Wyck Rissington

The Common and the Four-Mile Circuit

The green at the centre of Wyck Rissington is a six-acre common with two ponds and about fifty houses set around it, some of them dating from the seventeenth century. Horse chestnuts edge the grass, planted for the coronations of George VI and Elizabeth II and for her Silver Jubilee. Since 2009 the green has been left to grow as a wildflower meadow through spring and summer, then cut for hay. A handful of houses still hold grazing rights over it, though no animal has been put out for many years.

It is a registered common rather than a park, which has practical consequences. There is no parking on it, and you are asked to keep to the established paths unless the parish council gives permission otherwise. The village hall stands by the ornamental pond and hosts talks, quizzes, social evenings and a Christmas dinner; it can be hired.

For a pub or a shop, you go elsewhere. The walking makes up for it, and it starts at the door. A four-mile circular, stile-free but on unsurfaced paths that turn muddy, follows the Windrush across to Bourton-on-the-Water and back over about two hours. On the way it crosses Greystones Farm, with its replica Iron Age roundhouse and a play trail of wooden sculptures, passes badger setts and meadows, and crosses the River Eye and River Dikler by bridge before reaching Wyck's own pond and church. The return runs past Rissington Mill.

Long-Distance Paths and Nearby Provisions

The Oxfordshire Way passes straight through the churchyard and climbs towards Wyck Beacon. The village is also the end of the Holst Way, a twenty-eight-mile route from Cranham that takes in the composer's museum in Cheltenham before finishing at St Laurence's door.

For food and provisions you go out. Bourton-on-the-Water, linked directly on foot by that circular walk, has the pubs, cafés, shops and public toilets. The Lamb Inn at Great Rissington is the destination pub, where the kitchen is run by head chef Elliot and the food is seasonal and unpretentious: beer-battered haddock and chips, beef shin and Brakspear ale pie, shepherd's pie made with Cotswold lamb, pan-fried cod with curry sauce and pickled fennel, miso-roasted aubergine, and lamb rump with wild garlic and chimichurri, alongside Brakspear beers. For a weekly shop there is the Co-op in Bourton, a Tesco in Stow-on-the-Wold and an Aldi in Moreton-in-Marsh.

St Laurence's and Holst

St Laurence's Church is Grade I and its fabric runs from the twelfth century to the fifteenth. Inside are a tub-shaped font from about 1200, a medieval wagon roof over the chancel, fragments of early-fourteenth-century coloured glass, two trefoil-headed piscinas, and twelve circular olive-wood plaques, probably Flemish and of the fifteenth or sixteenth century, forming part of a rosary cycle. J. E. K. Cutts restored the church in 1879, taking down the transepts and building the south aisle and porch.

In 1892, aged seventeen, Gustav Holst took his first professional post as organist here. The instrument he played stands in the chancel and is still in use.

The Maze and Deeper History

The other thing people remember is the maze. Canon Harry Cheales built one beside the rectory after seeing it in a dream, and led his parishioners around it each year. It disappeared after he left, and he died in 1984; a mosaic inside the church preserves its memory, and a three-minute film of it from 1980 survives, described by the BFI as "one of the quirkiest features of the Cotswolds."

Before 1264 the church's advowson supplied rents to Eynsham Abbey, whose monks may have built the chancel and tower. By the Domesday survey of 1086 the estate held eighteen households — four villagers, twelve slaves and two female slaves — under Roger de Lacy, with Hugh as under-tenant. A mill rendered ten shillings, and the whole place was valued at seven pounds, down from ten twenty years before.

Arriving and Village Rhythms

Kingham is the nearest railway station, roughly eight miles off. The southern lane climbs steeply to Wyck Beacon and the A424; locals call it the Drainpipe, because rain runs straight down it, and it is narrow, single-track with passing places, and slippery in wet or icy weather. The demand-responsive Robin bus serves points on the A424 and Kingham station, but journeys must be booked in advance.

Village life keeps its own small rhythms. Gardens open to visitors every other September, the church is dressed with flowers for its festival, and volunteers take turns serving teas at nearby Chastleton House to raise money for the hall and the church. There is a bell-ringing group, too, and it will teach you if you ask.