Church Heritage Record 627220

5-bay aisled nave, west tower, 3-bay chancel and south chapel, south porch.

[Approximate] Nave 20m (66ft) x 8m (25ft),  aisles 3.5m (11ft5in) wide, chancel 12m (39ft) long.

The church has a complex and interesting history and development, which could benefit from fresh research.  Oxford was a Saxon Burh and town, probably founded circa 912: the town defences are mentioned in the Burgal Hideage.  It had become one of the most important towns in Wessex by the Conquest. The church was built after the Conquest 500 yards north of Oxford's city wall where St Michael at the North Gate still stands.  The motive is unclear; perhaps there was an intention to use the church as the nucleus of a suburb, which took until the 18th century to develop, with flocks of sheep still a common sight in the area into the 19th century.

In 1138 the church and all its property was granted to Godstow Abbey, 2 miles to the north-west.  St Hugh is said to have consecrated the church in 1200, and supposedly in commemoration of this consecration St Giles’ Fair was founded to take place on the Monday and Tuesday after the Sunday following the Saint’s Day, the first of September.  The fair is still held today.

The chancel, north and south aisles and arcades and the south porch date to the early 13th century. The nave walls were raised in the late 15th- early 16th century with the addition of parapets, and new windows.  Godstow Abbey surrendered St Giles' church and all its lands to the Crown in 1539 at the Dissolution. In 1542 the Crown granted St Giles' to Dr George Owen of Godstow, a physician of King Henry VIII. In 1573 his son Richard Owen sold the church to Sir Thomas White, Lord Mayor of London, who in 1555 had refounded the Cistercian house of St Bernard on the east side of St Giles' Street as St John's College. Sir Thomas granted St Giles' to St John's, which since then has held the advowson of the parish.

Incumbents of St Giles' have included two notable supporters of Bishop Laud; William Juxon from 1610 to 1615 and Thomas Turner from 1624 to 1629.  The church was damaged during the siege by the Parliamentarian army in the English Civil War in Oxford.  John Goad, vicar from 1644 until 1646, is said to have led services in St Giles during the Parliamentary artillery bombardment.

The church building received minor repairs during the 17th and 18th centuries. The church was restored by H J Underwood in 1850-2 including (total?) rebuilding of the south chapel, chapel east window restored by J M Derick. Chancel repaired 1879 under Blomfield, and restored again in 1920. Recently the south-east chapel was fitted out for small services. Plans are afoot to improve the access via the south porch including removing the steps, and an archaeological investigation of the footings was underway at the time of the visit.

The church is now relatively central within the modern city. As north Oxford was built up and its population grew, new parishes were created out of parts of St Giles'. They included St Philip and St James', consecrated in 1862 and St Margaret's, consecrated as a daughter church of SS Philip and James in 1883. St Giles remains a separate ecclesiastical parish but is now reunited with the parish of St Philip and St James with St Margaret in a united benefice.

One of the great, and perhaps most unsung, parish churches of Oxford.  Despite later alterations this church maintains the feel and much of the substance of a 13th-century building. The west tower gives the church strong vertical emphasis looking north-west down St Giles’ Street. It has a crenellated parapet, 2-light pointed belfry openings with unusual slits in the broad tympani under hoodmoulds, the belfry defined by string-courses; clock faces underneath. The tower and south aisle have no buttresses, and the general look is clean and simple.

Complicated roof-lines, the low-pitched nave higher than the chancel, the chancel higher than the gabled south chapel.  The aisles and nave have plain Perpendicular parapets.  The south aisle has three narrow pointed lancets to the west of the south porch, east of which  are two more such and then a 2-light pointed window with intersecting tracery.  The north aisle wall has cross-gables with 2-lights to the two western bays and a 3-light in the east bay, all with continuous hoodmoulds and of the 13th century, partly restored. Flat buttresses, look very modern. 

Large Victorian buttresses to the south chapel, which has a priest’s door to the west of a lancet and a 2-light pointed window, larger 3-light pointed window to the east end with Geometrical tracery. The chancel has two 2-light pointed windows with hoodmoulds each side of a lancet, and a 3-light with Early English tracery in the east wall. The porch is 13th-century in origin but heavily rebuilt, the entrance arches Victorian.

Entering the church, the interior is of high quality architecturally, uncluttered, whitewashed and fully pewed with plain benches (not fixed) in the nave and aisles, simple low choir stalls.  Across the west bay of the church is a modern wooden screen behind which is the organ with the pipes and console displayed, vestry, office and toilets, the spaces apparently for the congregation only.

The aisle arcades are carried on pointed and double-chamfered arches supported by columns with round abaci, 13th-century, though clearly the aisles were built at different times, the north aisle perhaps slightly later, terminating at the east end in a trumpet console rather than an engaged column as with the south aisle, chamfered plain respond.  Pointed chancel and south chapel arch in the same style.  There are round-arched recessed colonnades along the aisle walls, an unusual feature, and rere-arches with detached colonettes to the cross gable windows. The floors are of sandstone slabs, with inset ledger stones. Open timber roofs with collars. 

Looking east there is a square aumbry in the north wall of the chancel, possibly original. On the south side there are re-set Norman columns from the earliest phase flanking a pointed blank arch with inset Victorian piscina, west of this a large round arch to the south chapel.  Diaper and lozenge carved decoration on east wall below the window. The south chapel has modern light-stained wooden fittings, used for Taize and small services.