St Columba
Oxford, Oxfordshire
Oxford's central United Reformed Church, dating to 1915.
This beautiful building is home to a vibrant worshipping community with a rich worshipping tradition and a world famous Cathedral Choir. It hosts a wide range of diocesan events, music, art and drama.
Thousands of people visit our Cathedral each year to pray, worship, or simply to enjoy the stillness and the profound sense of history it inspires.
On this site once stood the convent church where Oxford's patron saint, St Frideswide, was buried in the eighth century. Around her shrine in the ninth and tenth centuries a group of priests lived a communal life, doing pastoral work, and in the 12th century the monastery became the Augustinian priory of St Frideswide. By the 13th century it was a major place of pilgrimage.
When Cardinal Wolsey began the building of his college here, the western end of the building was removed to make space for Tom Quad, and the remainder was used as the temporary chapel for the new college. Wolsey's plan to replace it with a larger chapel on the North side of Tom Quad would have caused its demolition but when he fell from power the building of the new chapel stopped.
Today we are grateful that the building has survived, and that it is used to the glory of God.