Winston Churchill is one of the most famous, and most controversial, sons of Oxfordshire. Once lionised as a national hero, his legacy has been reassessed in recent years. Younger generations have drawn attention to the parts of his history that have traditionally been glossed over, such as his justification of the use of poison gas on “savage races”, and his ordering striking miners to be shot at during the Tonypandy riots of 1910. This article will focus on his Oxfordshire connections, and will not be another general biography of Churchill, of which many already exist.
Churchill was born in 1874 at his ancestral home, Blenheim Palace. He spent much of his youth there,and proposed to his wife Clemmie there in 1908. His military career began in the local territorial regiment, the Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars. He was promoted to commander of their Henley Division, and later colonel, a rank he held until his death in 1965.
Churchill died in London, but is buried at St Mary’s Church in Bladon, close to Blenheim Palace. Before his death, he expressed his wish for a private burial there following his state funeral in London, and as an act of spite towards the French head of state (at the time, Charles De Gaulle), asked that the train transporting his body depart from Waterloo instead of Paddington.
In 2015, on the 50th anniversary of Churchill’s death, a stained glass window designed by Emma Blount was unveiled in the church, depicting scenes from his life, as well as is coat of arms, and more abstract images such as a black swan, because he had one another of his family homes, Chartwell in Kent. The window was designed to be sensitive to its surroundings. “It has to be a religious window without obvious, inappropriate reference to a secular subject, but there are subtle ways of doing this”, said Robert Courts, the PCC chair at the time.