Called Westone in the 11th century the village of Weston Turville once comprised a group of five manors called Weston Molins, Weston Botillers, The Hide, Bedgrove and Broughton Hollands. The two larger manors, Weston Molins and Weston Botillers, merged to form Weston Turville in the 16th century when at the time the village had about 200 inhabitants. Prune orchards, straw plaiting and duck breeding were mainstay industries in the village up to the 1800s and in 1736 a charity was formed called The Widow Turpin’s Charity, providing “groat loaves” of bread to the poor of the village. The charity still exists today, though it tends to give out food vouchers instead.
The parish church of St Mary the Virgin sits on the site of an early 12th century structure, though the current building is mainly of 13th and 14th century design. All that remains of the original 12th century church are the font and an octagonal shaft built into the south wall of the chancel. The church appears to have been significantly expanded in size when it was rebuilt in the 14th century, and evidence has been found to suggest that the chancel arch inside the church was widened at about that time.
When a tower was added to the west of the church in the 15th century it was unusually built into the west bay of the arcades and protrudes only slightly from the west wall. This is because the western boundary of the church land (where the car park is today) has always been too close to the church to allow a tower to be built wholly outside the nave, which was the usual fashion. At around this time the roof of the church was heightened, and some of the 15th century internal features can still be seen.
Today the church has a peal of six bells and a choir affiliated to the Royal School of Church Music. The building is frequently in use with worship and community activities happening throughout the week.
Onto the cache:
In order to find the cache gather some information from three locations within the churchyard. All three locations are near the public footpath, which crosses the churchyard from west to east. The final geocache is not in the churchyard but can be found nearby.
The cache can be found at N51 47.A[B+C]D W000 45.C[E+1][B+C] where:
Something in the churchyard was faithfully renovated by Don Billing in 20AB.
Somewhere you can rest awhile in the churchyard was placed in loving memory of Lorraine Rice. Number of letters in her nickname = C.
Buried elsewhere in this churchyard is Private H. L. Kempster, who died on 13th October 1918. His service number was 308DE.
Please exercise stealth when retrieving the cache.
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For full information on how you can expand the Church Micro series by sadexploration please read the Place your own Church Micro page before you contact him at churchmicro@gmail.com.
See also the Church Micro Statistics and Home pages for further information about the series.
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