The Church of the Holy Rood, Cuxham

Ambrosden church

The Church of the Holy Rood in Cuxham is a middling-sized medieval structure substantially rebuilt in the late 17th century and much altered in the 19th. In its present form it comprises a squat west tower, two-bay nave, and rebuilt chancel with north vestry, its older walling composed chiefly of coursed chalk rubble. The earliest features date apparently from the 12th century, and include the round-arched west doorway with sculpted capitals, the ground-floor window openings of the tower, and the plain tub font in the nave. The windows in the nave's north wall are early 14th-century, but those in the south are probably 17th-century replacements. A Jacobean pulpit survives reset on a late 19th-century base.

The church was largely rebuilt c.1685, though part of the roof may have been recycled. Drawings of 1806–22 show a small plain church with a low chancel, a nave, and a west tower. Restoration work was apparently carried out in 1850, and in 1895 the rector Edward Fletcher commissioned the Anglo-Catholic Oxford architect Clapton Rolfe to rebuild the chancel in Gothic style, complete with piscina and sedilia. The work, which cost c.£400, was paid for by donations, including £100 from Merton College. Oak panelling fitted on the south side of the nave in 1925 was recycled from a screen by Sir Christopher Wren removed from Merton College chapel in 1851. The pews are partly Victorian, but may include some 17th-century woodwork. The church contains a memorial to the Gregory family, and brass plaques in memory of four village men killed in the First World War and four in the Second. Electric lighting was installed in 1947 and heating in 1968, and the roof was repaired in 1992. 

Historical information about the Church of the Holy Rood is provided by 'Cuxham', in A History of the County of Oxford: Volume 18, ed. Simon Townley (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2016), pp. 158-179. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol18/pp158-179 [accessed 16 March 2023].

The Church of the Holy Rood is a Grade II listed building. For more information about the listing see CHURCH OF THE HOLY ROOD, Cuxham with Easington - 1059751 | Historic England.

For more information about the Church of the Holy Rood see Cuxham | British History Online (british-history.ac.uk).