The shepherd’s stroll
A guided walk around Great Rollright
A circular walk around the Oxfordshire village of Great Rollright, discovering the places most closely associated with shepherd Richard Widdows (c 1810–1910).
1. St Andrew’s Church
Spare a few minutes to peep inside the church, noting the beautiful Norman doorway as you enter. Richard Widdows was a regular church goer. In the centenarian’s reminiscences, captured by a Chipping Norton paper in 1905, he recollected how in his youth the church had high pews and a gallery in the belfry from where musicians accompanied the services. The village players’ instruments including a clarinet, bassoon and bass viol. Boys and men attended church in clean ‘smock-frocks’ with the wealthier farmers wearing ‘knee breeches, buckled shoes, and brown and blue coats with gilt buttons’.
After exiting the church, take the main path towards the lychgate. Immediately to the right on slightly raised ground is Widdows’ grave.
2. The Shepherd’s gravestone
Prominently placed by the entrance of the churchyard, Widdows’ tombstone is a reflection of the fond regard in which he was held. The gravestone was paid for by public subscription: contributions were raised in the village and across the Chipping Norton area. In October 1907, this humble man gained national fame for his longevity after King Edward VII sent him a message of congratulations on his ‘102nd Birthday’.
Records suggest that on his death in 1910, Widdows was not 104, but closer to a century old. This was, however, an extraordinary age for a man who had spent several years of his childhood in a workhouse and had three sons who died before the age of thirty-five.
3. The lychgate
Completed in 1908, this fine lychgate was only a couple of years old when Widdows died. Designed by Arts & Crafts architect WD Caröe, it was built in loving memory of Ellen Rendall by her sons. You can find the names of the nine sons inscribed inside the arch.
Mrs Rendall was the wife of the Rector, Henry Rendall, who came to Great Rollright in 1855 and served the parish for almost 40 years. With nine sons and a single daughter, who died in infancy, the couple’s family filled the roomy rectory with their offspring. It had been extravagantly expanded by Rendall’s profligate predecessor, who had fled abroad to escape his debtors.
In the last few decades of his life, Widdows lived in one of the two cottages, known as Potter’s Coomb, that were attached to the lychgate. If you take a look at the gate, you can see the remains of the joining wall. In the 1950s, this tiny terrace of cottages fell into disrepair, becoming derelict, before being demolished. All that survive of them now are the foundations in the vegetable patch of Molly’s Orchard.
A reporter from the Oxfordshire Weekly News wrote of Widdows in 1905: ‘He resides in a little cottage adjoining the church, as he has done so for the last 20 years. A little window in his sitting-room overlooks the graves where his two wives and a number of his children lie buried. Every Sunday morning he attends the service at the picturesque little church he has known so long. He accomplishes this short walk quite unaided.’
Now follow Church End around to the right until you see Church End House on the right-hand side of the road.
4. Church End House
The grandest farmhouse in the village, with its classical porch, was built in 1725 by yeoman farmer Richard Berry. It continued to be inhabited by generations of Richard Berrys – the name was passed down from son to son – until the final Richard Berry (1849–1918) was forced to move out in 1915. Driven into debt by the Great Agricultural Depression, Berry lost his home, before losing his only son to the First World War.
Committed to public service, Richard Berry was Church Warden and Guardian of the Poor. A kindly benefactor, he supported Richard Widdows at a time when there was no welfare or state pension. In his retirement, the shepherd lived in Berry’s cottage at Potter’s Coomb. Berry’s support exceeded financial aid: he also wrote to the King’s secretary to inform the monarch of the shepherd’s great age and organised for his gravestone to be erected by public subscription.
After Berry moved out of Church End House in 1915, Brasenose College refurbished the farmhouse and Reginald Jeffery, a college fellow and historian moved in with his wife and young daughter. Jeffery wrote the first history of the village: The Manors and Advowson of Great Rollright, 1927.
Now turn around and walk down Tyte End (the road will be immediately behind you with the Old Rectory on the left). Keep on walking until you reach a sign for Tyte Tap on your right.
5. Tyte Tap
Widdows had no running water in his cottage at Potter’s Coomb. There was a well in the field just below the school, which could be used for washing, but drinking water had to be collected from the natural spring at Tyte Tap.
The word ‘tyte’ or ‘tite’ is an old Oxfordshire word for water that is artificially collected in an open hollow.
Until the 1960s, several households in Great Rollright were not connected to the mains and continued to collect water here.
Continue following Tyte End as it curves around to the right and then walk uphill until you reach Manor Court Farm on the right-hand side of the road.
6. Manor Court Farm
This was the largest farmhouse in the village owned by Brasenose College. In 1840, it was leased to Widdows’ employer William Fletcher. Fletcher was born in Ebrington, Gloucestershire. He was only 20 years old when his father set up him up as a tenant farmer in Great Rollright. His father’s name, Richard Fletcher, is on the original lease with the college. Widdows started working for Fletcher as soon as he took over the farm. By 1851, Fletcher employed nine labourers, including Widdows.
Soon after moving to Great Rollright, Fletcher married 19-year-old Susannah Penson, a farmer’s daughter from Blockley in Gloucestershire. They had a son William who went on to become a farmer in Chadlington. When Susannah died at the age of 35, Fletcher never remarried.
Like so many farmers in the 1870s, Fletcher struggled financially during the Great Agricultural Depression. He fell behind with the rent and was forced to give up the farm in 1880. Although he spent the last few remaining years of his life living in Hook Norton, he chose to be buried at Great Rollright by Rector Henry Rendall. Having worked for Fletcher for almost 40 years, Widdows referred to the farmer faithfully until the end of his life.
Take the first turning on the left down Chapel Lane. Follow Chapel Lane around past the Old Beer House on your right, once in South End look out for Tewer Cottage straight in front of you.
7. The Tewer
On the right of Tewer Cottage is a narrow passage, known as The Tewer, which connects South End to the High Street. Head straight down this tight dark alley with stone walls on either side.
‘Tewers’ or ‘tures’ are narrow alleyways that were used for herding and counting sheep. A number of tures can also be found in Stow-on-the-Wold.
It is not difficult to imagine Widdows driving William Fletcher’s flock of sheep down The Tewer on the way to the livestock market in Chipping Norton.
When you reach the end of The Tewer, turn right into the High Street and walk up for some way looking out for the sad spectre of The Unicorn pub, a dilapidated building, on your right.
8. The Unicorn
A keen pipe smoker, Widdows abstained from alcohol in his later years. However, he admitted to not having been a teetotaller all his life. He would have been well acquainted with the interior of The Unicorn. Functioning as more than a watering hole, it served as the village’s social and communications centre. A coaching inn, it became a post house in 1852 with a wall letter box introduced in the early 1860s. It had a tap room at the back and a formal front room with rooms upstairs for paying guests.
Originally built in the late 18th or early 19th century, the pub was remodelled in the 1850s.
Closed in 1989, the pub’s structure is now decaying to the point of ruin. A grade II listed building, the pub’s owners and the council have been locked in a battle over planning and change of use for over thirty years. It is a sight of shame and great regret for Rollright’s inhabitants.
Walk straight ahead to the junction and the signpost where the High Street meets with the Hook Norton Road. You can either finish your walk here or continue ahead on the main road until you come to a left turning to catch a glimpse of the Coombes - the valley before you.
9. To the Coombes
Divided up by Enclosure at the end of the 18th century into two farm holdings, the Coombes is a valley to the north of Great Rollright. Dissected now by a footpath, bridleway and private roads, it would have seemed very remote in the 19th century. To reach the village would have meant traipsing over a mile on paths across muddy fields. It is here that Widdows lived most of his working life.
The shepherd first came to the valley as a young boy of 10 or 11 to work as a plough boy on Coombe Farm for tenant farmer Thomas Harbidge.
When William Fletcher took over the tenancy at Manor Court Farm in 1840, it included a ‘small field homestead’, Coombe Cottage, in the Coombes. No longer standing, the cottage was only relatively recently demolished in 2015 to make way for a substantial new stone house in a historic style.
Widdows lived in Coombe Cottage with his first wife Eliza Penn and, then after her death, with his second wife Jane Wiggins. He brought up 11 children in Fletcher’s Coombe. We know from surveys undertaken by Brasenose College of their property that by the end of the 1860s and early 1870s the house was in a ‘poor state’, decaying from ‘old age’. It was not until about 1880 that Widdows and his wife Jane were able to move into the centre of the village to the cottage adjacent to the lychgate.