Victoria Connelly

Last week, we visited St Mary’s Church in Radnage, hidden in a secluded Buckinghamshire valley. It was used as the main setting in the 1987 film adaptation of J L Carr’s novella, A Month in the Country, starring Colin Firth and Kenneth Branagh. It’s one of my favourite films and it was a true delight to find this gem of a place.

Set in 1920, A Month in the Country is about Tom Birkin who arrives at the church at Oxgodby to uncover a medieval wall painting. He meets archaeologist, Charles Moon, who is working and camping in the field adjacent to the church. And so begins a beautiful summer of tentative friendships and healing for these two wounded souls who have – physically at least – survived the horrors of the First World War.

Carr describes his story as ‘a rural idyll’ and the action takes place in Yorkshire, and scenes from the film were shot there, but it’s this hidden valley in the home counties where most of the filming took place.

We quickly discovered that the box tomb where Birkin and Moon sit together must have been created for the film as it doesn’t exist in the churchyard. And, of course, there is no doom painting or tomb of Letitia. But the beautifully simple font where Kathy Ellerbeck places her gramophone is there, as is the pulpit from where Patrick Malahide preaches.

A footpath skirts the bottom of Moon’s field with lovely views back to the church and out across the valley beyond. The fields were laced with footpaths and it was a shame we didn’t have longer to explore. But there were other churches to see. To quote J L Carr, we were in the role of ‘church-crawler’ that day.

Still, there was one final delight in Radnage. Roy found the gate and view used for the final shot in the film and I took a moment there – ‘letting summer soak into me’ just as Birkin had.

It was then on to the village of Ewelme in neighbouring Oxfordshire where we met Jill Saint. Jill is the daughter of Dora Saint who wrote as ‘Miss Read’, and we’ve kept in touch ever since I gave a reading at Dora Saint’s memorial service. I’m a huge admirer of Miss Read’s work, especially the Fairacre series, and the countryside around Ewelme isn’t too far from the downland country Dora Saint wrote about in her beautifully observed novels.

It was lovely to spend some time with Jill at this picturesque church. It houses the fabulous tomb of Alice Chaucer – the granddaughter of the famous fourteenth-century writer. The churchyard is also the resting place of another of my favourite authors – Jerome K Jerome – who wrote the delightful Three Men in a Boat.

We found a shady bench in the churchyard and chatted as red kites and ravens flew low in the sky above us.

Jill kindly gave me a copy of the play Village School which was adapted by Ron Perry from Miss Read’s first published novel. I had the pleasure of seeing Ron’s play Miss Read Remembered with Jill a few years ago – in the church on the ‘real’ Thrush Green – Wood Green near Witney, Oxfordshire. You can read my post about it here: Miss Read’s Thrush Green.

As Roy and I said goodbye to Jill and left Ewelme, we drove by the great watercress beds at the edge of the village. Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire really do have some pretty villages, fabulous churches and stunning valleys to explore. All you have to do is find them!