Grave in Adlestrop – St Mary Magdalene church

Canon Powershot s90

Novelist Jane Austen was related to Reverend Thomas Leigh, who had the living of Adlestrop. Austen is known to have visited Adlestrop on at least 3 occassions – in 1794, 1799, and 1806, and she would have worshipped in this church. The Rectory, Adlestrop House, is directly across the road from St Mary Magdalene church. It is believed that Austen used Adlestrop as a model for at least one location in her novel Mansfield Park.

Source

Adlestrop is also famous for the poem by Edward Thomas:

“Yes, I remember Adlestrop —
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop — only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. "