The patron of Evenley Church is Saint George.
Evenley church was built sometime between the 11" and 13" centuries, originally in the style of Croughton and Farthinghoe churches. The church had so deteriorated by the early nineteenth century that it was no longer used for regular services and in 1865 it was devastated by fire that destroyed most of the interior woodwork, except the rood screen which was saved and reinstalled after the church was repaired/reconstructed, the marble frieze and panels for the Levinz memorial and all the noteworthy wall paintings, see below.
It was rebuilt to virtually the same footprint and with the same window openings, door openings, porch etc but with the addition of a wooden shingled steeple to the top of the tower. I am of the opinion that when Mrs Pierrepont provided the money for a new church it was for a total repair rather than a rebuilding/new construction. That the stonework where not defective was repaired and re-pointed and new and different openings made for windows in the same places as before, new guttering with the date on still exists today (2022) and a steeple plonked on top of the tower with a new buttress to counter the extra weight on the tower. See photograph and compare with the present church. Also noteworthy are the wooden post and plank grave markers which were once very common as cheaper substitutes for stone. Research is needed about exactly what was done, for if, though unlikely, some of the interior was not stripped completely of its plasterwork and merely skimmed over by the remedial plasterers in the 1860s, there may still be lurking part of the old wall paintings a few millimetres under the wall surface of the nave.
CHURCH SURVEY OF 1637
Reference chancel wants whitening and painting. Two seats belonging to Mr Levinz, near the chancel five foot high and above. The windows in the chancel broke in divers places with the glasse of one window on the side of the chancel very defective near the stone. Reference church wants whitening and painting and an aisle belonging to Mr Lisle wants whitening. A pillar on the north side of the church scapeing upon Mr Lisles the very much ruined at the bottom and in danger to fall. The seats in the church generally out of repair and wants bording. A seat belonging to Mr Lisle higher than ordinary but he promiseth to amend it. The Bible wants binding and is torn in the latter end. There wants “Erasmus" paraphrase of the Book of Homilies, God the King and a book for strange preachers. There wants a hood for the Minister and a wooden cover for the font. .. The ivy on the south side of the church groweth all along the walls and is conceived doth and will of walls.
CHURCH - 13th Century Taxation
In 1254 the Norwich Valuation valued the Evenley Rectory at 20 marks. The Vicarage being valued at 40 shillings.
By 1291 the Rectory was still 20 marks, the Vicarage 3.5 marks.
This was the taxation of Pope Nicholas IV in that year when he ordered a tenth to be levied on all the churches of England for a crusade to be entered upon by Edward I, who as a matter of fact, took the money and forgot the crusade. Consequently a new assessment was made of all the parochial and other benefices in England with a view to a levying of this tenth. There had been previous “taxations” of lower values made by various bishops, but this was the first complete taxation of the whole of England and Wales. In all medieval assessments for the purpose of taxation in our modern sense, the values were considerably lower than the actual yearly average of receipts, there being a sort of unofficial income-tax abatement allowed. The system of taxation is a rough estimation of the lowest value at which a benefice cloud be farmed, but since the farmer himself always had to make a profit to induce him to take on the burden at all, it is obvious that this principle itself involves a large abatement.
Miss Rose Graham has put forward evidence for this with regard to Pope Nicholas’s taxation in the “English Historical Review xxiii, pp 434 seq. Some of the figures quoted by her reveal cases where the assessment was only half the true value, although the assessment itself was termed a “verus valor.”
We can assume with very little doubt, that the figures do in actual fact represent only half the true value.
It appears that Bishop Hugh de Welles of Lincoln under-assessed his churches and vicarages as a general policy, and that the value of money had been steadily pursuing its normal medieval downward trend. Improvement of agricultural methods may also have had something to do with the matter, but these alone were not sufficiently noticeable to make all the difference. Assessed values are bound to vary a great deal under any system and can never be more than a human guess at probabilities indicated by faulty evidence produced by interested parties. The parish priest himself would be unlikely to guess his own income in extravagant terms and his neighbours, being farmers and farmworkers as a rule, would not take too optimistic a view of agricultural prospects.
Even although the benefice was of low value the vicar was expected to make provision for a chaplain or clerk to serve the church; even though this assistant cleric may have only been a part-time worker, yet nevertheless his remuneration must have been a heavy burden to a poor vicar living on the margin of poverty. In addition the vicar himself required the services of a boy, who perhaps would be in the lowest of the minor orders, who performed such menial, though divine, services as carrying holy water to the parishioners.
The detailed assessments of vicarages in the Diocese of Lincoln are interesting as showing the comparative value of the various emoluments, but it is impossible to say what was typical of an average vicarage, because the conditions of local agriculture can never be reduced to a type. For instance, flax tithes in one village might be extremely valuable, and yet in the next be quite negligible.
There is no such thing as a typical 13th century vicarage for the simple reason that there was no typical village agriculture. Yet the proportion between small tithes and oblations is interesting and corrects the tendency to exaggerate the value of small tithes at the expense of the oblations. Eggs, for example, as perishable commodities, could not have been very valuable, even if plentiful. fruit is very perishable, and consequently would not be of much value to the vicar. The penny marriage offerings and offerings at churchings, baptisms, funerals and Masses of all kinds might prove more valuable simply because they would ‘keep’. Such matter of fact considerations must have meant a great deal to the vicar, who after all, was essentially a member of the agricultural community.
All notes on Evenley Church are gathered from Magdalen College Records and acknowledgements must go to Jaqui Simpson and Gina Harvey for their valued contributions.