page_title: Watlington, Oxfordshire
section_title: Roman Catholic
hierarchical_section_title: Watlington, Oxfordshire / Churches / Roman Catholic
caption_attribution_description: English: Methodist Church, Shirburn Street, Watlington, Oxfordshire: built in 1812 as a Wesleyan chapel
context_page_description: Watlington is a market town and civil parish about 7 miles south of Thame in Oxfordshire, near the county's eastern edge and less than 2 miles from its border with Buckinghamshire. The parish includes the hamlets of Christmas Common, Greenfield and Howe Hill, all of which are in the Chiltern Hills. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 2,727.
context_section_description: During the English Reformation Oxfordshire had numerous recusant Roman Catholics. In 1549 William Grey, 13th Baron Grey de Wilton was sent to Oxfordshire with 1,500 troops to enforce the Reformation. Grey ordered William Boolar, a Catholic of Watlington, to be hanged as an example. Despite persecution, a number of local landowning families including the Stonors remained Catholic, and they and their chaplains supported small numbers of other Catholics in the area.
  In 1930 Fr. William Brown, the chaplain at Stonor Park, brought about the building of the Roman Catholic church of the Sacred Heart in Watlington.
  The present Roman Catholic church in Watlington is dedicated to St Edmund Campion, a Jesuit priest who was executed at Tyburn in 1581.
caption: Watlington Methodist church
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