Very little is known about the origins of the name of the village of Sarsden but down the centuries Churchill has had several names, such as, Cercelle, Churchell. Cherchell and finally, by 1537, Churchill. It is thought that it may be derived from the Old English ‘cyrc’, which means a hill, burying ground or barrow. There are several barrows within the village, which would indicate a settlement from pre-historic times. On the other hand, Churchill may be simply ‘Cyrc-hill’, literally ‘Hill-hill’, part Celtic and part Anglo-Saxon.

The village was mentioned in the Doomsday Book of 1085, the quotation in the first of the tapestries being an exact copy of part of the entry. The land had been taken from Earl Harold, named as the successor to Edward the Confessor, defeated by William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

Warren Hastings was the second child of Penniston Hastings (incumbent of the living of Daylesford, just three miles from Churchill) and Hester Warren. In 1730 Penniston Hastings became incumbent of Bledington and came to live in Churchill. Warren Hastings was born at Hastings House in Churchill on December 6th 1732. His baptism appears in the Churchill register. Later, his father went to the West Indies, leaving Warren in the care of his grandfather. In 1742 he entered Westminster School. Following the death of his uncle, with whom he had lived for a short time before entering the school, his uncle’s executor arranged for Warren to go to India in January, 1750. Clive encouraged the lad and helped him to progress in a career with the East India Company. In 1772 Warren was made Chief of the Council in Bengal and in the following year he was appointed the first Governor General of India.

In 1891, Early Ducie had an inscribed tablet placed on the house, (which is home to a local family)

where Warren Hastings had been born.

William Smith

Born in Churchill on March 23rd, 1787. His father died when he was only seven years old and from then on he was cared for by his uncle. He became interested in mathematics and surveying and at the age of 18 joined Mr Edward Webb of Stow on the Wold, as his assistant. In spite of the fact that he had received only an elementary education, William enlarged his knowledge by reading and study. He developed an interest in fossils found in the fields around his native Churchill.

In 1791 he went to Somerset and obtained employment in coal mining. He was commissioned to superintend the construction of a canal linking the mining area of Somerset to the Kennet and Avon Canal. His travels took him over much of England and he began to realise that various strata ran across the country in layers. In 1831 William became the first recipient of the Wollaston Medal, the ‘blue-ribbon’ amongst geologists.

Two of his early maps are preserved in the Oxford University Museum and a third is in the possession of the London Geological Society. His portrait still hangs behind the presidential chair of the Society.

In 1891 a memorial to William Smith, ‘The Father of English Geology’, was erected in the village by the Earl of Ducie, using stones found in Sarsgrove Wood. Memorial tablets are also found at Midford, Somerset, at Bath and in St. Peter’s Church, Northampton, where he died on August 27th, 1839

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