Church of SS Edmund and Frideswide (Greyfriars church)

Church of SS Edmund and Frideswide (Greyfriars Church)

This is a neo-Norman church built in knapped flint with red sandstone dressings and pantile roofs. It forms part of a single long range of Greyfriars buildings on the western side of Iffley Road, with the church positioned at the northern end, aligned north-south.

The church comprises a nave and aisles of four bays, a chancel flanked by side-chapels, and a tower at the west end serving as the main entrance. Two former side porches have been blocked up to create a baptistery and a chapel.

The exterior displays plain neo-Norman styling with round-headed door and window openings featuring simple cushion capitals to the imposts. The five-stage tower has angle buttresses and a clasping stair turret. The main entrance consists of a triple-arched doorway to the north with a small quatrefoil window above it. The second stage contains three blind arches topped by two tiny slit windows, while the topmost stage has twin belfry openings and rises into a saddleback roof pierced by a short copper spire. The former east porch has an arched doorway of three orders, now blocked with flint work in which sits a circular relief of the Virgin and Child.

Internally, the church is simple and unadorned. The nave arcades feature unmoulded semicircular arches springing from cylindrical columns with plain cushion capitals. Similar arches open from the aisles into the side chapels and porches, while the tower and chancel arches are enlarged versions of the same type. Above the chancel arch, the wall is pierced by three round-headed openings that echo the three tall lights of the south window. Both nave and chancel have open king-post roofs. In a 1967 reordering, the chancel floor was raised four steps above its original near-level position with the nave.

The tower contains a panelled organ gallery with balustrade, housing a William Drake organ originally built in 1981 for a private house and transferred here in 2001. The aisles contain statues of St Francis, St Clare and St Maria Goretti, along with Stations of the Cross in opus sectile (glass mosaic) installed in 1938 and reportedly designed by Fr Benedict Williamson. Aisle windows dating to around 1960 depict St Francis, St Anthony and St Clare. Elaborate wrought-iron screens erected around 1930 mark the entrances to the side chapels and former porches.

The east porch was converted in 1954 into a chapel dedicated to the Mother of the Good Shepherd, containing a painting attributed to Murillo of that subject set into a painted and gilded shrine. A 13th-century stone capital, excavated from the site of the original Greyfriars in the city centre, serves as a credence table here. The west porch now functions as a baptistery and holds a square stone font. Its wrought-iron screen incorporates baptismal symbols and inscriptions: the tympanum displays the Holy Spirit descending amid a sunburst with a Greek text from Mark 1:8 reading "he shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost", while the gates bear the symbols Alpha and Omega and the Latin phrase PORTA COELI ("the gate of Heaven").

The side chapels flanking the chancel are dedicated respectively to the Sacred Heart and Our Lady of Pity, both lined with marble, stone altars and painted statues. The chancel fittings—lectern, altar, candlesticks and tabernacle—were reordered and remodelled in 1967. Three windows above the altar were installed in 1978 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Capuchin friary, depicting St Edmund of Abingdon, St Agnellus of Pisa and St Frideswide of Oxford.