St Mary, Chalgrove

St Mary's is a Grade I parish church on Church Lane in Chalgrove, Oxfordshire, in the Diocese of Oxford: an early-thirteenth-century church whose early-fourteenth-century chancel holds one of England's most complete medieval wall-painting cycles.

Overview

Historic England lists the Church of St Mary (list entry 1284879, designated 18 July 1963). The listing records an early thirteenth-century church with an early fourteenth-century chancel and fifteenth- and eighteenth-century alterations, in coursed limestone rubble with ashlar dressings and a late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century gabled tile roof. The plan is chancel, aisled nave and west tower. The chancel has offset buttresses, a three-light Decorated east window and a Decorated piscina and sedilia. The three-stage tower lost its spire in 1727. The nave has an early-thirteenth-century four-bay south arcade of Transitional character on circular piers with water-leaf capitals.

The listing describes complete sequences of fine early-fourteenth-century wall paintings: Last Judgement and Life of the Virgin to the south, Tree of Jesse and Life of Christ to the north, and on the east wall the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin with the Ascension, Resurrection and Descent into Hell. The paintings were limewashed after 1547 and rediscovered in 1858. The parish notes royal and Wallingford connections that help explain the quality of the scheme, and a rare double squint on the north side of the chancel. Brasses commemorate members of the Barantyn family. The church is in the benefice of Chalgrove with Berrick Salome.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1284879
• Parish: heritage
• Medieval wall paintings