86 THE TWO CHURCHILLS.

W. Brown Esq., and W. Trow, Esq. Agricultural labour is the chief employment, the only manufacture here being a spade mill. Population, 181 (there were only nine families in the sixteenth century); acreage, 924 ; value of living, £300; patron, Lord Lyttelton ; vicar. Rev. R. P. Turner. If the traveller (misguided by the name of the parish) looks out for a church on a hill, he will be disappointed; and if at any time the church was on an eminence it must have been many centuries ago, as portions of the old structure just destroyed (which was on the site of the present one in the bottom of a valley) belonged to the thirteenth century. The old building stood in need of such extensive repair that to rebuild was considered the best course; and last year one of the nicest little churches of the day was erected here, Mr. Hopkins architect. There is a school here, poorly endowed, with thirty to thirty-five children, under Government inspection, but not eligible for a grant. A former incumbent of Churchill was the Rev. J. A. Baxter, a man of considerable attainments, who wrote a work on church architecture, and assisted in compiling a hymn-book, afterwards much used. The Dickens family, of Bobbington, were lords of this manor from 1432 to 1657, and it is said that from this family Mr. Dickens, the novelist, is descended.

Churchill No. 2 is one of a constellation of little parishes, thickly studded, easterly of the county town, and anciently belonged to the Bishop's manor of Northwick; it was then successively held by magnates bearing the names of Wysham, Guise, Cooksey, Acton, Bourne, and lastly, Berkeley, who is still the patron and principal landowner. There were eleven families here in the sixteenth century, representing fifty-five people, now increased to only seventy-eight; acreage, 660. The Rev. W. A. Faulkner, rector; value of living, £240; church accommodation, 100; free seats, eighty. The church is small and plain, and contains nothing of interest. A mineral spring, which many years ago some people held in equal estimation with Tunbridge Spa, exists here; but