Lost medieval settlements and the abandoned church of Bix Brand

The idea of a lost medieval village sounds mysterious and thrilling, conjuring images of streets and houses lost to modern maps, abandoned for reasons unknown and buried under layers of subsequent history. In reality these deserted villages were most likely very small settlements populated by a few families linked to a manor house and perhaps a church. There are literally thousands in England alone and the factors driving their abandonment were probably more mundane than catastrophic. 

One such abandoned settlement is Bix Brand nestled in a valley in the Chiltern Hills a few miles from Henley. What remains today is the ruins of a Norman era church dedicated to St James but the area is known to have been populated in Roman times - a Roman farmhouse and artefacts have been discovered in the vicinity. Also nearby lies part of the prehistoric earthworks known as Grim's Ditch. 

By the time of the Domesday Book, there were two settlements in the area known as Bixa Brand, which had ten families and Bixa Gibwin, which had seven families. Each settlement had their own church but by the 13th century they shared a single vicar. By the 1700s the church of St Michael at Bix Gibwyn had fallen into ruins and has since been lost. Of the surviving church, we can see that it included Norman windows from the 12th century, early Gothic windows from the 13th century and Anglo-Saxon herringbone patterns in its flinty walls.

This is an isolated, hilly area of narrow, steep lanes but the church of St James in Bix Brand was still in use during the 18th and much of the 19th century even as the modern village of Bix developed a mile away close to the former Bix Gibwyn.

In the late 1700s brick buttresses were built on the church's west wall to stop it collapsing. But by 1874 efforts to keep the church in a state of repair were finally abandoned and a new church dedicated to St James was built in Bix instead, while the original church fell into ruin. 

That modern church contains features from the original St James, including the original Norman-era fon (not the font in use!), a piscina, tiles, and even two16th century stained glass windows.

The old church became badly overgrown in the 20th century but retained a place in the local landscape and has latterly been tidied up thanks to conservation work partly supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund. It's close to BBOWT's Warburg Nature Reserve, which is well worth a visit too.

Famously, if you are interested in British horror films, Bix Old Church was used as a location in the 1971 film, The Blood on Satan's Claw (in an article for the BFI, writer Adam Scovell has compared scenes from the film to actual locations). But perhaps most appropriately, the church remains a consecrated place of Christian worship, the grounds apparently still used for open air services.