The Building

The visitor enters through the North porch, to find on his right the baptistery. This has a plain 13th century font with a cover of 1757. Its position just inside the building symbolises the spiritual entry to the church conferred by baptism. Passing into the have, he is at once impressed by the size of the church and the height of the oaken roof. Two long vistas, one looking towards the altar from the West end and the other seen from the altar steps with the wide chancel arch framing the tall narrow one leading to the tower, will reveal to him the noble proportions of the nave and its arches. He will probably wonder about the five banners hanging in the nave: they bear the coats-of-arms of five medieval lords of the manor and were placed there in the 1940’s when the Reverend Cowland Cooper was vicar.

Foundation and Building

There was almost certainly a stone church on the site in late Saxon times, although there is no mention of one in Doomsday Book. Some people think the triangular-headed arch in the North aisle was the doorway of this building; the remains of a zigzag dripstone between the arches of the North aisle imply that this was the outside wall of the Norman church built by Gilbert Bassett about 1120. The great central arches that once supported a tower also belong to this period.

Medieval Period

By the 13th century the church had been given to Bicester Priory which stood roughly where Old Place Yard is now. The priory supplied the vicars and at intervals of about a century enlarged and improved the church. The chancel was extended in the Early English period (13th century) and the priest’s door made in its South wall; four arches were cut in the South wall of the nave and the South aisle was added; the fine arch between this aisle and the Lady Chapel was built then. So was the South doorway. In the Decorated period (14th century) the North chapel and the North aisle were built, three arches being cut in the North wall of the nave. The North chapel is now used as the choir vestry; a wooden screen leading from this to the priest’s vestry is painted with a design of flowers, birds and insects; dated 1882, it is a good example of its period.

The Perpendicular Period (15th century) was the one that gave the building its present appearance. The central tower was taken down, its West arch removed and the crossing thrown into the nave. The nave was heightened, the clerestory added and the nave roofed with timber supported on twelve fine stone corbels, carved heads of beasts and grotesques. The West tower was built with a splendid perpendicular arch opening into the nave. Parapets were added to the outside walls and the porch was built.

Storm of 1765

In 1765 a great storm damaged the church. Lightning struck the tower, damaged the belfry and the bells, broke into the body of the church, tore up part of the floor in the South aisle and smashed most of the lower windows throughout the building, leaving it “full of smoke, accompanied with a suffocating sulphurous stench”. This explains why there is almost no mediaeval stained glass left. The damaged chimes were mended in 1766 at the cost of £47.

19th Century

19th century. A print of 1849 shows the nave and aisles filled with boxed pews and a three-decker pulpit opposite the Grantham memorial. There were galleries across the West end and between the arches over both aisles. This “chaos of uplifted boxes” was removed in a thorough restoration of the church carried out in 1862-3 under the Reverend J. W. Watts, vicar from 1843-81. Roofs, walls and the floor were all repaired or renewed and the present pews were put in. The church was heated and gas lighting installed. C. N. Beazley in consultation with G. E. Street carried out the restoration at a cost of £3,214; they put in the existing window tracery and the stone and marble pulpit.

20th Century

20th century. The fabric has not been altered in the present century. In 1910 the high altar was given. Made of oak, it is carved with the Lamb of God, the symbol of Christ’s sacrifice. The organ, a fine one made by William Hill and Son, was bought from St. Peter’s in the East, Oxford, in 1968.

Bells

The church has a ring of eight bells, all recast in 1913. There is also a sanctus bell.

The Exterior

The outside of the church is worth examining. The porch was at one time two-storeyed. In the upper portion the muniments were kept and in the 17th and 18th centuries the chained library was housed there. In the left jamb of the West window are the initials W.T. and the date 1750. On the North side of the church near the East end is a doorway and a stair turret. The North chapel to which they led (now the vestry) once had an upper chamber and was used in the late 17th and early 18th centuries as a grammar school run by the vicar and curate; it was to this school that the chained library, whose catalogue still survives, belonged. An 18th century picture shows a chimney at this end of the building. The rainwater pipes on the North side are old; the head of one bears the date 1674.