Church Of St Mary

The Church of St Mary is a Grade II* listed building located in Garsington, dating from around 1200 to 1300, with restoration occurring around 1850. It is constructed of limestone rubble with ashlar dressings and features some Westmorland slate roofs. The church has a four-bay aisled nave, a chancel, a west tower, and a south porch.

The chancel, dating from around 1300, includes three two-light windows on each side with Y-tracery, with the western pair being lower and featuring transoms. The east window is three-light with intersecting tracery, and there is a priest's door in the south wall. The nave has two-light square-headed side windows with ogee tracery, and the west windows of the aisles display reticulated tracery. The three-light east window of the south aisle has lobed tracery.

The transitional tower from around 1200 has clasping buttresses and a round-headed west window with a pointed outer arch and detached shafts at the lower stage. The second stage has plain lancets, while the top stage features pairs of lancets on each face with outer roll-moulded arches on detached shafts and linked hood-moulds, beneath a decayed corbel table.

Inside, the church has 14th-century nave arcades with two chamfered orders under hood-moulds, round piers on the north side, and later octagonal piers on the south. The clerestory lights are sexfoil with three-centred rear arches. The tower arch includes shafts and stiff-leaf capitals, and the chancel arch is likely part of the original roofs. The wooden south porch features winged parapet gargoyles, and much of the structure, particularly the north aisle, underwent significant rebuilding during a restoration in 1849 by Joseph Clarke. Most of the woodwork is from the 19th century, except for a barley twist communion rail in the south aisle and a 15th-century screen re-set in the tower arch.

The stained glass includes armorial panels from 1845 by J.H. Russell and an east window from 1883, which was brought from the Church of St. Giles in Oxford. Monuments within the church include a mutilated floor slab from around 1300, a brass from 1484, 18th-century wall tablets commemorating members of the Wickham and Sadler families, and a shallow relief profile of Lady Ottoline Morrell, who died in 1938, believed to be by Eric Gill.