Geograph - photograph every grid square

SP3903 : St. Giles Church, Standlake With connections to Dr Fell, Dean of Christchurch, who owned Gaunt House.

STANDLAKE (St. Giles), a parish, in the union of Witney, hundred of Bampton, county of Oxford, 5½ miles (S. S. E.) from the town of Witney; containing, with the hamlet of Brittenton, 707 inhabitants. The parish comprises 2237a. 36p., of which 330 acres are meadow and pasture, and the remainder chiefly arable. Gaunt House, here, now occupied by a farmer, is said to have been originally built by John of Gaunt and Johan his wife, to whose memory there is a brass in the church 3 it was garrisoned for Charles I., in 1643 and 1644, by Dr. Fell, Dean of Christ-Church, to whom it then belonged. The living is a rectory, valued in the king's books at £16. 10. 10.; net income, £373; patrons, the President and Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford. The church is a handsome cruciform structure in the early and decorated English styles, with a lofty octangular tower crowned by a pierced parapet, from within which rises a low spire; the arched timber-roof is supported by springers resting on corbels ornamented with heraldic devices. Some children are instructed for about £25 per annum, arising from gifts by William Plaisterer in 1711, and John Chambers in 1732.

From: 'Stanbridge - Stanford-upon-Soar', A Topographical Dictionary of England (1848), pp. 180-183. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=51296. Date accessed: 12 June 2008.