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I visited Owlpen church on a perfect Summer's afternoon. It was locked but there was a notice on the door to get the key from the church warden up at nearby 'Owlpen Farm'. I drove up the country lane to the farm, pausing to look back at Owlpen Manor set in this most perfect of English valleys. At the farm I recognised the church warden as Duff Hart-Davies who was an author. He had given a talk to the local Rotary Club on the art of ghost-writing . I had attended that particular meeting as a guest. Duff's brother, Adam Hart-Davies is a famous TV presenter and I told Duff that I had turned on the BBC one evening to see, quite by chance, Adam Hart-Davies presenting an episode of 'What the Elizabethans did for us' from the inside of Owlpen Manor. Dressed the part in dubloons and tricorn hat, Adam was demonstrating an early telescope. ......... I gathered the bunch of keys from Duff and headed back to 'The Holy Cross' church. There one is treated to a display of fine stained glass windows; and decorative mosaic tilework in the chancel by the 19th Century artist Rose Stoughton. Her memorial plaque is near the altar. On the North wall of the nave can be seen a plaque to Thomas Daunt, describing him in a typically effusive 18th Century manner as having been "truly pious, strictly just" and "zealously loyal to his King and Country".
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