Ironstone Benefice Pilgrimage (12.6 miles. One day)
A circular pilgrimage route linking eight fine medieval churches in the ironstone country northwest of Banbury.
Hornton ironstone, still quarried on this route, was used to build the medieval churches and many of the buildings of the villages it links - Hornton, Horley, Hanwell, Drayton, Balscote, Wroxton, Alkerton and Shenington. Even in bad weather the red stone glows. The folding hill country in which the route lies offers changing vistas as corners are turned and ascents and descents managed. There’s a lot that is beautiful to enjoy on the way - and also that working quarry and a waste retrieval centre.
In Horley and Hornton churches you will find fine wall-paintings and at Hanwell impressive and intriguing 14th century carvings. At Hornton there are indications that an anchoress had her cell at the church in the Middle Ages. Alkerton Church had as one of its 17th century incumbents Thomas Lydiat, who appears in the Samuel Johnson’s great poem The Vanity of Human Wishes along with Galileo as an archetype of the learned man mistreated. The chancel at Wroxton is a mausoleum for the aristocratic, rich and famous associated with nearby Wroxton Abbey, among them William Pope, 1st Earl of Downe, Frederick, Lord North, the prime minister who ‘lost America’, and Thomas Coutts the banker.
There is much to ponder in their art and their historical and literary associations and, whether or not on those matters, all these quiet country churches offer space to sit for a while in meditation and prayer.
In Horley and Hornton churches you will find fine wall-paintings and at Hanwell impressive and intriguing 14th century carvings. At Hornton there are indications that an anchoress had her cell at the church in the Middle Ages. Alkerton Church had as one of its 17th century incumbents Thomas Lydiat, who appears in the Samuel Johnson’s great poem The Vanity of Human Wishes along with Galileo as an archetype of the learned man mistreated. The chancel at Wroxton is a mausoleum for the aristocratic, rich and famous associated with nearby Wroxton Abbey, among them William Pope, 1st Earl of Downe, Frederick, Lord North, the prime minister who ‘lost America’, and Thomas Coutts the banker.
There is much to ponder in their art and their historical and literary associations and, whether or not on those matters, all these quiet country churches offer space to sit for a while in meditation and prayer.
