Church Heritage Record 627227

Nave of four bays with aisles and clerestory, south-west porch and north-east Advent chapel (originally the vestry) ; crossing with tower and spire above, north and south transepts, the former with a vestry beyond and the latter with an apse. The sanctuary is housed in an eastern apse.

The church was designed by George Edmund Street, and the foundation stone was laid on 8 May 1860. In 1854 the development of this part of Oxford had hardly begun, but the growth of population was rapid enough to cause concern to churchmen and in September of that year the churchwardens of St. Giles sent a petition to the President and Fellows of St. John's College. 

No doubt partly as a result of its position in a centre of learning, this church has become one of the most famous examples of ecclesiastical Gothic Revival architecture in the country. It dates from the potent years of High Victorian architecture when the first imitative designs of the early Revivalists had been superseded. by the more free-ranging concepts of the younger generation. Street was in the forefront of this movement, and this church occupies a central position in the most uncompromisinglyoriginal phase of his career, not only as the earlier by far of his only two fully cruciform churches, but also by reason of its boldly experimental Tractarian planning, later evolved into distinctive types at All Saints Clifton and St. John the Divine Kennington.

The style is indeed Middle Pointed, with strong French overtones, especially in the plate tracery and the spire. The aisles are divided into four bays externally by low buttresses and each bay has two trefoiled lancet windows except for one on the north (second from the east) which has three. The west bay of the south aisle has the main entrance to the church, protected by a porch, and the east bay of the north aisle has an arch opening into the original vestry, now a small chapel.

The clerestory above has six bays which do not run in step with the four aisle bays, a source of annoyance to the church's critics, and these consist of two-light windows with plate tracery alternating with foiled windows (of four or five lobes) under semi-circular arches. The windows also have foiled circles in the heads and these, like the bigger foiled windows, are not placed symmetrically. The west front has a doorway under a stone gablet with three receding chamfered orders and then three. shafted lancets above. In the gable is a large circular window containing a quatrefoil and flanked by two odd little constructions like colonettes supporting pinnacles which act as terminations to the moulded hood. The face of this wall is the clearest example on the exterior of the church of Street's relatively restrained use of widely spaced bands of darker pinkish stone to relieve the brownish-buff wall surfaces.

The transepts have differing fenestration, which probably reflects their originally differing purposes. The south transept, which was originally a choir vestry, has a doorway under a gablet in the middle of the south wall and four lancets above, whose sills step up round the gablet. Above them a large circular window with eight subsidiary circlets round a central circle provides light for the crossing. The north transept, which houses the sacristy in the lower part, originally formed the organ chamber, and now has two rectangular lights in the east wall and two tall and two short trefoil-headed lancets with an almond-shaped quatrefoil above in the north wall. The vestry adjoining to the west has three lights surmounted by a sexfoil in the north gable.

The apse added to the east of the south transept by Sir Charles Nicholson is externally less in keeping with the church than it appears to be internally. The exterior has a parapet which conceals the roof, and there are lancets in each of the narrow faces. The stone is well matched with the rest of the facing of the building.

The tower continues the structural honesty of the nave, with a west wall which is in line with the west transept walls and which is linked to them by buttresses to emphasise the point. The walls of the nave clerestory, moreover, bend inwards to abut the west face and thus to act as buttresses. The east wall has a buttress like that of the west wall on the north side, and on the south side is the spiral staircase in an octagonal turret with a spire-like roof. The stage of the tower immediately above the stone vault within is provided with two lancets in the north and south walls and the belfry stage has two large lancets in each direction with three receding orders of stonework and three large louvres in each. A later skeletal clock face is fixed to the stonework between each pair of lights and interferes somewhat with the lines of the architecture. There is a band of darker stone just above sill-level and another at the springing of the arches.

The broach spire is rather short, clearly influenced by French examples, particularly in the lucarnes which have small colonettes and trefoiled arches and stand so proud of the spire that they have pyramidal rather than gabletted roofs. There is a band of darker stone at the level of their bases, two narrower bands at the level of their capitals and then two more bands higher on the spire, above which there are some bands of scale pattern carved on the stonework and several tiers of pierced roundels. Since tower and spire are broader from nath to south than they are from east to west, they naturally look more substantial when viewed along the axis of the church, and critics objected to the setting of a spire on a rectangular base.

The apse is of virtually the same width as the tower and has a continuous semi-circular terminationdivided into five bays by buttresses of which the three curved easternmost have three-light windows with plate tracery of a quatrefoil above three trefoil-headed lancets. The apex of the roof is capped by an iron cross.

The broad arches of the arcades are simply chamfered and carried on short single pillars of polished pink Peterhead granite with capitals carved by Earp with various stiff-leaf designs, one on the south side with angels playing musical instruments given by the choir, and that by the pulpit incorporating the signs of the evangelists. The windows of the aisles have detached shafts against the respond between the two lights. The floor is paved with red, black and buff tiles in the alleys and the pews stand on timber platforms.

The clerestory, as has already been noticed, runs out of step with the bays of the arcade below it. The windows are linked by bands of carved foliage finished long after the completion of the building. In 1904 Mr. Felton offered to do the work, and the bands of foliage with some human heads intermixed (including portraits of Wilberforce, Street and others), were completed. The circular panels above and between the windows were not all carved, although a scheme was drawn up for the iconography. Even those which were carved are very indistinct.

The roof is one of the best features of the church. It is a simple timber vault with pine boarding spanned at each bay by a tie beam carrying a turned kingpost and with moulded braces. Each bay has a painted panel in the centre with a sacred monogram. Street hoped to have tha aisle roofs painted as well, but there was not enough money, and this has never been done. The aisles are spanned at each bay by half arches of stone and the walls have been whitewashed.

The nave is simply furnished. The font stands by the south door on a raised plinth porch with good patterned Minton tiles, and near it an inscription on the west respond of the south aisle records the date of consecration of the church and that all the seats would be free for ever. The present pews came from All Saints, Oxford, and are probably by T.G. Jackson. The pulpit stands in the north-east corner of the nave and the lectern is set against the stone screen opposite it.

An arch at the east end of the north aisle opens into the Advent Chapel lying on the west of the north transept. This was originally the vestry but was furnished as a chapel in 1905 (the altar was originally under the north window), and the names of departed worshippers are inscribed on panels on the walls. The arch at the east end of the north aisle is now blocked by the War Memorial designed by Nicholson. Street's original drawings show organ pipes here but the organ was eventually raised on a gallery at a higher level in the transept, with a sacristy below.

The crossing and apse are provided with groined vaults, the former rectangular on plan with a circular central bellway and moulded ribs. The apse vault is carried on polished red Devonshire marble shafts and the ribs meet at a boss carved with the Agnus Dei. The crossing, which housed the choir originally, is divided from the nave by a low stone wall surmounted by an iron screen in addition to the later rood beam at the level of the springing of the western arch. The windows in the apse have shafts of polished black marble, and were originally to have been of two lights. Morrell's suggestion that they should be triplets is certainly an improvement. The black and white Belgian marble floor was laid by F.C. Eden in 1898-9 and the levels were altered. The sanctuary floor was raised (the original floor level and Minton tiles can be seen behind the reredos). The chancel woodwork is by Street, but is not of special interest. The reredos, which was originally by him, was altered later with his consent. The glass is by Clayton and Bell, and the sedilia on the south side, with three trefoil-headed recesses with red marble shafts under triangular hoods with naturalistic leaves for the capitals and finials, were carved by Earp. The aumbry on the north (which also has a quatrefoil drain) was provided in 1910 with a shelf and grille to form a tabernacle. There is a dado about nine feet high of green, red, brown and buff tiles all round the apse with a stone cross inset behind the reredos.

The south transept now forms a chapel, with a sanctuary in the apse added by Nicholson. Nicholson was clearly sympathetic to Street's work and provided a substantial stone ribbed vault based on the vault in the sanctuary, but with stone shafts rather than Devonshire marble. The boss is carved with IHS. Two niches on the south side form the credence and piscina. The stained glass was re-used from the triplet of lancets which had originally been in this wall. The walls are faced with ashlar masonry, and Nicholson also divided the transept from the south aisle by inserting two smaller arches in the original broad arch. On the westward face the trumeau has convincing thirteenth-century scrolling foliage, but the little niche with a statue of Our Lady gives away its later date by the rectangular fleurons, a Perpendicular motif which Street would have abhorred. The floor of the apse is paved with black and white marble.