St Edburg Bicester Pt2

 

This week The church Explorer takes you around the inside of St Edburg's church which I found to be quite beautiful and full of interest 

South side of St Edburg

The porch, which from the look has a  room over it

The doorway with modern glassed door

I noticed some graffiti on the windowsill in the porch

Inside looking along the nave with north and south aisles

Going right back behind the fond for another view of the interior

Near the chancel arch and the new altar used for services

The altar with Norman arch behind

Inside the chancel with choir stalls

The east window and altar

East window and reredos below

The altar itself is quite stunning along with the reredos behind

View back out from the new altar

From the altar rails the chancel and Norman arch

The pulpit

Which give a great view down on the nave and south aisle

 

There is a lot of stained glass as you would expect in market town church, this one is in the chancel

The screen is in the north aisle I did try to go in but it is locked. Odd thing is I had a selfie stick and did not use it to get a pho of the east window you see

Collage of the stained glass, the center one is my favorite

Memorials or monuments if you like, there are more that you can shake a stick at, this one really stood out

If you look at the scroll you see a face on this one

The monuments are quite something to look at

Collage of the memorial

I thing it was the colour of the coats of arms that I took notice of and that it had a date of 1574 on it

Thomas Roblyn MD a surgeon on the Sloop Bull Dog

Memorials on one of the arches in the nave

Memorial to Lieutenant  William Henry Grimsley

Another old memorial this one dated 1652

Memorial to Mary Wife of John Burrows and three of her children, she was 29

Memorial to John A.l.Coker

You can miss this one which quite low down

Sad War memorial of the Fane family

Collage showing the Roll of Honour for Bicester, the lower one is unusual because you come across few from the Korean war

The Lady chapel, the window here is famed because it is by Morris & co, it is called the three graces

It is quite stunning to look at

The figures at the base of the window

The west arch

With another wonderful window to look at

At the west end of the there is now a kitchen area

The window in the south wall is quite beautiful to look at and the figures shown look quite modern

different scenes in each panel

with moments in the life of Jesus

The north aisle looking to the panel at the end from by the entrance steps

Zooming in a bit to the panel

The doors I did wonder is one lead to a former rood loft but I was told it just took you too the roof, the one on the right takes you to the bells

 

 

 Victorian scripture panels

More interesting for me are these panels, I can only think of the Norman craftsmen who made them apart from the head in the arch, I'm not sure about that

I think it is amazing considering how old it is

The brasses must have come from a floor tomb now that are displayed on a wall dated 1602

More Norman carvings in the church

I love the head looking out of this corbel

The quatrefoil from around 1250 removed from the parapet of the south aisle in 2015 when the aisle was added to increase the capacity of the church 

Looking over at the south aisle

Towards the north

The font which I would think is Norman

I will leave you with this photo of the Christmas tree with the chancel arch as background. There is much more to see in the church and I have shown as much as I can but it is worth visiting and I might just do that.

Till next time may I wish you all a peaceful week

Church Explorer update

 

I thought I might update my blog and how I go about finding the churches I visit as I notice that I have posted 591 blogs since I started back in 2012, mind you a fare number of them are cemeteries and blogs on Church groups

You may have noticed that I have been concentrating on visiting Churches in the book Oxfordshires best Churches from which I have managed to visit most, I have now got 11 left to visit in the north of Oxfordshire. I have not included the Oxford churches which I will do once I have gone to the others, there are only a few in Oxford anyway and easy to get to by train. This year I hope to revisit a few of the previous churches in the blog as I feel I can get better photos now. I also have noticed that there are things I have missed in some of the churches like the ceiling in the lady chapel at St Helens Abingdon.

If you wondered what I meant by finding the churches on the OS Maps well that is the Ordnance Survey maps for the UK, I have them on my laptop so look at them when planning a visit. Yes I use Google as well as I keep a map with a record of the churches visited on it. 

The book you see by Richard Wheeler is what I use for reference and reading about the churches I am visiting I would say it is the best place to start if you are thinking of visiting some churches in Oxfordshire Simon Jenkins who quoted at the bottom has also written a book called England's Thousand Best Churches 

The book goes into the best churches to visit in all of  England's Counties. He is a journalist who writes in one of the tabloids. If you visited all the churches it would take around three years visiting one a day. I dare say he had researchers doing all this plus the photos came from the Country Life archive. I'm not saying he did not visit any I just have my doubts all of them. There is no reason Richard could not have visited the ones in Oxfordshire which is where I think he lives. I am slowly working my way through the book .

There are a couple or other reference books I use 

Rices Church Primer, an excellent book with plenty of drawings of of parts of the church so when you visit you know what you are looking for, this and the previous book were the first books I got from my wife one Christmas. 

Last is Churches of Oxfordshire,

This is a paperback which I think was done with the help of Oxfordshire Historic Trust I have had a look though it but I feel it is let down by some very dark photos but that aside a good book to use if  you are going to visit some of the churches as it will go in your bag. What I will say is that reading the book is one thing and looking at the photos in them but they do not show you what the church is like, in my blog I try to show you what the church is like and hopefully the items of interest to see.

The churches I have visited are all with in a 30 mile radius of Oxford, I live about half an hour south so you can see why it takes me over an hour to get to the ones I am visiting now.

I hope that has given you a bit of an insight as to how I go about visiting the churches you read about

 

St Edburg Bicester

 

 This week the Church Explorer takes you to St Edburg Bicester. This is one church that I have been wanting to visit for a while but left it because it was in a busy shopping town. When I found it where I could park I made the effort to go along to see this amazing church which is one of the churches in the book Oxfordshires Best Churches. I'm going to show this church over two weeks as I feel I cannot do it justice in one post so you will be seeing the inside next week

History I copied form Wickipedia but if you click on the links you can find out more about the church  St. Edburg’s Church in Bicester was founded as a minster, perhaps in the mid 7th century after St. Birinus converted Cynegils, King of Wessex, following their meeting near Blewbury. The site was just east of the old Roman road between Dorchester and Towcester that passed through the former Roman town at Alchester. The earliest church was probably a timber structure serving the inhabitants of the growing Saxon settlements on either side of the river Bure, and as a mission centre for the surrounding countryside. Archaeological excavations at Procter's Yard identified the ecclesiastical enclosure boundary, and a large cemetery of Saxon graves suggesting a much larger churchyard has been excavated on the site of the Catholic Church car park almost opposite St. Edburg's.

St Edburg from the entrance to the churchyard

The south side

Going along to the south east end

East end with south and north aisles with my shadow

 

View of the north side looking west from the path

 

The tower

Tower window and door

This is the south doorway

 

Chest tomb in the corner of the south aisle and chancel

 

Porch and north door, there also looks like there is a room over the porch

Churchyard on the north side of the church

West of the tower is a wall which is lined with old headstones and one of the reasons I could not get a complete view of the tower from that side

Churchyard south of the church

Some old headstones beside the wall

Coffin slab surrounded by old headstones

The north side churchyard looking west

The east end of the churchyard

South boundary wall with older headstones

South of the church from the path takes you to Bicester cemetery next door. This part is owned and and  looked after by the town council.

Which is where you see the wildlife scurrying around

Bicester cemetery which is next door to St Edburg's churchyard

More recent headstones can be seen dating to Victorian times

The headstones are packed in

It's full of squirrels running around

I must admit you could spend a long time walking around it

The cemetery is well laid out and kept tidy

It also has this chapel in it which was locked when I walked past

The commonwealth war grave of Second Lieutenant H.J.Lamb RAF

Looking south down the cemetery

Towards the far end more recent graves

This is where you will find a lot of commonwealth war graves

Most are from WWII like these who all died the same day so I suspect were the crew of one plane

These graves are from a couple of different decades the two at the top from 1942, the lower half from 6th July 1965. They died in the Little Baldon air crash  there is a memorial in St Lawrence Toot Baldon

There are not only RAF some are more recent, two graves on the end the personnel were in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps who died in 1968 and 1970

The cemetery is huge

Over the fence is another part which I did not have the time to look around

I will leave you with this photo I took of a squirrel sat on the base of a cross in the cemetery. I will show the inside of the church next week.

Till Next time May I wish you all a peaceful week