Were we to ask Nevil Warbrook whether The Red Lion, Avebury’s famously haunted pub, or the village church was more important to him, we am certain he would say ‘St James,’ so it is there we begin a tour of the village.

It is certainly a gem of a church and we think underappreciated by the hundreds of thousands of visitors who come to see Avebury’s stone circle. Parts of the church date from Saxon times, Including a number of windows now wholly within the church’s interior, and possibly the font, but most of the fabric dates from the twelfth and fifteenth century. Of particular interest and beauty is the fifteenth century rood loft, which is a rare survivor as so many were destroyed by the Puritans in the seventeenth century, It survived at Avebury because it was dismantled, probably during the reign of Elizabeth I, and hidden behind a lath and plaster wall. It remained concealed until its rediscovery in 1812 and soon after, was reinstalled and painted as we see it today.

More important even than the fine architecture is the feel of the church as it is clearly used by the village and has none of that damp, unfrequented, air one sometimes finds in rural churches.

While we have been faithful to the fabric of the church in The Reluctant Ascent of Nevil Warbrook, we owe its rector, the Rev’d Jonathan Poston, his predecessor, Rev’d Maria Shepherdson, and its congregation an apology. Nevil Warbrook acts as secretary of the Parochial Church Council and his traditional views of worship are often at odds with those of my fictional Reverend Peter Chadwick. The traditionalists on the PCC enjoy a precarious majority over the modernisers who sympathise with the Reverend Chadwick, and while they narrowly voted down Peter’s proposal to remove the pews and install café-style seating, it’s uncertain how long they can resist drastic change to ‘their’ church. Nevil only hopes they can delay and obstruct Peter’s plans until such time as the diocese moves Peter on to another church, in the hope the next rector of St James will be more sympathetic to its historic interior.

In this we have played a little loose with reality as Parochial Church Councils are there to support the incumbent, not to thwart them, and do not vote down the reverend’s proposals, but we plead guilty to putting drama ahead of strict accuracy. If you want accuracy we refer you to The Vicar of Dibley. The PCC aside, we have done our best to follow the church year and taken much inspiration from The Upper Kennet News whose editions we have assiduously downloaded and studied over the last few years. We are quite certain the publishers did not anticipate the use to which we have put their magazine and we probably owe them an apology as well. In particular we took from the magazine the order of services and the celebration of Easter, which features in the first volume of The Reluctant Ascent of Nevil Warbrook published by Avebury Press in September 2023.