St Mary
Adderbury, Oxfordshire
This splendid church is one of the greatest to be found in Oxfordshire.
The church is a splendid example of late medieval English building, so harmonious that it looks like a gothic model when seen from the village green.
Inside the story is more complex as remains of the Norman church vie with late gothic, all sensitively restored by Sir George Gilbert Scott in the 1860s. It is a large building, light and grand, with a smattering of Victorian stained glass and a reredos with painted panels by EW Tristram.
One very unusual thing is the monument in the chancel to Sir Thomas Langton Freke who died in 1769. Not only is the subject matter extraordinary with the risen Christ trampling over a skeleton, its ribs hideously exposed, it is also made of plaster rather than marble. At the rear of the church on the floor you will find the 17th century turret clock rescued and restored 1968.
