A chance comment from a Manager at work brought me to this church for a visit, I had not heard of the place until then. The Village had some interesting history as does the church.
"The Church of England parish church of St Mary the Virgin was built as a chapelry of Hanney in the first half of the 13th century. There is a Mass dial scratched on the south wall. The wooden bell-turret was added in the 15th century, has a scissor-braced timber frame and three bells. The Perpendicular Gothic clerestory was added either at the same time or early in the 16th century. The church was restored in 1875 under the direction of the Gothic revival architect Ewan Christian. It is a Grade II* listed building.
St Mary's parish is now part of the United Benefice of Cherbury with Gainfield"
The path leading up to the church
Better view of the church from the churchyard
Going around the North side
The East end and West end with Bellcote
The cross on the church below the bellcote
Across the wall
The porch and entrance door
View along the nave
The Chance arch and inside the chancel
Looking out of the chancel to the bellcote support at the back
Simple altar adornments
The cross is in memory
Right the pulpit
View of the church from thepulpit
The church font
Which you can see is covered in Graffiti
Some of the windows in the chancel
Choir stalls
Opposite side with light streaming through the windows
Spotted this little angel in a Squint or hagioscope
The huge bellcote support and church organ
The war memorial for the village of Lyford
On 8 April 1945 an Avro Lancaster B.I Special bomber aircraft, HK788 of No. 9 Squadron RAF based at Bardney in Lincolnshire, had taken part in a raid on a benzole
factory in mainland Europe. On its return flight the plane caught fire
and crashed in a field barely 400 yards (370 m) south of the parish
church and Manor Farm.
All seven aircrew were killed. Six were members of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. The seventh was a warrant officer from the Royal Canadian Air Force. All are buried in the Commonwealth War Graves section of Botley Cemetery on the outskirts of Oxford.
In October 2008 the widow of one of the crew provided a plaque
commemorating the seven dead. It was installed in St Mary the Virgin
parish church, where the actor Richard Briers attended the ceremony and read Noël Coward's poem Lie in the Dark and Listen
Part of the Lancaster that was found sits on top of the memorial
Above the royal coat of arms from 1787
Couple of shots of the bellcote support and a chandalear
Sunlight shins through the windows
Outside in the churchyard you can see the place is kept neat & tidy
with headstones and tombs kept clear of grass
Near the south side of the church
Over in in corner of the churchyard
Above a group of headstones belonging to one family
Right a couple more recent headstones
Three of the older tombs in the churchyard
Nathan William Coe of the Berkshire Yeomanry
Above the grave of a young person
Right a family plot
The blocked off North door and the windows in the chancel
Above a mass sundial which
would tell you the time of the next service
The walls are covered in these crosses. I have come across them before but not in the numbers I saw on this church
One of the reasons could be that Edmund Campion was captured at nearby Lyford Manor, Pilgrims may well have visited the church and marked the cross on the walls of the church
I feel the post is unfinished with out showing the last resting place of the Lancaster crew so I visited Botley Commonwealth War Cemetery to find the Bomber Crews graves. You can find them in a row buried beside each other.
Have a Happy Weekend
7 comments:
Thev stonework is great and it's beautiful inside.
...what a gem, but who what write graffiti on a church?
Lovely to see all these photos. I have been tuning the organ there today having set it up originally in 2005 after it had been brought from Holland by two church volunteers.
Nice little organ, I have only heard some one playing one once in a church and that was after a service in Streatley. Do you go arund the country tuning them? Oldest I have seen was in Old Radnor
I go round a few in Oxfordshire villages tuning. Other and much bigger firms have much larger tuning rounds.
I presume you mean you Tune Organs if your linked in profile is right, it's small in comparison with some I have come across. I've bumped into a few tuners on my visits
Sorry I did of course mean tuning organs but I was not sure what happened to the text of my post
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