Around Nuffield

Several paces from Holy Trinity church at Nuffield lie the ashes of a man who transformed Britain’s car industry. William Richard Morris (1877-1963) was a renowned car manufacturer and benefactor who fell in love with this lofty village and took its name as Viscount Nuffield. He lived at nearby Nuffield Place. Morris was born in Worcestershire and began his working life in the bicycle repair business. By 1910 he was producing prototypes of Morris Oxford cars at Cowley, near Oxford. He was later acknowledged as the first British manufacturer to usher in the mass production of inexpensive motor cars. He received a baronetcy in 1929 and was raised to the peerage in 1934.

Man with a mission

However, there was much more to Morris than car production. He was a great philanthropist and much of his vast income was used to help build or expand hospitals and establish charities. He took a keen interest in the development of medical science and it was Morris who funded the first supply of iron lungs to British hospitals. A statue was erected in his honour at Guy’s Hospital in London. Restoration work on Holy Trinity church, undertaken in the 1930s, was funded by William Morris who also provided the organ from the chapel of Hursts Grammar School in Cowley. Ironically, despite his preoccupation with general health, Morris was a chain smoker. He died following surgery at Nuffield Place and the bulk of his estate was given to Nuffield College.

Pioneering TV interviewer

Another man with a reputation for power and influence was the broadcaster Sir David Frost (1939-2013) whose funeral took place at Holy Trinity church 50 years after Morris’s death. A large-scale memorial service for Frost followed some months later and was attended by the Prince of Wales. David Frost, who had moved to the area shortly before his passing, was born in Tenterden, Kent and educated at Cambridge, He began his television career in the early 1960s when he hosted That Was the Week that Was, a weekly show with the accent on satire. Only in his early 20s, Frost became an overnight star and never looked back. He soon established a reputation as an incisive interviewer both here and in the United States and he was equally home in the world of light entertainment, regularly hosting quiz and chat shows. He is probably best remembered for his television interrogation of impeached President Richard Nixon in the late 1970s, though he also was a leading executive in the world of broadcasting, playing a key role in the development of breakfast television in Britain in the early 1980s. He briefly presented TV am, fronting the morning broadcasts alongside co-hosts Anna Ford, Michael Parkinson, Angela Rippon and Robert Kee.

From the parking area by the church walk back down the road towards the centre of Nuffield. A few houses and cottages line the road. The route of the Ridgeway long-distance trail can be seen on the left and further along the road is the entrance to Huntercombe Golf Club. Make for the junction with Timbers Lane, cross over and pass to the left of a house called Martyns Close.

Follow the path to a drive and keep right, passing Elderberry Cottage. The next stage of the walk is delightfully unspoiled and remote, with lines of trees and glimpses of distant Chiltern landscape. Remaining on the obvious path for 0.75 miles (1.2km), walk through woodland, pass a wooden kissing gate on the left and continue ahead when the trees thin to a strip, turning right at a junction with a track.

On reaching a stile after a few paces, cross over and aim for some trees just to the left of English Farm. This stretch of the walk offers delightful views over a gently rolling landscape of fields and pastures. Look for a stile leading out to a track, keep right and follow it as it curves left below the farm outbuildings. Sweep right by barns and at a waymark turn left to a gate and a junction of paths. Turn right and shortly rejoin the main drive, keeping the farmhouse over to the right. Pass a footpath on the left and keep ahead on the designated ‘Quiet Lane’ to the next road junction.

Turn left for several paces and cross over to a footpath, following it to the left of a line of trees. Cross the field, passing under power lines, and at the far hedge go through a gap and turn right. Pass through trees to reach the Ridgeway, which follows an earthwork, Grim’s Ditch, to the west. Go straight on towards Nuffield, enjoying fine views to the west. Climb gently through a belt of woodland and emerge by a galvanised gate. Follow the field-edge ahead to the road and turn right, returning to the church and parking area where the walk began.