Burford Parish Church

Our car rental ended May 25th, so, en route to Heathrow and the rental return, we stopped for our last Cotswold visit, at Burford and its five-star church, in Oxfordshire.

As may be inferred here, the church is of a somewhat irregular
"design"

Standard Cotswold; more "bale" tombs in the right center; unique
to the Cotswolds

The tower, spire, and its scary exterior ladder

"Plan," or how all the successive plans ended up by the 15th century;
the tower was built in 1170

Helpful model #11,703; early Victorian

Nave

Roof, completed 1475, a bit of the elevation

Some of the side halls are on a split-level basis,
seen in south Florida residential architecture in 
the 1950s

Tower; note the non-pointy windows

Thus

Organ

Tansfield tomb...benefactors

Tower clock...on such a large frame to permit the
swinging of the pendulum

East window, 14th century, though "much restored," Biblical
scenes and figures

Elsewhere, and strangely, a print copy of van Eyck's Adoration
of the Mystic Lamb, 1432, from St. Bavo's in Ghent; much of the
Wool Trade went to Flemish cities like Bruge and Ghent for weaving;
so I surmise; among my two or three favorites. so no worries

Baptismal font, thought to be 12th century

Tomb of Edmund Harman, barber and surgeon
to Henry VIII; thought to be the first depiction of
native Americans in Britain

Pulpit, 15th, some of the color is original

Way high up somewhere, a very old green man

Also now the social hall

A bit of the exterior sculpture program

Carrying on into pretty Burford

Among the many interesting shops

Main drag

Two very old buildings subsiding into each other...pretty normal
for this age of architecture; the appearance of an Orvis was disturbing...
until we noticed it had gone out of business

1,293.9 miles on our garden/houses/churches
campaign of 2022; Vicki was amply relieved to
ditch the car and not be on these roads anymore...

Bibury

Bibury is one of the Cotswolds' pretty little villages. Indeed, William Morris deemed it "the most beautiful village in England." The church is not one of the fifty or so great ones, but was interesting enough, especially for its relative antiquity. Records of Bibury go back to the 8th century.

The Arlington Row...printed on the inside of British passports;
now owned by the National Trust

Nearby water; no tour buses, but otherwise pretty crowded

Flora

Not the Laburnam Arch, but pretty nice

The church: Church of St. Mary

On one of the church school buildings

Barrel burial

Nave view

I was about to comment on disrespect when I saw
the "dogs welcome" sign; England!

Not Christian

St. Mary's Church, Fairford; Or, Our Set Is Complete

Our next church/town destination in the Cotswolds was St. Mary's Church in Fairford, a few miles east of Cirencester, another five-star parish church. An older church in Fairford was listed in the Domesday Book, but the present church was built only in the early 1500s, just barely Medieval, largely through the beneficence of the Tame family and the ongoing wool trade. The glory of this church is its windows--not that they are all that wonderful nor plentiful nor old--but that they are the only complete set to have survived both the reformation and the civil war, in all of England. No one knows why, although I would offer that the windows are almost entirely "educational," that is, depicting Biblical stories and events; one gets to a few popes and saints and kings and such only in the upper windows, which are difficult to see well. Nihil obstat. Of course, I took pix of all those in the lower register. But I'll post only a few, since there were many other items of interest in this church.

In the tower, bell-ringing apparatus

The great west window, a Judgment, early 16th

Hellish detail

The five-star churches, knowing their fame, always
provide ample interpretive information

Nave view

A bit of the elevation and ceiling

Some remaining original paint

Memorials, tombs

The great east window, Passion

In the quire, on the left of the tomb, old-style placards to guide you 
around the church

The misericords in this church were on full
display and appropriately profane (that is, not
sacred); woman bonking a dog for getting into
the food pot

Someone else about to get bonked

Do not sit on these railings

Another window, something about Mary; interested
me because of the use of the green

Interior corbel, typical of the period and Perpendicular

Abaft the altar

Outside again, another delicious hunky-punk

In the cemetery, Tiddles, the church cat, 1963-1980 

And a few views of the beautiful town; let us hope the tour buses
stay far away