Not surprisingly, in view of its remoteness, the steepness of its little lanes and the fact that even now as Evans noted in 1905, without the fingerpost you would never know it was there, Pitchcombe is a sleepy little place.

There are a few staggeringly beautiful valleys running up from the town of Stroud, including the Slad valley, famously immortalised in Laurie Lee’s magical book Cider With Rosie, of which the valley rising to Painswick is one. There is something about how the little hamlets hang on the edge of the hills, usually bisected by fast rushing streams, looking across the valley, so close you feel you can almost reach out and touch the sleepy farms and grazing livestock on the other side.

They don’t really change much either. In 1881 Pitchcombe had 40 houses and a population of 216. In 2011 there were 232 people living in 105 households.

That is not to say however that they aren’t constantly under threat. Some of you will remember our story of the development threat to the Slad Valley, fended off by determined resistance from the residents, well this valley has also had its share of philistine threats from the Stroud District Council and their local plan.

The church, dedicated to St John the Baptist, is a comparatively modern building, designed and built by William Franklin in 1819. It replaced an earlier church in an unusual way. It was built over the top of the existing building which was then demolished from the inside. I can only think that it was felt to be unthinkable that the village should be without a place of worship even for the time it took to build the church.