More About Chipping

Well worth a visit is the village Church, which is commemorated by an annual fair held on St Bartholomew's Day, August 24^th. The church of St Bartholomews has a number of heads carved on a pillar in the north aisle. They appear to be pulling faces and are thought to have been carved in the 14th century. Also inside the church can be found a 12th century piscina in the chacel and a plague stone. The Belgian people in 1879 made a gift of a chest to St Bartholomews Hospital in London. This is now housed in the church near two 1450 holy water stoups. A local tradition has it that when a wedding has taken place in the church local children tie the church gates shut. The wedding couple must then throw money to the children in order to get them re-opened.  

Perhaps the most interesting of the local tales is connected with a young serving girl Lizzy Dean who worked at the Sun Inn. One day she heard the bells ringing from the church across the street. Looking out the window she saw here fiance arriving to be married to another. Lizzie was heartbroken and hanged herself. Here suicide note stated that she wished to be buried beneath the church path, so that everytime here fiance went to church he would have to walk over her grave. The vicar would not agree to this and buried her at the South-East corner of the church. It is because her final wishes were not carried that the locals claim that her spirit still haunts the Sun Inn to this day.  

The post office is one of the oldest buildings in the area, it is recorded as being the oldest continuelly used shop in England. The shop and adjoining house were completed in 1668 by one John Brabin, a London cloth merchant and dyer. Following his death in 1683, he left instructions to create a trust providing relief to the poor and education for the young. Outcomes of this can be seen on Windy Street today with the “old school house” and the “alms houses”, both completed a year after his death. His house next to the shop still bears the original date stone, and is said to be haunted by the ghost of John Brabin. Since Mr Brabin first set up in business in 1668, the shop has had a number of incarnations including; a bakers, a grocers, an undertakers and a butchers the lettering of which is still just visible above the front door.

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