All Saints Church

All Saints is led by Revd David Salter, who serves the joint ministry across Churchill & Sarsden, Kingham and Daylesford. Under the care of David and his wife Sally, the church remains at the heart of the community: Sunday services, harvest festivals, concerts and gatherings beneath the familiar tower.

Because resources are shared across the villages, weekly Sunday services rotate between the churches, typically at 9am or 10.30am. Exact times are in the monthly Church News, delivered free with Roundabout, on the lychgate noticeboard, and here.

A landmark Betjeman would not have lost

By the end of the eighteenth century the old church at the foot of Hastings Hill was in a bad state of repair. In 1825 James Haughton Langston, who owned the Sarsden estate and most of Churchill, obtained permission to pull it down and build a new church higher up the hill. All Saints was consecrated in 1827.

James Plowman of Oxford designed an architectural mixture of imitations: the tower a two-thirds copy of Magdalen College; the hammerbeam roof after Christ Church; the buttresses after New College chapel. There is a peal of eight bells, and an unusual external staircase to the ringers’ chamber. The old graveyard remains in use.

John Betjeman, writing in a 1975 restoration appeal, called the tower “a beautiful landmark… a delightful one.” The church survived a fire in 2007 and is again used for services and community events. It is Grade II* listed.

The Methodist Chapel

The Chapel opened at Easter 1927, by Richard Cadbury of chocolate fame, on a site given by David Crudge, a local farmer. The stone came from Chadlington; the iron gates were made by Charles Blake the village blacksmith; the chairs from trees grown in Churchill. The building has now closed. Services continue at Chipping Norton Methodist Church at 10.45 on Sunday mornings.