Looking up at a central church tower from between the name and the south transept, from the outside. The church tower is very squat, and has a dark blue clock with gold numbers and hands on the right-hand side. The church is built of stone. The porch is to the bottom-left of the picture. The sky is dark grey, and a tree overhangs to the upper-left of the frame.

Faringdon

Normally when I write about a place, I try to come up with an overarching theme for the post. But there are three things I want to talk about here, and they’re all very different. So here’s a blog post in three acts.

Date of trip: 23rd August 2020
As promised, this was not a trip made so I could write a blog post about it. We went by car, and followed social distancing guidelines as much as possible, though were hindered when other people didn’t: see Act II.

But as the prologue, let me tell you where I’m talking about. Faringdon is a town in the Vale of White Horse—its second-largest, after Abingdon. It’s about halfway between Oxford and Swindon: for complicated bus reasons,¹ if you catch a bus along that road, it says on the front that it’s going to “Faringdon for Swindon”, even though you can stay on the same bus. (Bee tee dubs, if you’re thinking, “Hasn’t he done this one?”, you’re probably thinking of Farringdon with two Rs, in the City of London: somewhere I’m unlikely to be returning to for a while yet.)

Act I: The signs are good

“Only you,” said my travel partner, “could get this much amusement out of the signs in a town.”

“Not after I’ve blogged about them,” I replied.

Seriously, though, I could have done a whole blog post just on the signs of Faringdon. (Which I’ve evidenced with photographs I took on my phone, so apologies for the poor picture quality on some of them.) Like the one about an exiled Spanish republican who frequented a pub in the town, complete with tiny flag.

  • Lord Faringdon is not to be confused with Lord Berners, of whom more later.

His homeland has named three streets and a square after him, which rather overshadows this little plaque, but still.

Next we find that Faringdon is twinned with Le Mêle-sur-Sarthe, in la France.

  • A plaque on an orange-painted pebbledash wall. The plaque is rectangular, with a small hump at the top; it is painted dark green, with a white inset border. The hump is over a depiction of a blue circle containing a ring of twelve white stars, in the centre of which is a white circle containing two blue hands shaking. On either side of the circle, and slightly below it, are representations of two towns. On the left, there is a white rounded rectangle with a brown-coloured representation of an old market building, raised on columns above the street. Below that, in caps, it says “Faringdon, Oxfordshire”. On the right of the blue circle is a shield: the top of this is a red-and-black vertically-striped bar with two lions passant guardant inside, in yellow. The rest of the shield shows a black bird apparently standing on blue-and-black horizonally-striped waves against a white background. Below the waves is a yellow-and-black diagonally-striped representation of sand. Below the shield it says, in white caps, “Le Mêle, Pays Melois, Orne”. At the bottom of the plaque, between the two town representations, is text reading, in white, “600 Kms, 375 miles“; on either side of the text are wedges pointing outwards, to suggest the distance between the towns.
    The stars presumably represent Europe, but they’re upside down. Symbolic, perhaps.

English Wikipedia doesn’t say much about it, but according to the French one it has a neoclassical church that’s listed as a historical monument. So that’s fun.

That plaque, by the way, was under the old market hall, as evidenced by this plaque.

  • On an orange-painted pebbledash wall, a green circular plaque with a white border. The text of the plaque, in white, says: “Old Town Hall. Built as Market Hall in Late 17th Century. Magistrate‘s Court above and lock-up below; later houses the fire engine, now the Town’s War Memorial”.
    This is badly punctuated.

See, so many plaques.

And this one piqued my interest:

  • In decorative stonework on a building, the stone forms the shape of a shield. The shield is painted with a heraldic design: blue, with two white diagonal wavy lines from top left to bottom right; atop them, in the middle of the shield, is a red ox’s head facing forwards. At top-right there’s a sheaf of wheat, and at bottom-left a tree.
    The tree looks very primary school.

Why? Well, that’s quite an old building, but the coat of arms, as you may be able to guess from the angry red ox staring out at you, belongs to the modern county of Oxfordshire, so dates from no earlier than 1974. But as the Association of British Counties, who got a namecheck in last week’s post, would tell you, Faringdon used to be in Berkshire—and, as they would argue, still is in Berkshire, because old Berkshire never ceased to exist.

Anyway, beyond the niche historical signs, some of them were just amusing. (Well, amusing to me, anyway.) Like the one for this church, which had evidently just heard someone sneeze.

  • The front garden of a church, with a path between two lawns up to a building with a porch and high arched windows. There's a tall building to the left, and a wall in front of the yard. Behind the wall is a blue sign on metal poles, with a glazed box for the newsletter, the times of mass, and the name of the church: “Blessed Hugh Catholic Church”.
    Yes, I know it’s pronounced “bless-ed”, but then the joke doesn’t work.

And this cul-de-sac, which is drawing nearer all the time, even if you’re walking away.

  • A street sign for “Pulling Close”, with the logo of Vale of White Horse District Council on the left and a cul-de-sac sign on the right. It's in front of a driveway with a parked car on it ahead of some gates with a “No Parking” sign. Behind that is a stone wall that appears to be the foundation of a light-brick modern building with wood-framed windows.
    Either that or lots of new relationships are beginning nearby.

There were the Fish Brothers who could sell you a car, when you’d expect a boat:

  • A darkened window beneath corrugated metal walling. Text in the window, in white capital letters, says “Fish Brothers, driven by customer care”.
    Presumably the in-car entertainment systems at least give you a good weather forecast.

And the Faringdon United Church, who thankfully weren’t the Church of the King or their acronym would have been that much worse.

  • If you think this picture is bad, just wait until you see the next one.

Let’s not forget about this street which is just called “Eagles”. Not “Eagles Street”, or “Eagles Close”. Just “Eagles”. Perhaps the developers were fans of seventies rock.

  • Such a lovely place.

And the street that’s just one letter away from being a ballet.

  • A street sign for Swan Lane, embedded in thick green hedge.
    This isn’t the best joke, but I thought I ought to stick my neck out and post it anyway. (Geddit?)

You’re probably bored of signs now, and wanting me to go on to the next section, and maybe tell you about the town’s history, which is rich and varied.

  • I swear I’ve heard this about somewhere else.

I hear you. The wait is over.

  • In front of a cream-coloured wall with sash windows divided into a small panes, there is a sign on two white poles. The sign is white, with a dark blue border. It has the logo of a company called “Ede Homes, Est. 1959”, then says in red: “The wait is over – contact us now for information”. Then in white-on-blue: “A selection of characterful 1 & 2 bedroom apartments”. Below that: “Book appointment to view NOW; For further details contact: Ede Homes”, and a telephone number and website are given.
    Please do contact me now for information. I can’t guarantee it will be relevant or useful, though.

Act II: Anti-social distancing

So I thought Faringdon had shown the impact of COVID-19 on town centres, because many things appeared to be closed down, including the Budgens mini-mart and the Volunteer pub with the plaque about Señor Barea. But it turns out that most of those actually had already shut down by January, long before the new crowned virus hit our shores. Which means it says more about the gradual decline of town centres than anything else.
So let’s talk about what definitely is a COVID effect: the fact that we’re supposed to stay 2m away from each other. And I’m sorry, I’m making Faringdon a scapegoat here, because what I’m about to describe definitely isn’t unique to the inhabitants or visitors of the town: I’ve experienced the same or similar in Oxford, many times, while on lockdown walks.

But, my God, people, can’t you just stay back? It’s not hard.

The worst point for interacting was on the narrow, fenced-in footpath up to the landmark I’m about to describe in Act III. And these people I don’t blame, because it would have been impossible to maintain proper distance without having something like traffic lights controlling which way the flow was going, or without people retreating to the start every time they encountered someone new, which clearly isn’t practical. And anyway the government guidance only says you should stay 2m apart where it’s possible, which it clearly wasn’t.

That said, while I appreciated the thanks for stepping into the nettles to stay as far away from the oncomers as possible (I was wearing shorts; that hurt), their shouting in our direction rather nullified the physical distance by rapidly propelling air towards us. And I wasn’t a huge fan of the person who, as we neared the end of the path, waited for a while at the entrance as if to let us get clear, and then decided “never mind” and ploughed ahead when she could have waited, I don’t know, maybe ten seconds?

But the absolute worst was the person who, on just a regular quiet road with footpaths on both sides, clearly saw us cross the road to escape his group, and decided this was the perfect moment to cross the road himself, getting as close to us as possible. He clearly didn’t need to cross the road at that point, because he continued up the road, and his group joined him later. I think it was just lack of situational awareness, not any malice. But, my God.

And I’m sorry if this all sounds mean-spirited. I know these are trying times, and I know it’s hard to keep up with the rules and guidelines when they keep changing. But remember that some people really don’t want to get the virus, because they might be former shielders or people with underlying health conditions, or carers for the same, and so are under advice to strictly follow social distancing guidelines. And that’s not something that they can do on their own.

Act III: Sheer folly

Right, let’s get back to what you came to this blog for: niche local history. Faringdon has one major tourist site, which is closed to visitors “until the pandemic is over”, whatever that means. But the site is still accessible, and rather pretty. If a little odd.

I’m talking about Faringdon Folly, described as the last folly built in the UK. A folly, here, is a building without any real practical purpose, sometimes built as an early form of poor relief (a bit like the Hellfire Caves in West Wycombe), and sometimes simply on the whim of the landowner. This was one of the latter, built by the noted eccentric Gerald Tyrwhitt, the 14th Baron Berners.

Berners is a fascinating character, and the site contains an information board about him (though which fail to mention the fact that he was either gay or bisexual, frustratingly). I’m just going to link to Wikipedia so you can read more, but I will note that he used to put necklaces around his dogs’ necks, and dye pigeons in bright colours.

With the tower closed, we could only wander around the hilltop on which it’s sited, though the views were still good from there. The top of the hill is wooded, with wooden carved animals and cannon with the word “ROYALISTS” on it. It seemed to be a relatively popular spot to wander, with plenty of space to distance—unlike on the path up to it.

It was a shame not to be able to go up the tower, but on a random unplanned visit that might not have been possible anyway—it’s only open on the first Sunday of the month (and formerly bank holidays, though that bit of the board has been crossed out in permanent marker). But, once the pandemic is over, you might want to pay Lord Berners’ folly a visit. If you do, as the signs he erected once warned you, please do not feed the giraffes.

Looking along a path, with stone buildings to the left and a stone wall on the right; the stone wall gives way to a hedge, then a paved area and a tree. The houses to the left have small porches overhanging the doors. There's a road junction in the distance.
Looking up at a central church tower from between the name and the south transept, from the outside. The church tower is very squat, and has a dark blue clock with gold numbers and hands on the right-hand side. The church is built of stone. The porch is to the bottom-left of the picture. The sky is dark grey, and a tree overhangs to the upper-left of the frame.
Looking a long distance over fields, with various farm buildings and trees visible, towards low hills in the distance. The sky is fairly overcast, with clouds in left-right bands across the sky.
Looking along a sandy path between grass, towards some trees. In a gap between the trees is a brick tower, which is square shaped until an octagonal gothic top, with a wire pentagram placed on the roof. There are three round-arched windows near the top of the square section, which have little panes that reflect the light erratically. The sky is cloudy.
A carved wooded rabbit, sitting on its haunches. It sits on what looks like a tree stump, on sandy soil. Behind it is grass with a tree growing from it, and an informal path leading into the distance to the left.

¹ It appears to be a legal technicality to do with lengths of routes, which I’m not going to try and explain because I’ll get it wrong, but this bus enthusiasts’ website discusses it if you’re interested, in the paragraph that starts “An interesting development”. (Contrary to popular belief, I am not a bus nerd, simply a railway one. And I don’t want to get too far into the speculation: last time I did that it ended up in The Oxford Student under the headline “One Day In The Life Of An Oxford Bus-spotter”, and I got criticised in the Facebook comments for my lack of bus-spotting.)

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