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Finstock is the sort of place you’ve been to without noticing. People in cars on
the B4022, along the ridge of high ground between Witney and Charlbury, may be
briefly aware of a road sign and a scatter of houses as they race past, without
realising that they are missing Finstock itself which straggles down the
eastward-facing slopes of the ridge, overlooking the Evenlode valley. Turn off
at the crossroads at the top of the High Street and you will probably pause a
moment to admire the view over rooftops and rolling fields into such a far blue
distance that at least one awestruck visitor has been known to suggest that you
must be able to see to Moscow. You can certainly see the John Radcliffe Hospital
and the Beckley Mast. As you follow the bends of the High Street downwards, you
will look in vain for any signs of commercial splendour which the name might
suggest and it was presumably so called simply because it was higher than the
rest of the village. There is a certain dogged obviousness about Finstock street
names. High Street, therefore, leads, inevitably, down to The Bottom from where
the road curves up again to flatten out into School Road.
Apart from a school, Finstock also boasts a post office, which used to be in
someone’s garden shed but is now incorporated into the shop, a recreation
ground, a village hall, two pubs, a Methodist chapel, a church, marooned by
itself on the main road, a railway halt and a bus service, of sorts. The village
hall, which started life as a gloving factory, is the meeting place for various
village organisations and with the seasonal round of parties, summer fetes and
bazaars one always has the impression of something happening in Finstock.
In days gone by, as 19th century census returns show, the inhabitants of
Finstock would have earned their living entirely in or around the village, the
men mostly as labourers on the farms of the large estates of Cornbury, Blenheim
and Wilcote, which surround it, and the women engaged in gloving to eke out the
family income. Probably many people would hardly have left the boundaries of the
village in a lifetime. Today, however, only a handful of villagers work locally
on the land and most commute by car or train to Witney, Oxford, or even further
afield to London.
The churchyard, which is carpeted with primroses, violets and lesser celandine
in the spring, is a sunny place to sit and contemplate the view over the
village, but although Finstock, with the smoke curling lazily upwards from its
chimney pots, may appear tranquil enough now, many a lurid tale tells of a more
violent and boisterous past. In fact, at one time Finstock must have resembled a
frontier town of the American West as it was on the route of the drovers’ road
from Wales and the West Country to the London markets and at regular times of
the year was invaded by gangs of strange men with their bellowing, trampling
herds of cattle, looking for a watering-place.
Today, the great forest of Wychwood only marches up to the line of the B4022 but
centuries ago Finstock was still within its borders and the forest was a
dangerous place. Footpads, vagabonds and highwaymen haunted its coppices and
thickets and any well-to-do farmer unwise enough to set off for Charlbury with
his pockets stuffed with money was liable to end up thrown in a ditch with his
throat cut. The Crown public house, which dates from the 14th century, seems to
have been particularly notorious as a rendezvous for thieves, who frequently
had to make hasty exits from upper windows, one step ahead of the law. Apart
from the incidence of serious crime, there seems to have been a great deal of
unruly behaviour in the form of drunken brawls and gang fights between rival
villages. Even within living memory, as older inhabitants will tell you with
relish, Finstock had a reputation for being both tough and rough and an elderly
lady in an adjoining village still recounts with a rueful smile how in her
childhood a walk through Finstock often meant risking a hail of stones from
hostile urchins.
Until earlier this century, anyone walking about in Finstock must also have been
aware of the constant sound of running water as several streams, fed by springs
high up on the hillside, cascaded down the valley. At least one ran down beside
the High Street cottages, which had little bridges across to their garden gates.
It must have been a picturesque scene worthy to rival the well-known Cotswold
tourist traps of today. In 1928, however, the streams were enclosed in pipes and
covered over and like them Finstock seems to have been gradually quietened and
tamed.
If you are interested in astronomy, Finstock is a good place to live as there is
no street lighting to dim the starlight. From its valley slopes you not only
have a panoramic view of the countryside by day but a sweeping skyscape above
you by night.
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