Stinchcombe

**Stinchcombe**
	Stinchcombe
Gloucestershire
	Location
Grid reference:	ST733988
Location:	51°41’16"N, 2°23’14"W
	Data
Postcode:	GL11
	Local Government

Stinchcombe is a small village in Gloucestershire on the B4060 road between Dursley and North Nibley. To the north is the larger village of Cam.

The population taken at the 2011 census was 480.

Parish church

Church of St Cyr

The parish church is called St Cyr's.

The earliest mention of a church in Stinchcombe is in the Berkeley manuscripts which note that ‘the Church of Cam with the Chapel of Stinchcombe was granted to the Abbot of St Peter’s at Gloucester in 1156 by Robert Berkeley'. None of this early building remains. The tower and porch of the present church date from 1630.

The current church is Grade II* listed^[1] and built of local stone. An extensive restoration of the building was begun in 1854 funded by the local landowner and the incumbent and others, all of whom were participants in the Oxford Movement, or 'Tractarianism', which has been charaterised as a "re-catholicising" movement. The work was carried out in the Tractarian tradition by the architect J. L. Pearson. (The irony of this aesthetic in a village which was the birthplace of the great, martyred reformer William Tyndale, will not have been lost on them.) The new building was consecrated in 1855. The Church has many fine features: stained glass windows, a reredos and the organ in a fine oak case. There are several beautiful table-top tombs in the churchyard.

Stinchcombe Hill

Main article: Stinchcombe Hill

Above the village is Stinchcombe Hill, a nearly detached part of the Cotswold Edge. An area of 71 acres has been notified as a biological Site of Special Scientific Interest since 1966.^[2]

The hill forms part of the Jurassic limestone scarp of the Cotswolds and the site represents the semi-natural calcareous grasslands supporting particular flora and fauna, and particularly a number of rare and uncommon species.^[2]

The Hill has a large golf course on the top and has a public right of way round its edge which is part of the Cotswold Way.

Notable residents

The village is the birthplace of William Tyndale (ca. 1494- 1536), scholar, reformer and translator of the Bible into English.
The novelist Evelyn Waugh lived at Piers Court in Stinchcombe from 1937 to 1956. During this time he wrote some of his best known works, including Scoop, Brideshead Revisited, Men at Arms and Officers and Gentlemen.