St. Nicholas' Church, Idbury
The church was built in the twelfth century, and every generation since has made their contribution to its upkeep and development. It is the only public building in Idbury and is used for all kinds of community events, such as the Idbury Arts Festival, as well as for worship. This wider use of the church as community space as well as sacred space is very much in keeping with how the church would have been used in medieval times, when churches were used for social gatherings, and even business meetings, as well as for religious services. The following account of the building, church furniture and monuments is largely drawn from two sources: the entry in Pevsner’s Buildings of England, and a pamphlet published in 1914 by the then rector Idbury, the Rev. Gother E. Mann, entitled An Account of the Parish Church of St. Nicolas, Idbury, and of Its Proposed Restoration. These have been supplemented with information from Evelyn Goshawk’s Idbury History, and from a letter of 1963 from the Idbury churchwardens to the Secretary of the Historic Churches Preservation Trust. We have also benefited from the advice of the furniture expert Keith Hocking, and the expert on church architecture Philip Wilkinson. The Building Gother E. Mann writes, ‘Though small, the church is a prominent landmark. It is built of durable yellowish oolite and roofed with old grey stone slates, with the exception of the flat roof of the nave, once leaded but now covered with Welsh slates. The windows retain their old leaded glazing and iron stanchion bars, and, fortunately, there is no modern glass.’ Mary M. Dalston and Lancelot Spicer, the then Churchwardens of Idbury, wrote to the Secretary of the Historic Churches Preservation Trust in 1963 that, ‘Though not striking outside, apart from the blocked Norman doorway on the N. side, the interior, with its lovely clear glass windows, strikes all who see it as beautiful, in spite of the bad pews.’ The exterior of the church is plain and simple, the only extraneous decoration being two carved human heads as label stops on the westernmost clerestory window, and some gargoyles on the parapet, two used as waterspouts, the others purely decorative. There are also gargoyles on the parapet of the bell turret. Jennifer Sherwood, who wrote the Oxfordshire section of Sherwood & Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire, writes that, ‘The only important survival from the Norman church is a fine doorway re-set in the north wall. Arch of three orders, with a small band of zigzag, a roll-moulding, and a large inner order of zigzag. Jamb shafts incised with chevron pattern. Scalloped capitals. Tympanum with a deeper pattern of small circles. A large arch has been cut into it.’ This Norman doorway, which dates from around 1150, would have originally been the main door into the church. It appears to have been moved when the current door and porch were added in the late 14th century. At present the doorway is walled up, and can only be viewed from the exterior. At what point the arch was cut into the tympanum is unclear; it may be that the door was modified when it was moved, and that it was used for a while as a north entrance, before being blocked up. It is true that this doorway is the only important visible survival from the original Norman church, but in fact the exterior walls of the nave and chancel – the main body of the church – are the original Norman walls. The ground plan of the church drawn up by the Oxford architect F. E. Howard in 1914, and still on display in the church, dates the windows in the chancel to the thirteenth century; Jennifer Sherwood dates them slightly later. She writes that, ‘The chancel windows are early 14th-century trefoiled lancets, except for a three-light square-headed Perpendicular window on the southeast’. These probably did not replace original Norman windows; there is no indication of this. According to Gother E. Mann, ‘The typical Norman Cotswold church had no east window, and those in the side walls were mere slits’; in fact some Cotswold churches do have Norman east windows, and in others there is no way of knowing whether a later medieval east window was newly opened or simply replaced an earlier Norman one. In the early 14th century, a north aisle was added, greatly extending the footprint of the church. There is a Decorated three-light east window, and two Perpendicular square-headed windows, with tracery in the form of quatrefoils, in the north wall. The north aisle is separated from the nave by a three-bay arcade with piers of quatrefoil section and arches with two orders of wave-moulding, which Sherwood says is typical of this date. Shortly afterwards, a tower was built in the northwest of the aisle; the tower is of three stages with a battlemented parapet. In the late fourteenth century a new doorway, porch, and new windows were added on the south wall, and the original Norman doorway was moved to its present position in the north wall. There are six large Perpendicular windows in the south wall, four of which are set high up, forming a clerestory, and making the church very light and airy. Gother E. Mann notes that, ‘This work must have been spread over a number of years for the windows vary in design and are not equally spaced.’ In Cotswold Churches (1976) David Verey describes the clerestory as ‘four quite large, rather flat, four-centred arched headed windows and grid tracery, with deep hollow casement moulding and hood-mould stops.’ The porch contains a stone carved with details of the Coal Fund for the Idbury Poor, which like all the Idbury Charities has now been dissolved. On the outside of the porch to the left is a mass dial, which by the use of a finger as a gnomon still gives the visitor an accurate time, and is the nearest to a church clock that St. Nicholas has ever possessed. Around the corner from this is a modern Ordnance Survey flush bracket, BM 11048. At some time in the fourteenth century the chancel arch was re-cut from the original Norman arch. It was also around this time that the elaborate bell-turret for the sanctus bell was added over the eastern gable of the nave; this turret has crocketed pinnacles. Also around this time a Perpendicular piscina (a stone basin for washing the communion vessels) was added in the chancel; the bowl of the piscina projects out from the wall. Two corbels on either side of the altar were probably originally used to hold figures of saints. Sherwood also remarks on an ‘unusual Perpendicular sedilia formed by the sill of the south-eastern window from which spring three cinquefoils forming canopies’. A sedile is a seat for a priest, generally found in groups of three. The chief unusual feature of the one at St. Nicholas, Idbury, is that it does not exist, and never has; presumably Jennifer Sherwood at this point confused her notes on St. Nicholas with those on another Cotswold church. The nave has a Perpendicular roof, supported on corbels carved with human heads. The main timbers of the roof may be original, but it has been restored over the years, most recently in the 1940s. In the fifteenth century a squint or hagioscope was added, with a Perpendicular four-centred arch at each end. This is a narrow passage allowing a view through from the north aisle to the chancel; it has an arched ceiling strengthened with ribs. The purpose of a squint was not primarily as a passageway, though it can be used as one, but to allow a priest officiating at the Lady altar in the north aisle to see what was happening at the main altar in the chancel, and synchronize worship in the church. The squint in St. Nicholas is considered an unusual feature in a parish church. Above the squint is the entrance to what was formerly the rood left, where a rood (crucifix) would have been displayed. Although the rood loft is no longer present, the rood screen, ‘with simple traceried openings’, is; it was set back in place at the chancel steps in 1906, after having previously been used to form a vestry at the east end of the aisle. In Oxfordshire Byways, R. M. Marshall writes of St. Nicholas, ‘A mass dial is seen on the left of the south porch, and near the inner doorway, the remains of a holy water stoup. Inside the church further memories of medieval worship are recalled by the empty image brackets in the north aisle, in the rood door with the restored 15th-century rood screen, and in the hagioscope or passage between the north aisle and the chancel, whose purpose is uncertain now.’ The church windows would once have been filled with stained glass, but almost all of this was smashed by iconoclasts after the Reformation. There are a few fragments of glass remaining, dating from the mid-14th century, including foliage designs, the head of a female, and – high up in the interior wall of the tower – a small thin window that evidently escaped notice, with the stained glass figure of a saint, possibly St Nicholas. The reason for this placing of stained glass high up on an interior wall of the belfry is a mystery, as before the advent of electric light the window would never have been illuminated. It is possible that this is a treasured fragment from a smashed window, rescued and reinstalled in an obscure corner. This piece of glass is particularly commented on by June R. Lewis in Cotswold Villages (1974), who quotes an Idbury resident, Mrs Field, ‘Our only bit of stained glass, isn’t it lovely.’ The current transparent glass is obviously old, apart from the west window, which was replaced in the 1950s. Most panes probably date from the 16th-century; English iconoclasm was at its height in the reign of Edward VI, who inherited the throne from Henry VIII in 1547, at the age of nine. Royal injunctions issued in his name ordered the removal of all images from English churches, and the replacement of stone altars with simple wooden communion tables. Gother E. Mann writes that ‘There are no traces of post-reformation structural alterations’. However, ‘the work of the nineteenth-century restorers is painfully evident within. The chancel roof is of stained deal, and the rafters and boarding of the nave roof are of the same material. The floor of the chancel was raised a step and repaved with black and red tiles. This was particularly unhappy, for the rest of the church is paved with hard local stone, and at the east end of the north aisle there is what seems to be the original altar platform. The stone slates of the pitched roof were admirably rehung, but the lead roof of the nave was stripped off and Welsh slates took its place.’ Mann’s antipathy to what he saw as ‘the architectural sins of our Victorian forefathers’ evidently prevented him from appreciating the beauty of the decorative encaustic tiles on the floor of the chancel, which to modern eyes seem elegant and appropriate. It is believed that the original stone floor of the chancel probably still exists below the raised tiled floor. These tiles are not in fact Victorian. They were laid as part of the first post-Victorian restoration, carried out under the Rev. A. J. Wilson, Rector of Idbury from 1904-1909; less than 10 years before Gother E. Mann’s lament. In 1905-1906 Wilson also had the rood screen restored and replaced, and the current pulpit made up from medieval bench ends taken from the pews at the west end of the nave. Because the rood screen had been forming a simple vestry, a new vestry was made at the base of the tower; a cement floor was laid, and the old stones taken up and used, along with some old gravestones, to line the pathway from the south porch to the gate. Gother E. Mann’s much more extensive plan for restoration of the church was well thought-out, but ill-fated. Gother E. Mann became rector in 1911, and lost no time in having the architect F. E. Howard draw up designs for a thorough-going restoration. But these plans were never to be realised. Mann published his pamphlet on the church and his restoration plans in 1914. The outbreak of WWI meant that raising money for church restoration had to be put on hold. Mann was succeeded in 1918 by Rev. E. A. McConnell, who does not appear to have pursued Mann’s ideas; the whole scheme was effectively forgotten. This is what Mann proposed: From the foregoing account it will be seen how fully this fine little church deserves all that can be done to repair and beautify it. The bells are in urgent need of re-hanging, and the beams supporting the bell-cage are very unsafe. Some should be renewed, and others need strengthening. The roofs require overhauling, for they admit the weather in some places, and if sturdy rafters of oak, covered with cast lead, could be substituted for the present weak deal stained rafters and common slates, a good work would have been done. With these exceptions the structure is in a good state of repair, and it is felt that the time has come to fit up the interior of the church in a more convenient and seemly manner, and to atone in some degree for the architectural sins of our Victorian fore-fathers. It is proposed to removed the ugly tiles in the chancel, to re-arrange the levels as nearly as possible as in medieval times, and to pave with local stone. The ancient benches in the western part of the nave need careful repair. Mr. Crossley, who has recently repaired the screens at Hanborough in a very careful and reverent manner, is to be entrusted with this part of the work. Designs for new oak benches in the eastern half of the nave (on the site of the present deal box pews), pulpit, lectern, and stalls, in accordance with ancient Oxfordshire tradition, have been prepared by Mr. F. E. Howard, to take the place of the unsightly and inconvenient Victorian fittings. The Rev. F. J. Brown, of Steeple Aston, has offered a quantity of fine 18th-century balusters to be worked up into altar rails. The designs also show a contemplated restoration of the rood-loft, which would greatly add to the beauty of the interior of the church, which in its present denuded condition presents a huge expanse of blank wall above the chancel arch. The beautiful font ought to be raised again upon a step of the local stone, and a design has been prepared for a lofty open-work cover such as it certainly possessed in former times. So far as we can tell only one of his ideas – to raise the font on a stone step – was ever carried out. F.E. Howard’s sketch for the proposed Rood loft shows how different St. Nicholas would be today if the plans had gone through; effectively, Gother E. Mann’s intention was to visually transform St. Nicholas back into a Roman Catholic church. The letter sent by the Idbury churchwardens to the Historic Buildings Trust in 1963, after the death of Charles Edwin Goshawk, outlines the problems the church faced after WWII. They write, ‘By the end of the last war the church was in a very bad state, practically nothing having been done since the beginning of the century. In 1947 a major effort to restore it was begun in the parish, and with intervals this has continued ever since.’ Under Rev. Francis W. Broome, who was rector from 1945-51, £800 was raised to renew the nave roof, replace broken panes in the windows (including replacement of the large west window), and install electric light (with the beautiful light fittings still in use today) instead of lamps and candles. His successor Charles Edwin Goshawk continued this work of gentle restoration, completing the plastering and distempering of the interior, and installing electric heating to replace the old coal heater, which had ‘collapsed’. The only major change under Goshawk was the replacement in 1952 of the ‘small and unworthy Lady altar’ with a stark stone altar made by Mr. Leslie Townsend of Fifield. One intriguing feature that was left untouched is the small wooden chocks to be seen inside the window casements; these are believed to be remnants of the WWII blackout requirements. Despite all this work, the church still required a great deal of money spent on essential repairs, and that has remained the case up to the present day. The Church Furniture The most important item in the church is the carved stone font. This dates from the 15th century, and was an impressive addition to the church. It is a Perpendicular octagonal bowl, with two quatrefoils on each face and an octagonal base with blind traceried arches. It is evidently the work of a master craftsman. Gother E. Mann writes, ‘The font is really beautiful, exquisitely carved with pinnacles, tracery, and crocketted ogee arches. It has lost its step and has been mutilated, probably when it was cased in wood in post-reformation days.’ Although Mann’s large-scale plans for church restoration were scuppered by the advent of WWI, he did achieve some small victories, and one of these was that the font is now raised on a step of local stone. For about 400 years, the church would have had no seating. The first pews appear to have been installed in the late 16th century. The bench pews at the back of the nave are evidently of medieval origin, though much restored and in a battered and sorry condition. They are constructed of oak, which in recent years has been painted over with a thick layer of brown paint. This paint has, sadly, also been applied to the surviving medieval bench ends. These have been very crudely but charmingly carved with rosettes and quatrefoils, in a vernacular echo of the sublime stone-carving on the font. In 1906, when these pews were last given major restoration, three of these bench-ends were removed, and used to make up the present pulpit. It seems probable that these three bench-ends were too badly affected by woodworm to be retained for their original function; only the decorative facades were kept for use in making the pulpit. The central of the three re-used panels is carved with the figure of a bishop, presumably representing St. Nicholas. There is a large goose to his right, the significance of which is obscure. Geese do not figure in the iconography of St. Nicholas, though they do in that of St. Martin, with whom St. Nicholas is often associated, as a pair of ‘people’s saints’. So it is possible that the figure in the panel is St. Martin, rather than St. Nicholas. There is a second bird on one of the bench-ends that is still in situ. Gother Mann writes of these pews, ‘They appear to be in their original place though clumsily repaired in deal, much worm-eaten, and coated with paint.’ In the view of the Stow-on-the-Wold antique dealer and expert in medieval furniture Keith Hocking, very little of the original pews remains. Several of the top rails appear to be original – the first rail in from the wall on the north side (now removed due to damp and woodworm), and the fourth and fifth in the south side. These would have been the only support for the sitters’ backs, and the in-filled backs of the pews have been added relatively recently. Other top rails are later replacements. One worn seat (the nearest to the wall on the north side), much thicker through than the others, with a narrower seat, differently shaped at the corners, and may well have been the original seat; this was removed recently due to damp and woodworm. The remaining seats are later replacements, probably added piecemeal over the years. In Mr. Hocking’s view the important element of these pews is the 10 surviving carved bench ends, dating from the late 1500s; he recommends that these should be restored to the same condition as the three bench ends used for the pulpit, which would require immersion in an acid bath to strip off the unsightly brown paint. In the front half of the nave are box pews. These are made of deal, and were installed in the early 19th century. Gother E. Mann calls them simply ‘ugly’. They are described in the typed account of the church that has been used as the visitors’ guide since the 1960s as ‘varnished deal work of the early 19th century and should be replaced when funds allow by more worthy woodwork.’ Mr. Hocking was similarly unimpressed. The practice of having box pews for the gentry at the front and bench pews for the yokels at the back was a way of incorporating the English class structure into the interior architecture of a church. The 19th-century philosophy of ‘The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate’ was well-served by such distinctions, which sit less comfortably with our 21st-century ideas of equality and inclusiveness. There are further 19th-century pews in the north aisle, described by Gother E. Mann as ‘extraordinary backless benches with open-work ends’. These are probably rather later than the box pews, and have been made up from bits and pieces of wood; at some point since 1914 they have acquired backs. The ‘open-work ends’, which are in very poor condition because the central heating pipes run right alongside them, have carving on the bottom, which enabled Mr. Hocking to identify them as 17th-century work; he suggests that they were probably once an altar rail. Two further pews in the north aisle were installed in 1952, but removed recently to create an open space. The 1962 quinquennial inspection has not been seen, but according to the 1963 letter by the Idbury churchwardens the architect, K. A. Stevens F.R.I.B.A. recommended, ‘if possible, new pews’. The pulpit was made up in 1906 from some of the medieval bench ends, as noted above. The lectern is ‘a poor deal affair’ according to the visitors’ guide, dating from the 19th century. Gother E. Mann really gets into his stride when describing the church fittings, writing: ‘The rest of the fittings are mid-Victorian; the stalls and reading desk in varnished deal, the altar rails and pulpit in oak. All are hideous.’ The altar in the chancel is not technically an altar at all. It is an early 17th-century communion table, evidence that the early Protestant rejection of all things that smacked of idolatry left its mark on St. Nicholas in more ways than simply the destruction of its stained glass. Mr. Hocking dates the table to 1620-1630, and notes that it is in need of restoration, which would involve removing the Victorian top that has been placed on it to make it more altar-shaped, filling in the four holes drilled in the original top to secure pegs descending from the Victorian top, removing the added feet, and restoring some lost moulding on one side. Interestingly, in 1914 the church had a second of these communion tables in the north aisle, said by Gother E. Mann to have originally come from Fifield. This is presumably the ‘small and unworthy Lady altar’ removed by Charles Edwin Goshawk in 1952; its whereabouts now are unknown. In the vestry is a 17th century chair, with the protruding ends of the arms cut off but otherwise in original condition. St. Nicholas has three bells, recently restored to working order. The Treble bell is dated 1747, and bears the incription Peace and Good Neighbourhood, which is still Idbury’s village motto today. The Second and the Tenor bells date from the 15th century. The Second is inscribed Dirige Virgo pia quos congrego Santa Maria (Holy Virgin St. Mary, protect those whom I summon); the Tenor is inscribed Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judeorum Fili Dei miserere mei (Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, Son of the Living God, have mercy upon me). We are indebted to Dr Mike Baron for the correct inscriptions on the bells, and for the following. The two 15th-century bells were both founded at the Worcester Foundry, sometime between 1400 and 1420; they are two of 50 bells surviving today made by the same unknown founder. They are also two of only 150 surviving ‘Royal Heads’ bells in the entire country; these are bells possessing images of crowned ‘Royal Heads’ of King Edward II and Queen Philippa, located as ‘word-stops’ between the Latin words of the bells’ inscriptions. The only other furniture of interest in the church is the old coffin cart, or bier, which was shared between the villages of Fifield and Idbury. Local children would wheel it between the churches as and when it was needed, taking the opportunity whenever possible to climb aboard and freewheel downhill. Church Monuments Monuments within the church include a brass inscription of 1644 in memory of Thomas Hawtin. This was originally attached to a slate slab on the floor, also commemorating members of the Hawtin family. It reads:
Many of the letters are reversed, and the brass is decorated with memento mori in images of a spade, a pickaxe, and a skull. A large stone plaque in the north aisle is the monument of the Logan (or Loggan, or Loggin) family, who held Idbury from 1637 till the early 18th century. It was commissioned by John Logan, and is entirely in Latin; a translation is available in Evelyn Goshawk’s Idbury History. There is also a calligraphed Roll of Honour listing the 7 Idbury men who gave their lives in the First World War, and an intricate wood-carved Lord’s Prayer donated to the church in the dark days of 1940. In the churchyard are some notable tombs, seven of which are Grade II listed. These are a bale tomb and 4 chest tombs south and southeast of the church porch, and a pair of chest tombs south of the chancel. All of these tombs are currently completely overrun with ivy, a situation that should be remedied as soon as possible. One of the chest tombs on the south side of the chancel is that of John Gaynsford. The Oxford antiquarian Anthony Wood notes in his diary, 1674, ‘In the churchyard is an altar-tomb of John Gaynsford, ornamented with coats-of-arms’. Evelyn Goshawk writes in 1961, ‘The heraldic shields attached to the flat slab can still be seen, five on either side, but much defaced, and none of the emblazoning remains.’ The Gaynsfords held Idbury from 1502 till around 1620. The bale tomb is that of a member of the Woolliams (or Woollams) family. The inhabitants of the two chest tombs nearest the path are unrecorded. The outer left tomb is that of Ann Day, wife of Richard Day; the outer right tomb is that of Jane Loggin (Logan) and another 3 children of the Logan family. To the east of these tombs are several gravestones of the Digger or Diggar family, including that of Rachell Digger, who died on the 23rd of May, 1720 (Goshawk reads 1722), at the age of 60. In good sunlight the elegant cursive inscription on this stone is still perfectly legible. Rachell Diggar lived through a turbulent period of English history. She was born in the reign of Charles I, lived through the Civil War, the Protectorate, and the reigns of Charles II, James II, William and Mary, and Anne, to die under George I, having bridged the gap between the Stuarts and the House of Hanover. The National Archives house at least three 17th-century wills of the Digger family, who seem also to have been known as Heires, Eyres, or Ayres. Also in the churchyard is the elaborate tomb of the engineer Sir Benjamin Baker, the architect of the Forth Bridge and the Aswan Dam. The monument – presumably designed by Baker himself, who seems to have taken a suitably high-Victorian interest in his own funeral arrangements – is designed to commemorate four people. Designed as a massive granite Celtic cross supported by four flying buttresses, it is chided by David Verey in Cotswold Churches (1976) for ‘unsuitable design and material’; he compares it to ‘the corona of a church in Aberdeen’. The tomb contains Baker, his wife, and his sister, but the fourth spur is left empty. Near the Baker monument is a simpler one to Elspet Keith Robertson Scott, the wife of J. W. Robertson Scott. It is an ornamental bird bath, originally given to the school but moved to the churchyard when the school was closed, and remembers her as a ‘lover of children and birds’. There is one stone plaque on the south wall (to the west of the porch), with a winged angel’s head and an inscription in memory of John Wilks; it dates from the 1770s. In 1960 a fire broke out in the vestry which destroyed all the vestments. Four new sets of vestments were generously made by the Sisters of the Community of Jesus of Nazareth at neighbouring Church Westcote, who had for many years run a Sunday School in the parish. The only church plate of note is a silver Elizabethan chalice of c.1571. It was made by a provincial silversmith. The bowl has been badly damaged and if there was ever a maker’s mark, it has been obliterated. The paten cover has disappeared. Historical information about St. Nicholas' Church is provided by Wychwood Benefice St Nicholas' Church is a Grade I listed building. For more information about the listing see CHURCH OF ST NICHOLAS, Idbury - 1367780 | Historic England. For more information about St. Nicholas' Church see St Nicholas, Idbury - Wychwood Benefice |
