Filkins

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Filkins
Oxfordshire
Location
Grid reference: SP238041
Location: 51°44’10"N, 1°39’22"W
Data
Post town: Lechlade
Postcode: GL7
Dialling code: 01367
Local Government
Council: West Oxfordshire
Parliamentary
constituency:
Witney
Website: Filkins & Broughton Poggs

Filkins is a village in Oxfordshire, two and a half miles south-west of Carterton. The hamlet of the ancient parish of Broadwell was made a civil parish in 1896, but was merged with that of Broughton Poggs in 1954.

Church and chapel

Church of England

The Gothic Revival architect G.E. Street designed the Church of England parish church of Saint Peter, and it was built in 1855–57.[1] The parish is now part of the Benefice of Shill Valley and Broadshire, which includes also the parishes of Alvescot, Black Bourton, Broadwell, Broughton Poggs, Holwell, Kelmscott, Kencot, Langford, Little Faringdon, Shilton and Westwell.[2]

Methodist

The Methodist chapel was dedicated in 1833.[3]

Social and economic history

Swinford Museum occupies a 17th-century cottage in Filkins and stands alongside the former village lock-up. George Swinford founded the museum in 1931 with the help of Sir Stafford Cripps.

In 2007 the Filkins estate, which Sir John Cripps (son of the post-war Labour minister Sir Stafford Cripps) bequeathed upon his death in 1993, but which had been partly passed over to the Ernest Cook Trust[4] since then, was fully transferred to the Trust's portfolio. The Filkins Estate is on the county border between Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire and includes one 500-acre farm and a number of cottages, with a small area of commercial units housing the Cotswold Woollen Weavers and Filkins Stone Company.

Amenities

Filkins has a public house, the Five Alls.[5] The village has an outdoor swimming pool owned by the Centre Trust which was established by Sir Stafford Cripps under the control of the parish council (acting as trustees). The pool, now managed by the Filkins Swimming Club, is open from May until September. Next to it are the village shop, post office and bowls club. A large 18th-century barn is now the premises of Cotswold Woollen Weavers, which set up business there in 1982, and is the last company in the area to uphold the traditions of woollen cloth design and manufacture.[6] Filkins has a theatre club. The former village school is now a pre-school nursery.[7]

References

Sources and further reading

("Wikimedia Commons" has material
about Filkins)
  • Fisher, A.S.T. (1968). The History of Broadwell, Oxfordshire, with Filkins, Kelmscott and Holwell. privately published. 
  • Sherwood, Jennifer; Pevsner, Nikolaus (1974). Oxfordshire. The Buildings of England. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. p. 604. ISBN 0-14-071045-0.