If yet more proof were needed that more and more of us are becoming interested in local history, then the fact that things called heritage centres are springing up in diverse parts of the county must be it.

In Henley, a former Chapel of Ease in the Fair Mile Cemetery has turned into The George Orwell Centre, and in the small village of Churchill, near Chipping Norton, the Churchill and Sarsden Heritage Centre has reopened (with a little help from the Heritage Lottery Fund) complete with touch-screen information points.

It is housed in the only remaining part of the old medieval church — which found itself more or less isolated after a fire of 1684 killed four people and destroyed 20 houses. That fire gained national fame after the rumour spread that it had started as a result of a tax avoidance scheme: namely a scheme to save money on the chimney tax, introduced in 1662 and abolished in 1689.

It was designed to make richer people pay more, and poorer ones less, by the simple expedient of making householders pay according to how many hearths they had.

It backfired in Churchill when an enterprising baker decided to knock his hearth through to next door, without apparently paying proper attention to health and safety, in a bid to halve both his and his neighbour’s tax bills (levied at the rate of a shilling a hearth, payable twice a year on the quarter days Michaelmas, September 29, and Lady Day, March 25).

Following the fire the village was rebuilt further up the hill, this time using stone instead of timber frame and thatch.

By 1825, the church had become sufficiently run- down for the rich but eccentric philanthropist lord of the manor, James Haughton Langston, of Sarsden House, to obtain permission to pull it down.

He built the present, replacement church of All Saints, designed by architect James Plowman, in the middle of the ‘new’ village. Its tower is a two-thirds scale replica of Magdalen College tower in Oxford. There is even an outdoor pulpit, similar to the one at Magdalen The Churchill and Sarsden Heritage Centre contains plenty of information about Warren Hastings (1732-1818), first governor general of India, and of geologist William Smith (1769-1839), both of whom were born in Churchill.

It is open on Saturdays, Sundays and Bank Holiday Mondays, April to September 2pm-4.30pm. Admission is free.

A tea party to launch a new book called A History of Churchill and Sarsden, by Ralph Mann, will be held at the centre on June 15 from 3pm-4.30pm.