Berrick Salome

Berrick Salome comprises the villages of Berrick Salome, Berrick Prior, Roke and Rokemarsh. These villages are located in south-east Oxfordshire, England.

There can be no doubt that the location of Berrick Salome was determined in the earliest times by the accessibility of water. Except for a narrow strip of greensand on the upper edge of the parish, the subsoil nearly all consists of bluish-white gault, enclosing thin streaks of gravel. Close to the junction of gault and greensand are springs. The most important of these springs is that by Grove Barn that flows down Hollandtide Bottom. It ran past the village pond and the front of the Chequers Inn. Those households that did not have their own well depended upon this flow for their water.

Toponymy

"Berewic" means "corn farm". "Salome" is a corruption of a family name. In the 13th century, Aymar de Sulham held the manor; Sulham itself is near Reading. Successive changes have been Berrick Sallome (1571), Berwick Sallome (1737, 1797) and finally, by the time of the 1863 Enclosure Act, Berrick Salome. Berrick Prior means the corn farm belonging to the Prior of Canterbury.

Geography

The village of Berrick Salome is situated in Oxfordshire between the villages of Benson on the Thames to the south, and Newington and Chalgrove on the north. To the north-north east lies Brightwell Baldwin and to the west-south west lies Warborough. The open fields on the upper edge of the parish give an extensive view over the Thames Valley to the long line of the Berkshire Downs with the Sinodun Hills as a focus in front of them. To the east one can see the foothills of the Chilterns.

The church

A church was established at Berrick long before the Norman conquest. This supposition is likely because the church is dedicated to St Helen, who was the favourite saint of King Ethelbald of Mercia who took the Benson area from Wessex early in the 8th century. Berrick church is located well outside the village, near Hollandtide Bottom--evidently a route since before the Romans came. A dig north-east of the church on the other side of Hollandtide Bottom might possibly bring to light the remains of ancient buildings that were more than cottages.

The church is about convert|65|ft|m long including the bell-tower, which has no access from the nave and rises only about three feet higher than the roof ridge. Part of the fabric has been claimed to be pre-Norman and so has the font, with its interlacing ornament introduced into Anglo-Saxon work from Northumbria in early missionary times. It is unlikely that the little building ever had much stained glass; all that exists is a single diamond-shaped pane, each side about 4 inches (10cm) long, on which is depicted a golden-yellow butterfly or moth.

Over 350 years ago the roof of the nave was replaced by one of typical queen-post type with a complex timber truss. Sixty years later, accommodation was increased by erecting a simple wooden gallery at the west end of the nave, with a dormer window opening at each end of it in order to give it light. The tower is remarkable in being framed in timber. A photograph taken just before the restoration in 1890 shows it had then merely been faced with simple weather-boarding carried nearly to the top, whereas now horizontal apertures have been contrived to release the sound of the bells. The tiny wooden tower houses a fine peal of bells, the earliest two that are dated being 1621 and 1622, the latest 1836.

On Christmas eve, Church lane is illuminated by candles all along the side. This is traditionally done by families living on the lane.

History

Introduction

Berrick Salome's boundary was extended in 1993 to include the whole of Roke and Rokemarsh (previously largely in Benson's parish) and Berrick Prior (previously part of the parish of Newington). The history that follows is largely about Berrick Salome itself.

Medieval period

In the Domesday Survey, the place was returned as worth £5 a year, with £30 and £15 respectively for the neighbouring parishes of Bensingtone (Benson) and Neutone (Newington). Its population was 4 serfs, 10 villeins and 6 bordars who with their families would probably total more than 50.

The eastern boundary of the village follows the shallow valley of Hollandtide Bottom. Certain authors have identified this valley with the "Aculfes Dene" mentioned as a boundary in a land grant by Aethelred II in 996. The present boundary along the valley apparently follows that between two ancient pre-Norman manors. The northern of them fell into the hands of King Canute "through forfeiture of a certain thegn". It was begged of the King by his wife, Emma, who passed it to the monks of Canterbury. This transaction swelled the neighbouring parish of Newington which was a peculiar of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Berrick Prior thereafter acquired an administrative status quite different from that of Berrick Salome, for even in the present century directories referred to it as the "liberty of Berrick Prior" which reflected a sometime exemption from the jurisdiction of the Sheriff of Oxfordshire.

18th and 19th centuries

Berrick occupies no strategic position and there is no indication that it ever housed a person or building of great importance aside from the ancient church. As the rector reported to his bishop in 1738, "there is no family of note".

Alcoholic refreshment could be found in five locations. The Chequers in Berrick Prior, the Home Sweet Home in Roke and the Horse and Harrow in Rokemarsh were all hostelries, while the Plough and Harrow in Berrick Salome, now Plough Cottage, and The Welcome in Roke were off-licenses. Only the first two survive to this day. There were several shops and post offices, and a petrol pump at Woodbine Cottage in Roke, now all closed. It also appears that there was once an infant school at Roke, which had already closed by 1884, but within living memory infant classes were held in the Band Hut.

Right up to the Inclosure Act of 1863, most of Berrick Salome was farmed on the ancient open-strip system and field enclosures were few. Nevertheless, village life was apparently not affected badly by the disruption. The probable reason for this is that the proportion of common land abolished was so small, only one ninth of the parish. But the Berrick Salome Inclosure Award did establish two things that were of great importance to the local people. Firstly, convert|3|acre|m2, 2 roods and 25 poles were allotted "unto the Churchwardens and Overseers of the poor" of Berrick Salome "to be held by them and their successors in trust as a place for exercise and recreation for the inhabitants". To this day the annual cricket match is held there, but it was of far more importance in the 19th Century and early 20th Century when every Saturday afternoon there would be a cricket match and Berrick Salome "never got beat".

The Inclosure Award also resulted in the allocation of another two acres and 10 perches of land to "the Churchwardens and Overseers of the poor" of Berrick Salome "to be held by them and their successors in trust as an allotment for the labouring poor of the said parish". All the Berrick plots were eagerly taken up in those days, for the cottager's bulwarks against privation were his pig, his garden and his allotment. Over many centuries in Berrick there was virtually no alternative to working on the land.

20th century

At Berrick around 1900 the wages for a full-time adult worker were about 12 shillings a week (60p), a figure that had not increased by much for a long time. However, the rapid spread of mechanisation, beginning with the appearance of the first tractors shortly before the First World War, brought about a steady decline in the number of farm labourers. The first combine harvester was imported from the United States in 1928. Two more came in 1930 and one of these was based in Shillingford. As farms became more mechanised, young men sought other employment. In the 1930s, many young men in Berrick got jobs at the Cowley car works where they earned three times as much as a farm labourer. They went to work on motor-bikes and purchased their petrol from the shop next to the Chequers which at that time met most of the needs of the villagers. After the Second World War, indoor plumbing was first introduced.

Although surrounded by land from peripheral farms, there is now only one working farm left in Berrick - Manor Farm - and that is simply run by the farmer himself and his wife. Today the cottages of Berrick Salome are more likely to be owned and inhabited by bankers or businessmen. If Berrick Salome had not undergone this evolution it would have died out.

Instead of dying out, Berrick Salome's population increased over the 20th Century. In 1900, the population was 104. In 1991, the figure was 162. The number of households between 1971 and 1981, the number of households increased from 35 to 53. There is a likely correlation between the increase and the building of the M40 motorway in 1974, because roads had been historically terrible--someone had actually been killed in 1894 because her tricycle had hit parts of the unsatisfactory road. But in 1974, London was roughly an hour's journey away because of the highway.

By the 1980s, the inhabitants of Berrick Salome could consider working from home because of advancements made in information technology, including installations of telephones, fax machines and modems. A self-employed villager estimated that roughly 30% of the male population now worked in this way, and that having more people available during the working day had greatly enhanced village life.

Many village events and activities have become popular recently, particularly those centred around the Berrick Church Restoration fund. These include a Fête in June held in the garden of the Malthouse, and the Village Show (which alternates with the Fête) held on the recreation ground in September and jovially rounded off with a barbecue and dance in the evening. The Village Hall, erected in 1979 on the edge of the recreation ground, is always the venue for the cricket tea after the annual match between Berrick Salome and Berrick Prior in September. There is also the night of the Progressive Dinner, an opportunity for entertainment and fund-raising. It was introduced into the village by Mr Norman Willifer of Crickhollow and is generally enjoyed.

ee also

* Britwell Salome, another village in Oxfordshire

ources

* Moreau, R.E.; "The Departed Village".
* Oxfordshire Federation of Women's Institutes; "Oxfordshire Within Living Memory".
* Soper, Mike; "Years of Change".
* Whittle, Chris & Mary; "Mrs Irene Franklin".

External links

* [http://www.berrickandroke.org.uk The Village Web Site]
* [http://www.achurchnearyou.com/venue.php?V=34 The Church]
* [http://www.westgallerychurches.com/Oxford/Berrick_Salome/Berrick_Salome.html Pictures of the Church]