St Mary the Virgin Cropredy

 

So this was the church I had intended on doing last but set the SatNav with the wrong postcode ending here first. Not an easy one to park near either. If you like music then you may well of heard of the Croperdy festival, well that is held just outside the village which makes the place quite famous. I managed to park on the narrow road on the north side and went for my visit. I did not get a photo of the church from the road as the sun was shining right at me. The church completes the churches from the Banbury area I am visiting from the book Oxfordshires Best Churches. The next five are around the west of Oxfordshire

"The Church of England parish church of Saint Mary the Virgin is built of the local ironstone, which is a ferrous Jurassic limestone. Parts of the south aisle date from the 13th century. However, most of the present building is Decorated Gothic and was built in the 14th century, including the chancel arch, nave arcades, east window and most of the windows in the south aisle. In the 15th century Perpendicular Gothic alterations were made including a clerestory added above the nave, the north aisle rebuilt with new windows, and both aisles extended eastwards to form side chapels.

The church had a clock by 1512, when the vicar, Roger Lupton, left £6 13s 4d in his will in trust for the churchwardens to pay someone to keep the clock running and chiming every quarter-hour and the village curfew. Lupton's will prescribed that the wardens be fined 6s 8d per month of £10 per year if they were to fail. A new clock may have been installed around 1700, and Lupton's clock may then have been transferred to Claydon. The later clock was itself replaced in 1831 with a new one made by John Moore and Sons of Clerkenwell, London.

The bell tower has a ring of bells. There were six, but in 2007 two new treble bells increased this to eight. One of the new bells is named St Mary; the other Fairport Convention Festival Bell.

St Mary's parish is now part of the Benefice of Shires' Edge along with those of Claydon, Great Bourton, Mollington and Wardington."

 

Being spring you see primroses growing in the churchyard

The churchyard and church looking from the north east

 

The tower from the north west

 

West end view

East end

South west

More around the south side

This cross stands out near the porch

Looking from near the south wall

The churchyard north of the church beside the road

Around the south side near the east end

Old headstones covered in lichen

Looking east sows a lot of headstones along with a few tomb chests

This chest tomb has intricate carvings on it

This one not so old the words on the side fading

This look like a baroque headstone with the carving on it and not one I have seen the like of before

 

It looks a pleasant churchyard to look around

 

Headstones and monuments

Old headstones line the path

Others stand in the churchyard

 

These form a wall for another part of the churchyard

 

They are all old baroque looking headstones moved from where they used to be, the inscriptions lost to time and erosion

The churchyard now stands witness to time

A row of head carving look down from the roof

A collage of different faces

The porch leads us in

To the door in the south wall

Inside the door arches and light

The nave

Going closer to the chance arch

Above the arch a badly damaged doom can be seen

Inside the chancel with the choir stalls

The altar

With quite a beautiful stained glass window

The window in the south wall of the chancel

Looking back to the chancel arch

Then the nave

Brass eagle lectern

Wine glass pulpit

View down from the pulpit

The south aisle

A screen partitions of a chapel with an old church chest in front

To the right a recess with suit of armor behind a door

Inside the chapel The shelter is a mystery to me

The east wall has what looks like a Jacobean  altar

Nice to see King Charles III photo beside the altar

This window is in the south wall of the chapel

The east window

This one is the second south wall window

Memorials from around the church

I do like the round window in the top of this one

Collage of the double windows

One in the north aisle wall has plain glass with a single medieval insert

Chose up of the insert

Victorian font

With the good shepherd carving on the cover

North aisle

Which has this broken Norman font in it

At the end is a screen with a painted panel on the floor

Showing the crucifixion 

Over on one side a niche part of the fabric from the original church  

The old chapel behind the screen contains the organ

The peacock butterfly was on a plank of wood in the south aisle so I caught it and left it outside on a headstone. It was gone when I went back out. While in the church I met a Dutch couple visiting their son who's wife had just had a child, I hope they had a pleasant stay and visited the other churches I mentioned

Till next time may I wish you all a peaceful week