Many villages manage a small pamphlet about their history, but Ramsden has been more ambitious. The Ramsden Village Story is a record of the village’s 2,000-year history started as part of a millennium project, renamed the Ramsden Domesday Project, and is the result of almost 13 years of painstaking research by a dedicated team.

Four members have since died, and the remaining team has an average age “nearer to 80 than 70”, according to the editor, Dick Williamson.

The book is beautifully produced with colour photographs and drawings by villagers. The chapter on ‘working life’, for example, has detailed illustrations explaining how a Wychwood saw pit worked, and showing a cross-section of a clay pipe. The village was a source of blue-grey Lower Oxford clay, now dreaded by gardeners. It put Ramsden on the map as a centre of pipe-making, and readers’ understanding is enhanced by a reconstruction of a pipemaker’s gin-press.

But before the 20th century it was wood from the forest that dominated village life; people were loading old carts and prams with firewood until 1965, when a new law put an end to the custom. For the women, there was gloving, continued by one villager well into the 1970s. Interestingly, the chapter on agriculture suggests that forest is returning to some previously cultivated land.

The book is available for £25 including postage, from Mr Williamson, of Grey Barn, High Street, Ramsden, OX7 3AU.