagration, began in a bakery, where the cheapskate baker had made a hole in the wall to make use of his neighbour's chimney! The new, stone village moved up the hill, leaving the church isolated on the edge for 140 years

'Sarsden Halt' was a station on the (closed in the 60s) Banbury-Cheltenham railway. It probably got its name as a sop to the lord of Sarsden manor, whose blessing may have been required to route the track over his land. Or maybe the country alresdy had too many Churchill stations. There was a daily 'Ports-to-Ports' service - a direct express between Newcastle upon Tyne and South Wales - that passed through this tiny Halt. If a 'prior request' was made, it would stop and pick you up

Churchill has two* famous sons, each of whom deserves a blip to themselves: Warren Hastings (1732), an East India Company clerk who rose to be the first Viceroy of India, and later one of the few people impeached by the British parliament; and William 'Strata' Smith (1769), a brilliant man of humble origins who drew the first - still highly accurate - geological map of England. I guess I have to cycle this way again

*or three, if you count Rick Stein