Church Of The Holy Cross

ST 79 NE OWLPEN OWLPEN VILLAGE

Church of the Holy Cross 5/352

30.6.61

GV II

Parish church. 1828-30 by Samuel Manning; altered 1874-5 by J.P. St Aubyn. Tower rebuilt 1912. Coursed and dressed limestone; stone slate roof. Wide aisleless nave, chancel, west tower and south porch. Moulded pointed arched south doorway, timber framed porch dated 1897 and added for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, this having openwork carved barge boards and traceried windows. Two 3-light pointed nave windows to right with Decorated tracery; one similar window on north side. Polygonal east end to chancel with diagonal buttresses; single-light window with quatrefoil tracery to each side. Gabled north vestry. Two-stage tower with diagonal offset west buttresses, 2-light belfry openings; crenellated parapet. Interior: wide nave with coved plaster ceiling; at centre a timber ribbed grille with carved timber bosses. Moulded pointed tower arch and wider chancel arch with carved screen. Elaborately decorated chancel, walls covered with inlaid mosaics by Powell of Whitefriars Glass Works, alabaster reredos, encaustic tiled floor and richly painted arched braced collar truss roof with 2 tiers of windbracing, all of 1887. Trefoil rere-arches to windows. Trefoil arched aumbry recess and sedile with adjoining piscina recess. Interior of tower treated as baptistery, walls also decorated by Powell mosaics, including mother-of-pearl inlay to splayed window jambs, this added 1913. Norman font bowl on later base. Monuments, some dating from early C19, on north wall of nave. Good stained glass, much of c1887 by Powell. Other nave windows by Heaton, Butler and Bayne. A modest church with good late Victorian and Edwardian interior, in a prominent position and grouping well with Owlpen Manor (q.v.). (C.N. Mander, Church Guide, 1980; D. Verey, Cotswold Churches, 1976 and Gloucestershire: The Cotswolds, 1979)

Listing NGR: ST7998598402