Brightwell Baldwin

"Brightwell" is derived from the Old English for "bright spring".[3] "Baldwin" is the name of a family that held the manor.

The earliest known record of Brightwell Baldwin is a Saxon charter of AD 854 in the Cartularium Saxonicum that records the toponym as Beorhtawille or Brihtanwylle. Almost a century later a Saxon charter of AD 945 records it as Byrhtanwellan. The Domesday Book of 1086 records it as Bretewelle.[3]

Brightwell Park's 17th-century dovecote

The old country house of the Stone family burnt down in 1786, but a cruciform 17th-century dovecote[4] that was some distance from the house survives in the park.[5]

In 1790 a replacement house was built.[1] It has since been demolished, but its kitchen wing, stables, ice house[6] and an 18th-century stone arch bridge[7] in the park survive.

The earliest parts of the Church of England parish church of Saint Bartholomew are 13th century, including a stair turret and a number of lancet windows, notably in the chancel.[8][9] Early in the 14th century the nave was rebuilt in the Decorated Gothic style, with north and south aisles linked to it by arcades of four bays.[8] The west tower and the Perpendicular Gothic east window of the chancel were added in the 15th century.[8] The pulpit and tester are Jacobean[8] and therefore 17th century. The building was restored in 1895 and is a Grade I listed.[9]

Church monuments in St Bartholomew's include a number of brasses. In the north aisle is a brass commemorating John the Smith, who died in 1371.[9] It bears an epitaph written in Middle English,[10] which may be the earliest example of an inscription in the English language.[11] The epitaph reflects upon human mortality:

man com & se how schal alle dede li: wen þow comes bad & bare

noth hab ven ve awaẏ fare: All ẏs wermēs þ^t ve for care:—
bot þ^t ve do for godẏs luf ve haue nothyng yare:

hunyr þis graue lẏs John ye smẏth god yif his soule heuen grit[10][11]

In the chancel are two brasses commemorating John Cottesmore, who died in 1439.[9] Stone monuments include two 16th-century chest tombs of members of the Carleton family, and a substantial English Baroque monument to members of the Stone family on the east wall of the north chapel.[8] The latter was built in about 1670[8] or 1690,[9] replacing monuments to John Stone (died 1640) and his son Sir Richard Stone (died 1660) that were destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.[12]

The bell tower has a ring of six bells. John Saunders of Reading, Berkshire cast the tenor bell in about 1559.[13] Ellis I Knight, also of Reading, cast the fifth bell in 1637.[13] Mears and Stainbank of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry cast or recast the treble, second, third and fourth bells in 1911.[13] There is also a Sanctus bell that was cast in about 1550.[13]

The churchyard includes a late 18th-century chest tomb a number of 17th-century gravestones that are Grade II listed.[14][15][16][17] Another 17th-century monument commemorates one Stephen Rumbold, who died in 1687 aged 105.[18] On it a rhyming epigram bets with its readers:

He liv'd one hundred and five

Sanguine and Strong
An hundred to five

You do not live so long[18]

St Bartholomew's parish is now part of the benefice of Ewelme, Brightwell Baldwin, Cuxham and Easington.[19]

The Lord Nelson Inn, seen from St Bartholomew's parish churchyard

Brightwell Baldwin has a 17th-century pub, The Lord Nelson Inn.[20][21] It is now a gastropub.[22]

The Old Forge is a Grade II listed former blacksmiths shop: it was bought in 2002 by the Duke and Duchess of Kent.[23]

• Bertram, Jerome (2003). "Medieval Inscriptions in Oxfordshire" (PDF). Oxoniensia. Oxfordshire Architectural and Historical Society. LXVVIII: 27–54. ISSN 0308-5562.
• Ekwall, Eilert (1960) [1936]. Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names (4th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brightwell. ISBN 0198691033.
• Lewis, Samuel, ed. (1931) [1848]. "Brightwell-Baldwin (St. Bartholomew)". A Topographical Dictionary of England (Seventh ed.). London: Samuel Lewis. pp. 375–379.
• Sherwood, Jennifer; Pevsner, Nikolaus (1974). Oxfordshire. The Buildings of England. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. pp. 484–486. ISBN 0-14-071045-0.
• Utechin, Patricia (1990) [1980]. Epitaphs from Oxfordshire (2nd ed.). Oxford: Robert Dugdale. pp. 4, 39, 82. ISBN 0-946976-04-X.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Brightwell Baldwin.

• Brightwell Baldwin Parish Meeting