St John the Baptist
Burford, Oxfordshire
St John's began life as a Norman church, of which the central tower and west wall, with its typical Norman door, remain.
The small church has a curious 19th century tower and an enormous east window, which was blown out by an exploding land mine in 1940.
Yet nothing about the unassuming exterior hints at the extraordinary richness of the 17th century monuments inside. They depict six members of the Fettiplace family, one of the great families of Oxfordshire until they died out in the late 18th century. The highly stylised marble effigies, laid out on shelves, each reclines rather raffishly on one elbow.
There are also brasses commemorating other Fettiplaces. Nearby Asthall Manor, the Fettiplace family seat, later became the home of the Mitford family. Four of the six Mitford sisters, Nancy, Unity, Pamela and Diana, are buried in the churchyard along with their parents, Lord and Lady Redesdale. The only Mitford son, Tom, killed in Burma in 1945, has a memorial inside the church.
