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Freeland is a village not on the way to anywhere. It straggles along a road
between the Oxford-Witney and Witney-Woodstock roads. On approaching the green,
splendid with daffodils in spring, the cluster of cottages and pond with ducks
make a typical village picture, and on going past the pond to take in the view
towards Oxford, one can sometimes find a shoot of bracken - a defiant relic of
the old heathland.
Freeland began as a squatter settlement on the outer reaches of Eynsham as early
as 1650, and after the enclosures of the 18th century the settlement grew.
Squatter cottages were built with the narrow wall by the road, thereby using the
minimum frontage.
One of these cottages in the centre of the village is now the Oxford-shire
Yeoman pub. In 1973 the brewers, Morrells, wanted to rename one of their public
houses after the old county regiment. As the site of the New Inn, Freeland was
acquired in 1842 by one William Merry, yeoman, it was the one chosen. At the
other end of the village, on the Witney - Woodstock road is another public house
with a long history. Although not quite in the Cotswolds the area provided
grazing for sheep. By the drove road was an inn providing all the shepherds
needed, and it became known as the Shepherds All. In later years, someone who
evidently thought the locals were unable to speak properly added an ‘H’ and
Shepherds Hall it remains to this day.
Back on the main road through the village is a cottage which can answer a common
question asked by strangers about the unusual name of the road -Wroslyn. This
ivy-covered cottage was once an inn (suitably far from the centre of the
village) where wrestling bouts were held. In this part of Oxfordshire wrestling
was pronounced ‘wrosling’ so when road names were requested the Parish Council
preserved this little part of our history. The cottage is called Wrestlers and
the bungalow built on the field where the bouts took place, Wrestlers Mead.
Although it was in the parish of Eynsham, Freeland is nearer to the Hanboroughs,
and before the church was built villagers would walk to Church Hanborough for
services. Not many people, however, liked to walk alone after dusk down what is
now called Pigeon House Lane in case they should meet the ghost of Mother
Skolpepper (ie Mrs Culpepper). Children dared each other to go down, and at
least one father offered his children a shilling to ‘Pop down to Hanborough in
the evening’, knowing his money was safe! A less fraught way to Long Hanborough
was across the fields, and early this century Sarah Merry would go this way to
shop and visit her brother and sister with her pet pig trotting dog-like beside
her.
The little stone Methodist chapel was built in 1805, to the ‘greatest
mortification’ of Thomas Symonds, then curate, later vicar at Eynsham. It is the
earliest of such buildings in the Witney-Faringdon Circuit. Through the members’
long friendship with New Zealand hymn writer Cohn Gibson, there is now a hymn
tune called Freeland.
With the completion of the building of the church in 1869 Freeland became a
separate parish. Since the population of the hamlet was only about 200 at that
time, it is perhaps an unexpected place to find a ‘gem’ of a small church
designed by one of the greatest Victorian church architects, John Loughborough
Pearson. This virtually unchanged Tractarian church was built thanks to the
generosity of the Taunton family and other benefactors from the Oxford Movement.
The stained glass and interior decoration are by another leading Victorian firm
of Clayton and Bell. The chancel is decorated with 13th century-style wall
paintings which are echoed on the pulpit and font. Pearson later added a carved
alabaster reredos. The parsonage and a school were designed and built as one
group of buildings with the church.
At the end of the 19th century there were some brick kilns which
used clay from North Leigh common, and the row of houses at the
north end of the village known as Red City are made of these local
bricks. A number of villagers were employed as out-workers by the
Woodstock glove factories.
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