St mary Magdalene
Adlestrop
Services
St Mary Magdalene provides a varied pattern of worship, primarily based around the Book of Common Prayer and the more modern Common Worship, with family orientated services at festivals.
Contact:
Lesley Bishop-Miles, churchwarden, tel. 01608 659114
Yes, I remember Adlestrop…
Yes. l remember Adlestrop—
The name. because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop—only the name
And willows, willow-herb and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry.
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
Edward Thomas (1878-1917) turned to poetry only in 1912, encouraged by Robert Frost, and died near Arras serving with the Artists Rifles. Jane Austen (1775-1817) stayed on several occasions at the rectory with her mother’s cousin, Rev Thomas Leigh. She is thought to have drawn inspiration from the village and its surroundings for her novel Mansfield Park.
Adlestrop House, formerly The Rectory, where Jane Austin stayed three times with her mother’s cousin.
St Mary Magdalene stands in a leafy corner of the village, bordered by two handsome houses, Adlestrop Park with its Gothic front and Repton gardens and Adlestrop House formerly the rectory. For many years the church was a chapel of ease to Broadwell and from 1670 until 1936 it was the rector of Broadwell (albeit a Leigh) who occupied the rectory. In 1977 Adlestrop and Broadwell was united with Evenlode and Oddington, and subsequently into today’s benefice.
The lovely 13th century church was substantially rebuilt in the 18th century. The tower and the chancel arch date from the 13th century, but most of what is here today was rebuilt between 1750 and 1765 when Adlestrop Park was being extended by the English pioneer of the Gothic revival, Sanderson Miller. There were further alterations in 1824 and in the early 1860s, and in the 1920s.
The clock in the tower commemorates the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria, and the entrance gates with lantern, the Diamond Jubilee. The clock has only two faces. one on the north and the other on the east wall of the tower, as these are the only two places visible from the village.
Coenred, King of the Mercians, is said to have granted Adlestrop to Evesham Abbey in 708. The abbey continued to hold the manor of Adlestrop until the Dissolution.
The church has benefited from the 440 year patronage of the Leighs whose ancestor, Lord Mayor of London in the year of Queen Elizabeth’s accession, bought with his future wife’s uncle two great estates previously monastic, Adlestrop and Stoneleigh.
Several windows and inscriptions commemorate distinguished Leighs and rectors; among them Dr Theophilus Leigh (1693-1785), 59 years Master of Balliol, a benevolent man whose mastership released him from celibacy and who brought the college its first American students. His nephew and son-in-law Thomas Leigh (1734-1813), Cassandra Austen’s cousin, was 51 years rector, and in 1806 inherited Stoneleigh from his cousins, thereby re-uniting the Leigh estates.
