In July 2023, the FADLHS held a talk on Christ Church, our village church, presented by Fr John Caperon. From about the 12th century AD, the Church in England developed the parish system. This meant that every area of the country – whether village or town – had a church building and a parish priest, a ‘parson’, who was responsible for the spiritual care of the people. In his ‘Canterbury Tales’ written in the late C14th, the poet Geoffrey Chaucer describes a ‘poor parson’: s

In July 2023, the FADLHS held a talk on Christ Church, our village church, presented by Fr John Caperon. With the death of The Revd J B M Butler in 1897, a new era began for Christ Church: for it was at this point that people began to consider whether Fairwarp had sufficiently developed as a community for it to become a parish in its own right. As a ‘chapel of ease’, Christ Church had no churchyard of its own, and so anyone dying in the ‘chapelry’ of Fairwarp had to be burie

In July 2023, the FADLHS held a talk on Christ Church, our village church, presented by Fr John Caperon. At the outbreak of the war which was to become known as ‘the Great War’ – until of course a further, great ‘world’ war took place between 1939 and 1945 – the vicar of Fairwarp was The Revd George Whelpton Johnson. Mr Johnson had been appointed in 1906, and had ministered during the golden Edwardian period, but had also – as the last episode revealed – had to bury far too

In July 2023, the FADLHS held a talk on Christ Church, our village church, presented by Fr John Caperon. There were few ‘homes for heroes’ when those who’d served in the forces returned home after the War. For ordinary village folk, things were much as before, but with low national economic growth in the 1920s came high unemployment and strikes; though the general strike of 1926 probably had little resonance as far away from the industrial centres of the country as Fairwarp!

In July 2023, the FADLHS held a talk on Christ Church, our village church, presented by Fr John Caperon. The arrival of Frederich Eckstein at Oldlands in 1920 was to become transformative for the village and the church. Ennobled as Baron Eckstein of Fairwarp in 1929, but bequeathing that title to his son Bernard on his death in 1930, Eckstein – and the immense wealth deriving from his South African mining and financial interests - was to be behind a complete re-imagining of

In July 2023, the FADLHS held a talk on Christ Church, our village church, presented by Fr John Caperon. So time passed, and Bernard Eckstein’s raw-looking ‘white tower’ mellowed, and the now familiar shape of Christ Church became part of the landscape. The Forest, though, underwent considerable change. Once visible from the turning off the B2026 to the village centre, Christ Church disappeared behind the rapid growth of tree cover, once older Forest husbandry patterns change

Those who attended the April 2023 meeting of the History Society heard about 'Beurles'. Lying in the heart of the Forest to the west of...