Arthur Mee - The King's England, Oxfordshire.
Bicester – Old fashioned Town.
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It is an old fashioned town in a flat countryside with low-roofed houses lining the streets, and gabled houses with tiled roofs gathered about the three-cornered marketplace.
A path of trimmed limes brings us to its medieval church. In the porch are three windows which once lit an upper room that has disappeared and now light up a doorway a century older than themselves. It is one of two doorways, one 600 and one 700 years old. Over the older one is a figure with a cap and a high-fitting collar.
Inside is a great variety of arches, one strikingly beautiful and slender, opening from the tower into the nave; it is 15th century. The north arcade is 14th century and its companion 13th, but at the end of the north arcade is a small triangular arch of a narrow bay which is supposed to be Saxon, the oldest work in Bicester. The south arcade has richly moulded arches and slender clustered shafts, with a robed figure on a lion between two of the arches.
Next to the arch which may be Saxon are three arches left from the church the Normans knew. They were once part of a central tower and one is now the chancel arch, the others leading into the transepts. There is Norman masonry in the chancel and Norman zigzag on the wall outside the transept. Other Norman fragments are between the arches of the north arcade. On one of the walls indoors is a small grotesque with a finger in his mouth and in the other hand an apple he is eating.
All the roofs are fine, with many medieval beams, and there is a 15th century oak screen 14 feet high, almost intact save for a door, and as strong as on the day it was made. The roofs are well seen in the light of the clerestory windows. Over a small priest’s doorway in the chancel is a tiny window deeply splayed in the wall and filled with old glass of a angel blowing a trumpet; it is a very pleasing effect. A neat modern window had Christ talking to the children. By the 13th century font, which had a tapering bowl of 16 sides, is a figure of a woman with the folds of her robe in her arm, part of a 14th century tomb rescued from the vanished priory. There are two other stones from the same tomb above the north arcade, each with three recessed canopies in which stand hooded knights with shields and swords and other figures. Under one is a woman standing on a grotesque with its tongue out, which in its turn is resting on a beautiful bracket of a woman’s head. There is another woman’s head carved on a curious base of one of the pillars of the nave, and up in the roof are many quaint corbels, some with big goggle eyes.
There is a brass portrait of a 15th century noble at prayer and two marble portraits of 18th century men. One is Thomas Grentham, with two lockets containing portraits; the other is Sir Edward Turner, who sat in three Parliaments. In the churchyard a plain cross has the names of about 70 people who died in a cholera epidemic in 1832; and not far away is a fine lantern cross in memory of the men who did not come back from the Great War; it has St. Nicholas with a sailor and St. George with a soldier.
On the site of the old priory is an old stone dovecot with a tiled turret, but the only actual remains of the priory are in Priory Cottage some distance off, one part of the guest house. It has four medieval windows and an old archway in the garden wall.
W. Hobart Bird – Old Oxfordshire Churches.
The large and interesting church of St. Eadburgh has quire with North chapel, clerestoried nave with aisles, North porch and Perpendicular embattled West tower of four stages with pinnacles at the angles crocketed and panelled, with double sound-holes. The South and East walls have Norman masonry and the typical flat buttresses of the period, of which also are the remains of a chevron string-course. Later windows have been inserted. The West doorway is of heavy Tudor style with later two-light window of poor design. The South aisle has a good panelled parapet with quatrefoil. The South doorway is good Early English with triple jamb-shafts; four of the capitals have stiff-stalk ornament, but the two inner continue through the shallow abaci to form an inner moulding of the arch, which has two other orders of bold rolls, and label. Above is a small niche with a grotesque figure, and above that a good 14th century Decorated stone with two cinquefoiled crocked canopies containing plain shields. Over the small Early English doorway in the South wall is a small rebated window, with ancient glass, the purpose of which is a mystery. At the South East end is a small triangular turret giving access to the roof[1]. The large embattled South porch originally had an upper story (“parvise”), with a two light Perpendicular window on the south, also East and West windows below. The outer and inner doors have continuous mouldings.
The East widow of quire is Decorated of five lights with renewed tracery. The two South windows, of two and three lights, have similar period tracery. The sill of the two-light window is lowered for sedilia. There is much “restoration” in the quire. Not many years ago £3,500 was spent upon the church. The wide arch to the North chapel, which appears to have been rebuilt, is 14th century work with triple chamfer responds and arches. There is a great, but unbeautiful marble monument with a sculptured medallion showing Sir Edward Turner, Bart., and Dame Cassandra, his wife, obit. 1766-1770. There is a fine old oak parclose screen to this chapel and North aisle; it has been carefully restored. The great Norman chancel arch is severely plain, as also are some of the arches of that period to the aisles. Near these is a small triangular head opening, said by some writers to be Saxon but probably not of that period. The other bays are with octagonal pillars and capitals, and three chamfered arches. One has flat pellet ornament. The South arcade beyond the East is 13th century Early English with slender compound pillars and moulded capitals, which overhang in an unsightly way, and arches of inner chamfer, bold roll mouldings and labels with sculptured finials. The disparity between the capitals and arches is doubtless due to a rebuilding of the arches at a later period. The East side of one pillar has mutilated remains of a 14th century canopy in an unaccountably low position, being only about two feet from the base-mouldings. There is a large mural monument on the North (Thomas Grantham, 1718), a sculptured bust and two small children. There are also others on the South.
Built into the South wall over nave arcade are two sculptured Decorated panels with three crocketed canopies to each, which contain three figures, each with shield on arm, probably part of an altar-tomb; also a tall effigy on a bracket, with a diminutive canopy. This, too, is not in its original position, but is of much interest. At the West end of the floor is part of a much mutilated 13th century coffin slab. Note the holy-water stoup near North door. The fenestration of North aisle from the East comprises one five-light Perpendicular window and three two-light Decorated, also a wide 13th century lancet at West. The south transept has a fine Early English arch to aisle with compound responds having boldly sculptured stiff-stalk ornament to capitals and chamfered arch of two orders. The East widow is three-light Decorated, the south is five-light Perpendicular. Note at the east end a cinquefoiled piscina and on opposite wall two brasses, one to Rafe Hunt, 1602 (18 inches). The South aisle has three three-light Decorated windows and one three-light debased on West.
[1] Most ancient churches had lead roofs which required careful attention and the turret stair saved much carrying ladders, etc., to and fro.