Church Heritage Record 627010

West tower; aisleless nave and chancel.

Nave 42ft by 15ft; chancel 21ft by 15ft.

The hamlet of Emmington is what remains of a shrunken medieval village, and objects of Roman to post-medieval date have been found there, including a Roman quern stone and a large amount of pottery.  The site is therefore of some archaeological significance.  Details are held at the Oxfordshire SMR.

Originally early fourteenth-century, the church was almost entirely rebuilt (but for the north wall of the nave and the exterior of the tower) in 1873-4 to designs by Charles Buckeridge of Oxford and London, who seems to have followed the original design. The builder was Giles Holland of Thame, and the cost £952. Buckeridge died in September 1873 during the work and it was completed by John Loughborough Pearson according to his design. The church was re-opened on 22 April 1874.

Charles Buckeridge (1833-1873) was a pupil of G.G. Scott and rebuilt or restored a number of churches in Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire. His style was usually a serious and correct Decorated Gothic.

Emmington church is a very simple little building in a most attractive rural position. 

The west tower is of two stages with diagonal buttresses at the western angles which die into the walls at the level of a stringcourse which also forms the sill of the belfry openings. There is also a stringcourse on the west face only at the level of the lower weatherings on the buttresses.

There is no west window, but instead there are two small vertical slits set one above the other. The belfry stage has small single louvred openings in each face, those to the north, east and west having cusped ogee heads within rectangular surrounds and that to the west having a pointed head enclosing a cinquefoiled arch. The tower is covered with a simple saddleback roof.

The nave has two doorways and four windows arranged symmetrically. The windows are all of the same design, with two ogee-headed lights within square heads outlined by labels and with a retaining arch in the wall above. The north and south doorways have continuously moulded pointed arches and, although the south doorway is slightly the larger, it is the north doorway, facing the approach, which is now used. There are diagonal buttresses at the western angles.

The chancel is very much the same profile as the nave and is divided from it by buttresses and a stone coping on the gable wall above the chancel arch. The two bays are marked by plain buttresses and there are pairs of buttresses at the eastern angles. The two windows in the south wall are of two lights with cusped Y-tracery in a pointed arch under a hood, and these are matched by two windows in the north wall. The east window is a three-light version of the same design. The mullions and tracery of the chancel windows are all moulded. The east gables of the nave and chancel have delicately carved stone crosses at the apex.

The interior is simple, with a floor of red and black quarry tiles rather lower than the ground level outside. The walls are plastered and whitewashed. Pews stand on concrete floors replacing timber platfors. Windows have simply moulded rere-arches as do the doorways, the doorway to the south being taller than that to the north. The nave roof is an open structure of pine with tie-beams and king-posts which have struts forming a cross at each bay. 

The tower is not bonded into the nave, though the small west doorway linking the two has its chamfered outer facing towards the nave. There is a plain recess with a chamfered pointed arch (doubtless for a holy water stoup) beside the outer doorway and a piscina with a shallow circular drain under a cinquefoiled arch, also enclosing a stone shelf, near the east end of the south nave wall. Like all other features of the church, these are now entirely nineteenth-century.

The chancel arch is of fourteenth-century style and may be original work re-used. It has semi-octagonal responds with moulded bases and capitals and two chamfered orders. The chancel floor is one step above that of the nave and has some glazed tiles patterned with simple motifs in buff (nine together making up a quatrefoil). There is another step beyond the stalls, a third at the rails and a footpace upon which the altar stands. The south window in the sanctuary comes low to form double sedilia, and to the east of it is a piscina under a pointed cinquefoiled arch with a plain circular drain and a shelf, both piscina and sedilia being entirely nineteenth-century in date although the former probably represents what was there before. To the north of the altar, in the north wall, is an aumbry with a rebate for a door and lock. Between the north windows is a narrow doorway.