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Moreton first appears as a possession of the
monastery at Deerhurst in the Vale of Gloucester in the 9th century,
but Deerhurst's estates were later seized by the Earls of Mercia,
and when Earl Odda died in 1056 they passed to King Edward the
Confessor. So it was that the dying king granted Moreton, with other
former possessions of Deerhurst including Todenham, to his new Abbey
of Westminster in 1065. The grant was confirmed by William the
Conqueror, and Moreton remained part of Westminster Abbey's manor of
Bourton on the Hill and Moreton in Marsh for nearly 800 years until
the manor was bought by Lord Redesdale of Batsford Park in 1856. In
1919 the Batsford estate was sold to Sir Gilbert Wills, later Lord
Dulverton.
The Saxon name 'Mortun' meant 'farmstead on the
moor'. But for many centuries the Vale of Moreton consisted largely
of marshy heath. As a result the district became known from the
13th to the 16th century as the 'Hennemerse', 'the haunt of wild
fowl'. Although this description was attached to many local
villages, it persisted only in the case of Moreton, gradually
evolving from 'in Hennemersh' to 'in Marsh'.
Moreton is now the largest of the six
communities, but at the time of Domesday it was the smallest. It
owes its present form to a 13th century Abbot of Westminster,
Richard of Barking, who in the late 1220s built the new town of
Moreton in its present position along the Fosse Way in an initially
unsuccessful attempt to establish it as a market town. The church,
however, is in the original settlement to the east of the Fosse Way
still known as 'Old Town'.
St David's prior to the addition of a spire
in 1861
There have been at least three buildings on the
present site. The first, a simple nave and chancel, was certainly
in existence by the late 13th century. Fragments of later
alterations to this structure still exist, in the form of part of a
14th century screen in Bourton on the Hill church, at the east end
of the south aisle, and 15th century corbels on a house at the
corner of East Street. There is a reference to this 'Chapel of St
David' in a 1512 bull of Pope Julius II, who allowed burials to take
place at Moreton instead of Blockley because of the hardship caused
by the intervening floods and hills. The dedication to St David may
stem from a well which used to exist to the east of the churchyard
whose water was supposed to be good for sore eyes and which was
therefore dedicated to St David. The interior of this church is
known to have had a crucifix and a picture of our Saviour, a coffer
standing near the high altar, and a light maintained by a gift of
land.
The church was thoroughly rebuilt and
reconsecrated, with a battlemented parapet, Perpendicular windows
and a south door in the nave, in the 1540s. A tower, rectilinear
and embattled, with an arched west door and belfry windows of two
lights was added in 1561, and a north aisle in 1660. A ring of bells
was hung in the tower in 1693. As transport conditions improved and
a linen-weaving industry was established in the 18th century,
Moreton, at the junction of the Fosse Way and the 'great road from
London to Worcester', came into its own as a stopping-place for
travellers and an economic centre for the surrounding villages. And
as Moreton grew, the church was enlarged. In 1790 Thomas Edwards
Freeman of Batsford Park engaged the architect Anthony Keck to raise
the nave roof and add a south aisle; the main entrance was then
transferred to the west end. In 1820 the wealthy rector, Dr Samuel
Warneford, paid for further improvements, including east and west
galleries.
The coming of the railway in the 19th century
led to a further substantial expansion in Moreton's population,
which outgrew even the enlarged Tudor church. Accordingly it was
almost completely rebuilt in 1858 by Joseph Gill of Bourton on the
Hill to the designs of Poulton and Woodman of Reading, in an
appropriate return to the style of the 13th century. The roof of
the nave and aisles was raised on new nave arcades, a chancel was
built, the side windows raised and tracery introduced, and the east
gallery replaced by galleries on the north and south walls. The
original plan to add a steeple to the Tudor tower proved
impracticable, and in 1861 this was replaced by the present tower
and spire. The ring of bells was rehung in 1862, after four had been
recast by George Mears and Co of London. Further structural
alterations were made by E H Lingen Barker of Hereford in 1891-92,
when the three galleries were removed, the chancel extended, a side
chapel built, the south aisle widened, and the north porch
blocked-off to enable it to be used as a vestry. In 1927 a war
memorial altar and reredos of oak was placed in the Lady Chapel,
designed by Knapp-Fisher, Powell and Russell and executed by Cecil
Grimes of Moreton. In 1979-82 the roof was repaired and renewed and
the drainage improved to protect the church's foundations.
The honey-coloured stone from local quarries
above Bourton on the Hill has weathered admirably and gives the
building an apparent age beyond its years.
The visitor approaches
it through handsome wrought-iron gates designed and made by John S
Scott, which were erected in 1960, and along a gravel walk to the
west door lined with yew trees planted by a former curate. The
churchyard itself closed in 1867 when a cemetery was opened on the
London Road.
The main feature of the building is the west
tower and spire, over 35 metres high. The three-stage tower is in
golden ashlar, with two long lancets on each side above roof level
marking the position of the belfry. This contains a peal of 8
bells, which were recast by John Taylor and Co of Loughborough and
rehung in 1958, the third being an entirely new bell. The old third
bell, cast in 1693 by William Bagley of Chacombe, Northants., was
retained as a prayer and saints' bell. The tower is surmounted by
triangular-pierced battlements punctuated by pinnacles at each
corner, and an octagonal spire with four gabled pointed lucarnes.
Inside, the tower arch is the only survivor of
the Tudor church, while the high bases of the nave arcades, their
pilaster responds and the north vestry remain from the 1790-91
alterations. The church is of pleasing proportions, its open-beamed
roofs, lime-washed walls and piers, the capitals highlighted in pink
and red, and generous windows all giving an impression of light and
space. Its welcoming air has been enhanced by the insertion of a
window into the upper part of the tower arch, the reflooring of the
nave in light wood and the replacement of its former pitch-pine pews
by chairs of a pleasing modern design. The north aisle, the west
end of which has been tactfully enclosed, has been left open for
church activities.
On the left of the west door is a low desk
containing a Book of Remembrance under glass, and the wall behind
bears a number of early 19th century memorial tablets to local
people, including a marble scroll by Soward & Son to John Jefferies
Hooper, who died 1845.
 To the north of the chancel arch stands the
stone pulpit presented by the town's leading linen manufacturer in
1858, which is decorated with motifs recalling the local industries
of the mid-Victorian period. On the other side of the chancel arch
is the font of the same date, in a similar style, with a modern
pointed-cone cover of wood. The chancel arch is filled by a
memorial oak screen of 1910 designed by Frederick Bligh Bond. The
organ, by Henry Connacher and Son of London, dates from before
1889. The chancel floor is of Broseley tiles.
The modern lighting system, needlepoint
kneelers, and the oak communion rail, table and rector's stall are
all gifts by local people, as are the altar furnishings, both in the
Chancel and Lady Chapel, where the pews commemorate the wife of a
former rector.
The stained glass memorial window in the north
aisle commemorates the Rev Gabriel Stokes, curate 1890-1897, and is
by C E Kempe, who also designed the stained glass in Batsford
church. 
The east window of 1858 is by Lavers and Barraud, while the
small south window in the chancel, recalling two 18th century
parishioners, is the only glass to survive from the earlier church,
having been transferred from the organ chamber when the chancel was
extended in 1891-92. The east widow of 1932 in the Lady Chapel is
by Pearce and Cutler, as is that at the east end of the south aisle,
dating from 1935. Also in the south aisle is an oil painting of the
late 17th or early 18th century showing the Venerable Bede
translating St John's Gospel, which has recently been cleaned and
restored. Not on view is the church plate, which includes an
Elizabethan silver chalice and paten cover of 1576 with the
inscription 'Morton Hinmarsh in ye County of Glosster'.
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