Church Of St Michael

Church of St Michael

This exceptional church at Stanton Harcourt began as a cruciform building with a tower over the crossing in the mid 12th century. The transepts were added and the chancel enlarged during the mid and late 13th century, with further remodelling in the 15th century. The Harcourt Chapel was probably designed by William Orchard around 1470, and the bell-stage of the tower dates to the 15th century.

The building is constructed of coursed limestone rubble, with a rendered chancel, nave and lower stage of tower. The Harcourt Chapel is of ashlar, and the roof is gabled stone slate.

Exterior features include a chancel with an east gable set with offset corner buttresses and three mid 13th-century graduated lancets with a string course forming hoods. The north wall has two groups of triple lancets and the south wall one group. A simple blocked Norman door stands to the north. The Harcourt Chapel has a 4-light Perpendicular east window of panel tracery and similar 3-light windows to the 3-bay south wall, divided by offset buttresses. The south wall contains an inserted 17th-century round-arched doorway. A corbel table with carved heads, birds, roses and flowers runs along the wall, with a parapet above featuring pierced quatrefoils and pinnacles.

The south transept contains a mid 13th-century string course forming hoods over a blocked lancet to the north-east, two lancets to the west, and a mid 13th-century pointed moulded doorway to the south. It was remodelled in the 15th century with a 5-light panel tracery window to the south and a plain parapet. The north transept similarly has a mid 13th-century string course with hoods over two lancets in each side wall and a pointed chamfered doorway to the north, remodelled in the 15th century with a 3-light panel-tracery window to the south and plain parapet.

A stair-turret with broached spire adjoins the chancel. The tower over the crossing displays mid 12th-century double-chamfered round-arched windows to the lower stage. The 15th-century bell-stage has 2-light windows and a crenellated parapet with gargoyles at the corners.

The south side of the nave has two mid 12th-century round-arched roll-moulded windows and a mid 12th-century doorway with a pelleted hood over a roll-moulded arch set on jamb shafts with scalloped capitals and a chamfered inner arch. The north side has two similar 12th-century windows and a small 15th-century Perpendicular 2-light window set in a 13th-century archway with a ballflower-decorated hood. A north porch of 1843 contains a fine mid 12th-century north door with a sawtooth-decorated hood, an outer hollow-chamfered order and an inner roll-moulded order set on jamb shafts with scalloped capitals. A Perpendicular 5-light west window with panel tracery illuminates the nave, which has a 15th-century parapet. A memorial on the south transept wall commemorates John Hewet and Sarah Drew, inscribed with an epitaph by Alexander Pope.

Interior

The interior features mid 13th-century rere-arches set on clustered shafts with stiff-leaf capitals to the east and bell capitals to the side windows. In the south-west corner are shafts with stiff-leaf capital and springers of a former mid 13th-century vaulted recess. A 13th-century string forms a hood over a pointed roll-moulded recess housing a credence table above a pillar piscina. All mid 13th-century features are picked out in red ochre, uncovered in 1970. A mid 13th-century chancel screen is a very rare example, featuring trefoiled openings set on banded shafts and pierced quatrefoils in the screen below. The door retains original 13th-century bolt, lock and fittings. A 17th-century parish chest stands in the chancel.

The crossing arches are double-chamfered with a chamfered inner order set on shafts with bell capitals. A piscina with a head corbel stands to the south-east. The north transept has rere-arches to the east set on a clustered shaft with a naturalistic leaf-carved capital, a sill-band set on head and leaf corbels, a piscina, and two round-arched heads to the west. The south transept has two similar hoodmoulds to the west and early 18th-century wrought-iron gates set in a 15th-century archway with two orders of shafts and capitals leading to the Harcourt Chapel. Each transept has a 15th-century two-bay tie-beam roof with moulded and quartered beams.

The nave has four statue corbels and a fine 15th-century-style font of 1831. A 15th-century four-bay king-post roof with cusped struts is supported by 12th and 13th-century head corbels that support arch braces with traceried spandrels. Early 19th-century pews include box pews with panelled dados in the south transept. An early 19th-century Gothick-style pulpit with steps stands in the nave.

A shrine of St. Edburg is housed in the north wall of the chancel, dated 1294–1317. It was removed from Bicester Priory at the Dissolution by Sir Simon Harcourt. The painted and gilded Purbeck Marble canopy features crocketed ogee arches with armorial shields in the spandrels and small statues set under similar canopied niches at the corners. A frieze of carved heads and two bays of octopartite vaulting occupy the interior.

Monuments

The chancel contains 17th and 18th-century marble ledgers and brasses of Ellen Camby (died 1516) and Sir Henry Dodschone (died 1519). A tomb of Maud, wife of Sir Thomas Harcourt (died 1394), stands under an arched recess in the north wall, with a stone effigy painted red on a tomb-chest with painted shields. A small wall tablet commemorates Christopher Hovenden (died 1610), and marble wall tablets with urns and weeping women memorialise Robert Huntington (died 1685) and William Gibbons (died 1728).

The Harcourt Chapel contains floor brasses to Thomas Harcourt (died 1460) and Nicholas Atherton (died 1454). A fine tomb of Sir Robert Harcourt (died 1471) and his wife features alabaster effigies painted during 19th-century restoration, set on a tomb-chest with shields in traceried panels. A similar painted effigy and tomb chest of his grandson Sir Robert Harcourt (died c.1509) displays carved figures of angels and bedesmen with Tudor roses. Remains of a standard said to be that which Sir Robert carried at Bosworth Field in 1485 for Henry VII are preserved above. Part of a 14th-century chest tomb lies behind.

A pedimented marble wall-tablet to Simon Harcourt (died 1720) carries an epitaph by Alexander Pope. A wall tablet with a Greek Doric frame commemorates Simon, first Earl Harcourt (died 1777), probably by James Stuart. Another neoclassical wall-monument honours William, third Earl Harcourt (died 1830) by R.W. Sievier. Medieval-style monuments with recumbent effigies on tomb-chests commemorate George Simon Harcourt (died 1809) and Archbishop Edward Vernon Harcourt (died 1847), both by M. Noble, 1858. A wall-monument to George Granville Harcourt (died 1861) by M. Noble features a classical bust on a Gothic pedestal.

The south transept displays original plaster models for statues of Field Marshal William, third Earl Harcourt by Sievier (1832), now in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, and Sir William Vernon Harcourt, now in the Houses of Parliament. A tomb chest to Sir Simon Harcourt (died 1547), reduced in length, has a black marble top with shields set in quatrefoils to the sides. A very fine Baroque architectural wall monument features portrait busts in oval niches of Sir Philip Harcourt (died 1688) and his wife.

Stained glass, restored 1960–1962, includes rare remains of 13th-century grisaille glass and a figure of St. James Major in the south lancets of the chancel. The Harcourt Chapel retains remnants of canopy designs dated c.1475–80 in the heads of the east window, armorial glass of c.1475–80, and two mid 13th-century roundels of a king and an ecclesiastic in the south window.

This is an exceptional church, notable particularly for its remarkable 13th-century chancel screen and shrine, and its fine monuments.