Church Of St Mary

Church of St Mary, Adderbury

A Grade I listed church of major architectural importance, standing on the west side of High Street. The building dates from the early 13th century and early 14th century, with a sumptuous chancel and vestry built between 1409 and 1419 by Richard Winchcombe for New College Oxford. The chancel was restored around 1831 by J.C. Buckler, the nave around 1866 by Sir G.G. Scott, and further restoration was undertaken in 1886 by J.O. Scott.

The church is constructed of Marlstone rubble and ashlar with limestone-ashlar dressings and lead roofs. It has a cruciform plan with north and south aisles and porches, a vestry, and a west tower.

Winchcombe's chancel is built in ashlar and is exceptionally fine, consisting of three bays. It features a high moulded plinth and elaborate stepped buttresses with crocketed pinnacles rising to the upper stages. The windows are 4-centred-arched with deep casement mouldings and restored Perpendicular tracery with crenellated transoms. On the south side is a Tudor-arched priest's door with ornamented spandrels. On the north side, a contemporary two-storey vestry projects from the middle bay, featuring a fine traceried bay window with a crenellated parapet. The plain chancel parapet bears large winged gargoyles. Above the east window is a head of William of Wykeham and the arms of New College.

The rubble transepts retain 13th-century clasping buttresses and moulded strings. They have large four-light 13th-century windows with restored geometrical tracery. Both transepts have tall 15th-century paired clerestory windows, arched on the south transept and square-headed on the north.

The 14th-century aisles feature three- and four-light Decorated windows with restored geometrical and flowing tracery. Remarkably, they are carved with friezes below the parapets depicting grotesque faces, animals, and musicians. The 14th-century porches have simpler friezes and wave-moulded entrance arches. The south door is richly moulded with attached shafts and an elaborate hood mould ornamented with ballflower. The three main doors have very fine ironwork: the hinges and handles on the north and west doors are probably medieval, while those on the south door are 19th century.

The nave clerestory has three-light 15th-century windows with pointed-segmental arches. The early-14th-century tower comprises four unequal stages with diagonal buttresses. The west door is wave-moulded and sits below a three-light window with intersecting uncusped tracery. Similar openings appear in the tall bell-chamber stage. The late-14th-century pierced trefoil parapet rises from an elaborate frieze and has winged corner gargoyles. Large octagonal pinnacles with ball finials are set back behind the parapet and cluster around the octagonal limestone spire, which has triangular-headed traceried lucarnes between the pinnacles.

Interior

The chancel retains fine carved corbels and head-stops of bishops and kings. It has a restored three-seat sedilia, piscina, and reredos of great elaboration and quality. The 19th-century figures flanking the east window stand in tall 15th-century niches with superb pinnacled and crocketed canopies. The chancel roof is 19th century in 15th-century style.

The tall chancel arch is 14th century. The four-bay nave arcades are 13th century, though possibly altered in the 14th century; they have octagonal columns with moulded circular capitals. Both transepts retain 13th-century blind arcading with detached shafts, plus the splays of several lancets built up in the 14th century. The south transept has a small cusped piscina and a later double piscina with a traceried triangular head. The north transept has a 13th-century aumbry with a cusped head.

Two-bay late-14th-century arcades opening from the transepts to the aisles have slender moulded columns set diagonally, with capitals featuring male and female heads, some linking arms as at Bloxham and Hanwell Churches. Both aisles have a tomb recess, that to the north probably a restoration.

The 15th-century roof of the nave has eight king-post trusses with cusped and moulded arched braces rising from wall posts and with further cusped bracing extending in four directions from the kingposts. The 19th-century aisle roofs repeat the design.

Fittings include a panelled font in Perpendicular style of 1831 by John Plowman. Oak fittings are predominantly 19th century except for a fine traceried 15th-century rood screen, restored and given an elaborate roof loft by Gilbert Scott, and some 17th-century panelling in the transepts from former box pews. Also present are two old chests and an early-18th-century communion table. The chancel fittings include return stalls with misericord seats and an organ case by Gilbert Scott.

Monuments include a brass to Jane Smith (died 1508) and a painted wooden memorial to Thomas More (died 1586). Stained glass includes armorial glass of 1834 by Willement, two windows in the transepts by Ward and Hughes (1870 and 1888), a window of 1905 by Clayton and Bell, and the west window of 1912 by Powell and Sons.