The Church of St James the Greater, Oaks in Charnwood is the only Church of England church within the Civil Parish of Charley even though parts of three other Parochial Church Parishes lie within its boundaries. These being St Peter's Copt Oak, St Paul's Woodhouse Eaves and St Andrew's Thringstone.
"Most Anglican churches in the countryside are set at the heart of a village, and through their memorials, gravestones and registers, bear witness to a long history back through mediaeval times into Norman influences. For St James, history is laid down the other way round. Opened on 18 June 1815, Waterloo Day, in an empty countryside, it was hoped that the simple ‘Chapel on Charnwood Forest’ would soon find a busy rural community growing up around it. It was deliberately planted, as you would an enduring tree. Its Vicarage and School Room were much later additions after 1852.
The spur for this optimistic leap of faith came in 1805 when the six neighbouring Lords of their manors cast their eyes over the untamed wastes of the Forest, and foresaw a profit in enclosing it. The nation was still at war with France, and the production of food needed to be expanded. In 1807 they promoted an Act of Parliament to ‘Inclose the Forest or Chace of Charnwood, otherwise known as Charley Forest or Chace, and the Chace usually called Rothley Plain’.
Aware of this move in 1805, another local Lord of a manor, Thomas Babington MP at Rothley Temple, petitioned George Pretyman, the Bishop of Lincoln, to force a clause in the Act to allot land for the building and endowment of Churches. It was argued that the Charnwood landscape would be turned into such a productive farming area that many new inhabitants would soon put down roots, who would be in need of Christian pastoral care and ministry.
In the heady atmosphere of the expectation of future profits, the debate about the allotment for chapels reached fanciful levels. There was talk of four chapels being needed, while sober minds like Edward Dawson, the Belton lord, argued for the simplicity of one chapel in the middle.
When the Bill became Law in 1808 its chapel clause provided for 200 acres to be put aside, without specifying the number of chapels to be built. The six Lords would be the Trustees, empowered with making those acres ready for cultivation and let out to the highest bidders. Babington could not wait for the years to go by and the rents to accumulate. He badgered away at the trustees and the Bishop to put up one Chapel immediately, steadily raising donations from a list of family and friends. The Earl of Stamford was persuaded to give a rocky outcrop next to one of the 60-acre chapel allotments, and when the donated funds in the Bishop’s bank account at Coutts reached almost £800 in 1814, the Bishop authorised the building of the Oaks Chapel. Since the new chapel was going to be in Stamford’s extra parochial Grooby jurisdiction, he then made the grand gesture of adding his £400 to the donations list. This meant that none of the chapel cost fell on the other five trustee lords. The management of the project fell on Dr Parkinson, the Archdeacon of Leicester. He turned to his Proctor, William Harrison, who had a brother in the building business. Supposedly an Architect, this Harrison was more of a ‘design & build’ contractor of his era, specifying a footprint of 60 feet by 24 feet with 18 inch walls.
The Beginnings of St James Church, Oaks in Charnwood Wiithout a real debate about architectural sensibilities, Harrison put up a straightforward barn type building on the rocky outcrop and received a total of £1,527 10s 4d from Archdeacon Parkinson for his pains. Since only some £1,266 was available from the Coutts account, Parkinson had to hold the shortfall of £261 as his personal debt. He pleaded for an early reimbursement from the accumulating rental fund, writing that ‘I am poverty stricken and cannot afford to be generous.
On 15 June 1815, the new enclosure roads were awash with carriages as the great and the good rode out to witness this phenomenon, the consecration of the first new Leicestershire church for a generation. The Leicester Journal of 23 June reported that the ceremony by the Lord Bishop of Liverpool ‘attracted an amazing concord of people, whose orderly behaviour was highly commendable’.
It proved difficult to find a divine to officiate each week in the new Chapel. Mr Brace, the curate from Markfield, did a short stint, as did newly ordained John Babington, the son of Thomas Babington, and a Revd J Bull, all arranged by Robert Martin, commissary (Bishop equivalent) to the Earl of Stamford.
By Easter 1818, Martin did a deal with Revd Matthew Drake Babington (Thomas Babington’s nephew) to install him as the perpetual curate, paying him £50 a year out of the chapel lands rents fund. MDB lived at Longcliffe Lodge which had been built by Thomas Babington on the enclosure lots he had purchased, and watched over the sheep farming operation TB had there. Curate Matthew married in 1820 and went to live in the Sheepshead house of his father-in-law, Benjamin Fleetwood Churchill. His only son, Churchill Babington, was born in 1822.
Matthew also took on a second job in 1828, securing the curacy of the new build church of St George’s Thringstone. By 1832 he was living in the spacious new parsonage at Thringtone, taking in boy pupils from the landed gentry as their tutor. Really nice house, two curacies, and three resident pupils.
At the Oaks Chapel the small size of the congregation echoed the cries of those early manorial sceptics, Edward Dawson and Thomas Phillips.
In the 1851 religious census Joseph Thompson, farmer, reported 30 adults and 35 children attending on Sunday mornings and 40 each in the afternoons, about 20% of the capacity.
The early visions of agricultural profits from the Charnwood Enclosure of 1808 were severely dented by the immense cost of bringing the land and infrastructure into productive use. The Commissioners had to raise large sums by land sales, including those to Thomas Babington and Thomas Gisborne, and were only able to sign off the whole process in 1829. Three years later in 1832 the Beaumanor Lord, William Herrick VI died and his heir William Perry Herrick immediately took up the reins of the chapel lands trustee body with enthusiasm and rigour. This would lead to the final act of the original Charnwood chapels strategy, with the churches of St Paul at Woodhouse Eaves and St Peter at Copt Oak, identical designs by William Railton, being opened on successive days in 1837.
The Oaks building developed roof instability, showing its inadequate design, and this was put right by the energetic Herrick, adding a chancel at the same time. It took a little longer to sort out the ministry at Copt Oak and the Oaks, as in 1844 Matthew Babington took sickness absence in Messina, Sicily, where he died in 1851. Robert Close at Copt Oak died a year later, which opened the way for the Ashby Solicitor Edward Mortimer Green, resident at Charnwood Lodge, to re-organise matters.
In 1852 the parsonage at The Oaks was built, a joint appointment made to The Oaks and Copt Oak chapels, and in 1853 The Oaks Church was formally listed as an Ecclesiastical District. Those early efforts by Thomas Babington had come to the sort of fruition he could have imagined."
SOURCE - (
visit link) PDF