Trifter

As the mist cleared on the morning of the 29th of March 1644, the Civil War ‘Battle of Cheriton’ began.  Thousands of Royalist and Parliamentarian soldiers became locked in combat in the fields to the east of the small Hampshire village.  The brutal skirmish lasted all day, and by sunset around 2,000 men lay dead on the battlefield.  Ironically, some of the dead were buried in the village churchyard, probably in a communal grave.

 Why should this be ironic? 

The church of St. Michael and All Angels stands on a hill that is in fact a prehistoric burial mound.  History records that a settlement had existed in the area long before the church was ever built, and the burial mound is the last resting place for those who had died of natural causes, such as old age, and probably for those killed during inter-tribal conflict.  Therein lays the irony.

The earliest parts of Cheriton church, such as the porch with its plain Norman pillars on either side of the doorway, date from the 12th century when the grandson of William the Conqueror, Henry de Blois, was Bishop of Winchester between 1129 and 1171.

A long-standing mystery surrounds the porch that has baffled historical experts for generations.  It concerns two curious mouldings.  On either side of the doorway is a triangle made from six outer circles and three inner circles.  This pattern on the stonework of the wall may well be unique to Cheriton church.  Also on the porch wall is a Norman scratch or mass dial; the outwardly radiating lines of which would have signified the times of the masses.  The small centre hole shows where a gnomon (or short metal rod) was inserted to cast a shadow from the sun, working in much the same way as a sundial does.

St. Michael’s contains a number of other interesting 13th century artefacts.  In the south wall is a small priest’s door.  On the same wall inside is a piscina for holy water and throughout the church are a number of window mouldings all from the same century.  Near the altar are a number of 13th century tiles believed to be of Flemish origin; one presents the head of ‘Our Lord’ and is unique in design to Cheriton church, another displays the head of the ‘Blessed Virgin Mary’ while a third is Dutch in origin with a dated inscription ‘1250-1300’.  The reason for the inscription is still a mystery.

In 1744 a terrible tragedy struck the village.  Throughout the previous four years, England had been in the grip of a prolonged drought.  In common with the rest of the country, Cheriton village was tinder dry.  It was a disaster waiting to happen. 

On 29th of May a voracious fire swept through the buildings in the vicinity of the church.  In the space of two hours several houses, barns, and the stables belonging to the Parsonage were burnt to the ground.  The flames now headed for the church of St. Michaels; and although it stood fairly isolated on its hill it would not escape the approaching inferno.

At that time the church walls were covered with wooden shingles, and in no time at all the building was engulfed in flames.  The windows shattered or melted in heat, the wooden pews quickly disintegrated into a pile of blackened ashes, and the whole of the roof caved in, falling to the floor in a charred and smoking heap.  At its height, the temperature of the fire was so high that every church bell in the peal of five melted.  When the fire eventually died down, all that remained of the old bells was a mound of molten metal.

Within two years however, enough money had been provided from various sources and the church had been rebuilt.

Sadly, the Civil War and the fire of 1744 were not the only set-backs that had affected the long suffering church and its parishioners.

During the Reformation, when the new ‘Church of England’ took over many of the former Catholic churches, the rector of Cheriton church, John White, ran foul of the Protestants.  He was accused of preaching Catholicism against the orders of Henry VIII and incarcerated in the Tower of London. 

Fortunately for the catholic John White, freedom was not too far away.

Shortly after her succession to the throne in 1553, Mary Tudor, (Bloody Mary), daughter of Henry VIII, ordered the release of John White and subsequently promoted him to Bishop of Lincoln, and later – Bishop of Winchester.  But, sadly, in a cruel twist of fate, his new-found freedom was soon to come to an end.  In 1558 Mary was succeeded by the Protestant queen, Elizabeth.  Once again John White was thrown into the ‘Tower’, but this time there would be no pardon or reprieve.  Within three months the rector of Cheriton church was dead.

Fortunately, there is a happy ending to the trials and tribulations of the church on the man-made hill.

In 1746 a new peal of five bells was cast to replace the five destroyed in the fire; a sixth followed in 1887 to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee and in honour of her Diamond Jubilee in 1897, the villagers of Cheriton raised enough money to have a clock erected on the church tower. 

An inscription on the clock case, which survives to this day, records their proud achievement.

Other village churches in the series include: Brixworth(Northamptonshire), Charwelton (Northamptonshire), Clifton Hampden (Oxfordshire), (more to follow).

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