Church Of St Catherine

The Church of St. Catherine is a church located on Towersey Church Lane. It features an early 13th-century chancel, a mid-14th-century nave and tower, and underwent restoration around 1850 by J. Cranston. The building is constructed from coursed squared stone and has a plain-tile roof from the 19th century, although the roof of the tower is not visible.

The church has a four-bay nave and a two-bay chancel, with a transept recess to the north and a south tower. At the base of the tower, there is a two-centre moulded stone archway. The entrance features a two-centre arched doorway with a hood mould and a 19th-century plank door. On either side of the doorway, there are two-light Y-tracery windows with hood moulds. The rear of the church includes a two-centre arched doorway with a plank door at the center of the nave, flanked by two-light Y-tracery windows. The transept has a three-light panel-tracery window, while the chancel has a lancet window and two-light reticulated-tracery windows at its east end. The west end features a three-light intersecting-tracery window.

The tower consists of three stages, with a clock face on each side of the second stage. The third stage has two-light Y-tracery louvred openings and a battlemented parapet with banded obelisk finials at the corners.

Inside, the church has a 14th-century two-bay arch-braced collar-truss roof with windbraces in the chancel, and a piscina to the right of a projecting bowl on a half-column. The chancel arch is segmental pointed. The nave has a 19th-century braced collar truss roof. There is a mid-17th-century hexagonal wood pulpit with carved panels, a round stone font from the 14th century, and some 17th-century fleur-de-lys bench ends.

Historically, the clock in the tower was presented in 1877 from Thame Town Hall, where it had been installed around 1777, having originally been at Rycote Chapel from 1577 to 1777.