After the Reformation, there were very few Catholics in the Western part of Oxfordshire.  In 1676 the Compton Census of Roman Catholic Recusants, as they were called, numbered twelve, in the parishes of Westwell, Broadwell, Brize Norton and Bampton.  But with greater religious tolerance during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, more people were able to practice their faith openly; and in 1829 the Catholic Emancipation Act was passed, allowing Catholics to build churches and priests to say Mass openly