St Mary's Church, Bloxham

St Mary's is the parish church of Bloxham, 3 miles south-west of Banbury, and its spire stands over the whole village. Historic England lists it Grade I. The tower and spire are fourteenth century, about 60m tall by the county history, and the church is known for its carving, the fifteenth-century Milcombe Chapel and its Morris & Co glass.

The story of St Mary's

Little is left of the Norman church. The listing finds twelfth-century fragments, a reset doorway on the north side with a fish-scale pattern in its tympanum, and reused Romanesque carving. The chancel, nave, aisles and arcades are thirteenth century. In the fourteenth century the aisles were widened, a shallow north transept and both porches added, and the west tower and spire built.

The fifteenth century brought the clerestory and the Milcombe Chapel, which the listing suggests may be by Richard Winchcombe, the mason of the chancel at Adderbury. The aisle roofs were rebuilt in 1686 and the spire repaired several times in the eighteenth century. G. E. Street restored the church in 1864 to 1866, giving it new roofs, a reredos, choir stalls and a vestry, and there were major repairs in 1956.

The church's own entry with the National Churches Trust quotes the local rhyme: Bloxham for length, Adderbury for strength, Kings Sutton for beauty. The beauty is the spire at Kings Sutton, across the valley.

What to look for

Begin outside, at the west end, because the best carving is on the tower. The west doorway has three orders of mouldings with ballflower, leaves and birds in the hollows, and large carved heads in place of capitals. The county history describes the carving over it as the apostles and the Last Judgement. Then look up:

• Carved heads round the outside of the west window, which the church calls a rare feature
• The tower's five stages turning to an octagon under the spire, with pinnacles at the corners and a cornice of blind tracery
• A corbel table of heads, animals and birds above the parapet round the base of the spire, and grotesque figures on the north aisle cornice, as the church describes them

Inside, look for the band of heads and linked arms on a north transept capital, a pattern the church says seems to be unique to Oxfordshire, and the carved corbels in the nave and south aisle. The Milcombe Chapel has big four-, five- and seven-light windows, wall paintings the listing dates probably to the sixteenth century, and the Thornycroft monuments, among them Sir John Thornycroft, who died in 1725, reclining on one elbow. The east window of the chancel is Morris & Co work of 1869, designed by William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. A second Morris & Co window, low in the chancel's south wall, was put in in 1920, and there is a window by Charles Kempe and fragments of fourteenth-century glass in the north aisle.

Visiting St Mary's

The church's own website says it is open every day for visitors, without giving times. Its older entry with the National Churches Trust gives 10am to 5.30pm, March to October, and warns that the details may be out of date. Entry is free. The church says there is step-free access from the pavement; the Trust entry adds level access to the main areas and accessible toilets nearby rather than in the church, and says dogs, walkers and cyclists are welcome. Sunday services are at 8am, 9.30am and 6pm, so a weekday or a Saturday is quieter. When we checked, the church listed a Jigsaw Festival on Saturday 21 November 2026, 10am to 5pm, and Sunday 22 November, 11am to 4pm.

Getting there

The church is on Church Street, off the A361 Banbury to Chipping Norton road. There is no public car park. The church says Godswell Surgery offers parking at weekends; at other times park on the street, considerately and away from the A361. See the buses around Banbury for the way without a car, and our Bloxham and Milcombe circular for a walk from the village.

Nearby

The village museum is beside the church, free, on weekend and bank holiday Monday afternoons from Easter Sunday to the end of October; it is closed for the winter and reopens on Easter Sunday 2027. Bloxham School's chapel of 1871, also by Street, can be seen from the public road, though the school is not open to casual visitors. St Mary's in Adderbury has the strength in the rhyme and the same carvers' style, and the Warriner windmill is between the two villages. The Duck on the Pond at South Newington is the nearest pub we list.