Very little is known about the origins of the name of the village of Sarsden but down the centuries Churchill has had several names, sych asCercelle. Churchell, Cherchell and finally, by 1537, Churchill.   It is thought to be derived from  the Old English 'cyrc' which means a hill or barrow (burying ground).    The several barrows within the village indicate  a settlement from pre-historic times.  On the other hand, Churchill may be simply 'cryc-hill' part Celtic & part Saxon.

The village was first mentioned in the Doomsday Book of 1085.   The land was 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

 Warren Hastings was the second child of Penniston Hastings, incumbent 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 (still standing & used as a private dwelling) on Decenber 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.   Warren went to India in January, 1750.   Clive encouraged the lad and helped him 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 Earl Ducie had an inscribed tanlet placed on the house whetre Warren Hastings had been born.

                                                                                     WILLIAM SMITH

Born in  Churchill on March 23rd, 1787, his father died when he was omly seven years old.   He became interested in Mathematics and Surveying, joining Mr Edward Webb of Stow on the Wold  as his assistant.  He developed an interest in fossils found in the fields around Churchill. In 1791  he went to Somerset and obtained employment in coal mining, becoming superintendent of the construction of a canal linking the mining area in Somerset and the Kennet and Avon canal.    In 1831 he became the first receipient  of the Wollaston Medal, the 'blue ribbon' amongst geologists.  Some of his early mapes are preserved in Oxford Unversity Museum and the London Geological Society, and his portrait still hangs behind the presidential chair of the Society.

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

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