a blacksmith. He was educated at the parish school until he was 11, then went to London for two years. In 1788, when he returned to Churchill, his uncle (a Hook Norton farmer) encouraged his interest in surveying, and together they pursued various schemes for land improvement and drainage. At 18 he became an assistant surveyor, helping to survey Churchill and Sarsden for the 1788 Enclosure Act. His experience of different rock formations led him to develop the theory that the occurrence of different types of fossil could be used to order the geological sequence of rock strata. Although from 1800 he gained a reputation as a civil engineer, he became famous for preparing and producing a series of detailed geological maps of England. He died on 28 August 1839 in Northampton. Celebrity chef Rick Stein was born in Churchill. Rebekah Brooks, journalist and editor, has a small estate at Churchill. Amenities The village has a public house, the Chequers, built in the late 18th or early 19th century. It was controlled by Hunt Edmunds brewery before Mitchells & Butlers Brewery took the company over in the 1960s. It is now a gastropub. The village hall was built in 1870 at the behest of James Langston as a Reading Room for the village. It was converted into the village hall after the Second World War. Bus route X8 serves the village. Buses run peak hours only, Monday to Friday, linking Kingham railway station and Chipping Norton via Churchill. Pulham's Coaches operates the route for Oxfordshire County Council. Churchill had two primary schools: the "Top School", opposite the church on Junction Road, was the Girls' School, and the "Lower School", further down the hill on the Sarsden Road, was the Boys' School. Their dates are somewhat obscure; the Lower School is said to have been built in 1716, though that seems surprisingly early to some historians, and the deeds of the Top School date it to the 1850s, though its rainwater heads are dated 1870. The Lower School was closed in 1947, the Top School in 1982, and both have been converted and divided into private houses. See also Churchill & Sarsden Heritage Centre References Sources External links Churchill and Sarsden Churchill and Sarsden Heritage Centre Villages in Oxfordshire Civil parishes in Oxfordshire West Oxfordshire District Cotswolds