The Domesday Book (1086 A.D.) mentions a church at Ellisfield, but the Church of St. Martin was built during the second half of the thirteenth century. The earlier building may have been the chapel which for some time after the Norman Conquest was staffed by the Fraternity of the Holy Ghost in Basingstoke, later to become known as the Church of All Saints. The latter stood in the grounds of the old rectory, now Brocas, on a site called Hallowed Litton. Litton is the Anglo-Saxon for churchyard; so that a church stood in what was then Aelle's Field, named after King Aelle, who landed in Sussex in 477 A.D. When the Church of St. Martin was built, there were two parishes in this scattered village; but the plague reduced the population to nine and it was decided to unite the two benefices under the shared patronage of Sir Bernard Brocas and William Fyfhide in 1383. The decaying Church of All Saints was then closed. At the time of the Domesday Book Ellisfield was held by Hugh de Port on behalf of the Bishop of Bayeux and Auti.

The building comprises a chancel, a nave, a south porch and a west tower. Extensive restoration took place during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and an enquiring imagination is needed to visualize features of interest which
may have existed before that time.

The Chancel
The chancel is lit by Gothic Revival lancet windows in the north and south walls, a three-light Gothic window dominating the east wall. The shape of the stone window frames is faithful to the English Decorated Style of the thirteenth
century, though the original lancet windows may have been smaller, and the stained glass would have been peopled with more symbolic, icon-like figures
than the life-like characters in the present nineteenth century window. The plain,
rough-hewn corbels of local compacted chalk-stone at one time supported
statues.

The church interior

Medieval churches were designed for the hearing of the Latin Mass and we
wonder what the whitewashed plaster may conceal. Was there on the north
wall an aumbry, a cupboard let into the wall to house the Reserved Sacrament
and Holy Oils? Does the lip of stone protruding from the plaster in the south wall indicate a medieval piscina, used for ceremonial ablutions during Mass? The
chancel is the same width as the nave, but separated from it by a Gothic Revival arch in the Early English Style. There is a pleasing contrast between the scissor-beam construction of the chancel roof and the hammer-beam style of the nave. An early twentieth century photograph shows the ceiling between the rafters painted white which seemed to fill the church with light. The two Elizabethan credence tables are notable: one is inscribed "ER". The Bishop's Chair and the wooden font cover appear to match them.

The Nave
Parts of the nave walls are probably contemporary with the chancel; but the
inside semi-circular arch of the south doorway is said to be fourteenth century, the outer arch being built up. It opens into a brick porch, now a vestry formed by the bricking up of the outer door. On the east side of the stone arch behind the vestry door are several ancient scratchings on the stone. They include four Crusader crosses. One has a circle round it signifying that the Crusader was
blessed by a bishop. Can we then imagine a knight, his sword laid before
the altar, spending a prayerful vigil in the church before leaving for a Crusade the
next day? These centuries old inscriptions are no less a memorial to the deeper issues of the human spirit than the silver cross on the north wall commemorating those who gave their lives in two World Wars.

The pulpit

At the north-east end of the nave above the pulpit is a lancet window which may in part date back to the thirteenth century. The wall next to it was cut back to allow more room for a former nave altar. The dedication of the stained glass window on the nave south wall to William Hampton bears witness to a line of yeoman farmers who occupied Hill Farm, Ellisfield, for three hundred years.

The Font

The Font

The font is Early English though plainer than usual, perhaps because the
material used, similar to that of the corbels in the east wall, is prone to
splinter. It has been repaired in several places, probably in the course of removal from one site in the church to another. On the north wall hangs the coat of arms of George III. This harks back to a time when it was customary to hand the coat of arms of the reigning monarch in English churches. An undistinguished furnishing with poignant associations is the small prayer desk bearing a Greek inscription and, inlaid in the wood, a cross and two ornamental birds of shell. It was put in the church by Archdeacon Richard Rudgard who brought it from Melanesia where he had spent ten years as a missionary. It once belonged to John Coleridge Patteson, Bishop of Melanesia, who was murdered on the Island of Nukapu in 1871, thus becoming a missionary Martyr Bishop of the Anglican Church. It was made for him in Auckland, New Zealand, by one of his assistants, Joe Atkins, who was murdered at the same time. The Greek
inscription reads, "A bishop to a priest: a colleague to a colleague; a fellow
soldier to a fellow soldier".

The Tower

The Tower
The Gothic Revival tower was built in 1884. It replaces a wooden tower and
resembles the tower of St. Andrew's, Farleigh Wallop, erected about the same time. The old wooden tower arose from the roof above the present site of the font, the bells being rung round the font.

The five bells it houses have no inscriptions but bear an unusual number of lines on the crown, shoulder and sound-bow. The bells are Spanish and are said to have the same tone as the bells of Madrid Cathedral. How they came to Ellisfield is a mystery. A note in the Records Office reports that William de Boarhunt attacked Spanish ships off the coast of Southampton and took the goods. Were the Ellisfield bells part of the loot? Or were they brought from
Spain by Nathaniell Cranford who lived in what was then Manor Farm beside the
church, and who travelled a great deal as a merchant? Another possibility is that
the Church of the Holy Ghost, Basingstoke, being an important foundation, may have had Spanish bells given it during the reign of Queen Mary and that
when the foundation was closed the bells were sent to Ellisfield Church on account of its connection with the Fraternity.

The two small windows in the tower porch are an example of a modern
method of using stained glass in pieces resembling mosaic tiles. The themes of
the Cross on the left and the Crown on the right complement each other. At the
top of the left hand window the hand of God sends down the love of the Holy
Spirit to the Cross. To the right and left are the sun and moon, after the manner
of the illustration in the Winchester Bible. Below are two trees symbolising
the trees in the Garden of Eden and two birds representing two human spirits.
The four rivers of Eden - Gihon, Pison, Tigris and Euphrates - flow from the
foot of the Cross to water the four corners of the Earth. The right hand window depicts the heavenly Jerusalem above a crown resting on a tree representing Paradise; and birds perch in its branches. At the foot of the tree is a roe-deer. The window's theme is the worldwide rule of Christ, the Crucified King.

The list of Rectors and Patrons includes a variety of Norman and Saxon names. Prominent among them are the names of des Roches, a family which produced a Bishop of Winchester, and the name of Brocas. When Bernard Brocas became a patron of the living in 1366 he was the first of a line of patrons which, except for a break during the Civil War, continued to his descendants until 1972, when the patronage was vested in the Bishop of Winchester and the benfices of Ellisfield, Farleigh Wallop and Dummer were united. Bernard Brocas was a very colourful character: a hero of Poitiers, he fought as a young man at the Battle of Crecy and perhaps as a reward for his services was appointed Constable of Aquitaine. He also took part in the Parliaments held between 1369 and 1373. We are also told that he attended the funeral of the Black Prince.

The Exterior
The nave walls show some early looking flint masonry. There are traces of a north doorway which the nineteenth century window, containing the modern
picture of St. Francis, has replaced. A blocked lancet window of the thirteenth
century appears on the outer south wall of the chancel. On the outside stonework
of the nineteenth century windows are dripstones with carved heads. Did they
replace similar carvings which had weathered away? They are faithful to the
mood of the age when the church was built.

The Louse
The unusual shape of the weathervane prompted the author of the Victoria
History of the County of Hampshire, from which much of our information comes, to compare it to a pineapple, presumably lying on its side. To the village the weathervane represents a louse. It first appeared on the tower of Long Ditton Church; then it was set up over the stables of Cawley Priory and from there was brought to Ellisfield. Unfortunately we are unable to date the Louse's travels.

The Louse has inspired several legends to explain how it came into being. One is that an architect disapproved of some restoration he was called upon to do; to express his displeasure he gave the weathervane its present shape. Another relates that a curate who had taken duty in a church found his overnight lodging so louse ridden that he presented the church with the weathervane to commemorate his discomfort. A third account tells us of a parson who found he could not raise from among his parishioners the money needed for a weathervane. Having to pay for it himself he gave it a lousy shape. Or was it a weathercock for which funds could only be found for the tail? (We tell these tales with impunity, assuming, of course, that they belong to Long Ditton!)

The churchyard

The Churchyard
The avenue of pleached limes which forms an arcade between the lychgate
and the church door was planted in 1897. This type of avenue originates in France where it was introduced in the late seventeenth century by Andre Le Notre. It became a popular feature in formal French gardens and is also found
in French villages today. In France pleaching begins in the nurseries. The wooden fence of hew beams is a modern provision reviving an ancient custom: each family in the parish is asked to supply a section of the fence and the incumbent supplies the gate. An early account of this taking place in Ellisfield in 1589 is to be found in the Church Register when oak rails were provided for the "moundes", as the eastward from the said 4 paire ... Pullans maketh 3 paire of railes and next that Elizabeth More fr." A further list of rail-and-post donors occurs in the Church Register of 1839. A profusion of snowdrops and wild daffodils carpets the churchyard in spring. The snowdrops were planted on the grave of a child over a hundred years ago and have since spread abundantly.

Yesterday and To-morrow
Buildings, like the communities who erect and modify them, reflect the changing values of the people of the neighbourhood; so does Ellisfield Church. It was built when the great religious orders were civilising the savagery of kings and barons; when great Norman families like the des Roches and de Ports has seized power
from the Anglo-Saxon Fyfhides; and when kings and young noblemen dreamed of serving their Blessed Lord, winning the approval of a lady — while at the same time working off their aggressions - in a Crusade. But what do we find of the inner life which the House of God should foster within its walls?

The carved dripstones and the corbels that once supported statues suggest that
the worshipping world of our thirteenth century forefathers was more crowded and friendly than that which we often associate with the inside of a church today. The heads in stone and the faces and figures in glass return us to an age when the church would be aglow with colour and church walls crowded with friends and saints welcoming us. This atmosphere conveyed to the worshipper that he belonged to a second, joyful, colourful world less than a stone's throw away. He felt himself to be most intimately in touch with this other world when the priest raised hallowed Bread and Wine above the altar for all to see.

Calvinists and Idols
The Caivsnists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did much to destroy this atmosphere: the statues were idols; there, was no art in Heaven, no spiritual reality to be expressed in paint. The Puritan raised the word preached from the pulpit above the deep, often illiterate, and largely inarticulate devotion around Jesus' invitation to Supper.

Friars, Landowners, and Peter of Hoo
What then should be our aim? We must take into account changes in the Church's ministry and in the make-up of the village population. The first to play their parts were monks and friars. Then it was the feudal class, from whom the bishops were drawn, who appointed men to their parishes. The parsons of this period were often local men, the sons of small landowners, poorly educated, though well-liked people. But it was often an inconsistent ministry. Among the list of rectors, for example, is Peter of Hoo who was given leave of absence to use the parish's income to further his studies, a frequent irregularity
which led to much neglect.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a further development is illustrated in the names of the rectors. There is a change from Anglo-Saxon and Norman forenames to Christian names taken from the Bible, such as Barriabus Blacker, Samuel Cole and Ezekiel Lion. The Protestant Reformation, with its emphasis on knowledge of the Scriptures, produced a more educated parson that the frequently semi-literate Mass priests of the Middle Ages. Clergy were often the only source of education in the villages and frequently supplemented their incomes by teaching.

Variety
The eighteenth century saw patrons of the benefice appointing members of their own families to the living. In some ways this worked well. A parson with means would, if so minded, act as a sort of one man Welfare State. In many country
rectories soup was always on the boil for anyone who was hungry; the parson's pony-and-trap was available to transport parishioners to the doctor or hospital;
and parsons and their wives were at hand to help unmarried mothers. It often produced parsons with stamina and straightforward principles. For many months the Reverend E. Botry Pigott used to walk to Dummer by the footpaths on Sunday to take a service for the Rector of Dummer who was seriously ill. (Eversfield Pigott would not use his horses or take out a groom because it was Sunday.) He did this in addition to taking two services at St. Martin's on the same day.

The job was full of variety. When Richard Pigott was presented to the benefice of Ellisfield by his relative, Bernard Brocas, in 1836 he found his duties included the shooting of a rabid dog in Bell Lane. Another Ellisfield rector had to deal withu an alcoholic who became murderous towards his family when under the influence. The parson was the only man with the necessary courage and tact to calm him
and to persuade him to give up his shotgun. An interesting sidelight on this
period is provided in the Church Register where a rector noted that the
music was provided by a fiddle, a flute and a comb when he first arrived in the
parish. The church of a hundred years ago was ill-lit, except at festivals, and
very cold.

Washing and Ginger Beer
Nevertheless, there grew up many wonderful characters among the parishioners. They were loving and devoted to the service of God and the Church in Ellisfield. Such a one was Ann Jones who lived in the cottage opposite the big pond. "Master Jones", her husband, was carter to "Farmer Snow" and they brought up a large family on the very small wages of those days. She took in washing and made ginger beer which she sold at Id. a bottle. She always had a kind word for everybody and a cup of tea for the baker as he did such a big round. Just at the time that she was dying from cancer on the tongue. Bishop Boutflour came to hold the first Confirmation in Ellisfield. The Bishop went to see Mrs. Jones and spent some time praying with her. Afterwards when asked what she thought of the Bishop her reply was "Oh sir, was not his surplice beautifully washed and
ironed". During her painful illness she asked for the Bible to be read to her, yet
was never heard to complain of her sufferings. Her one prayer was to live to
look after "Master Jones".