Burford Parish Church
Burford, Oxfordshire |
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Burford Parish Church
Burford, Oxfordshire |
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This is one of the big Cotswold Wool Churches. It was probably built on the site of a Saxon church. The present church was built in the late C12th but as the wool trade grew in Burford, so did the church. Extra chantry chapels were added and at its height, Burford had nine separate altars and six incumbent priests. Now it is one of the largest churches in Oxfordshire
Soon after the end of the Civil War a group of Parliamentarians called the Levellers disagreed with Oliver Cromwell. About 340 were captured near Burford and imprisoned in the church. Three of them were sentenced to death by firing squad while the rest watched from the roof.
One of the large Cotswold 'wool churches' built between 1160 and 1475. Items of interest include: a memorial tablet to Henry VIII’s barber-surgeon, Edmund Harman, showing one of the earliest representations of South American Indians; the ornate, canopied tomb of Sir Lawrence and Lady Tanfield; a tablet commemorating the Burford mason, Christopher Kempster, who was employed by Christopher Wren on the rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral and a pre-Christian carving dated at 100 AD, possibly depicting the Celtic goddess Epona.
In 1649 mutineers in Cromwell's army (Levellers) were imprisoned in the church - one of them carved his name on the font! - before being forced onto the roof to watch their ringleaders execution in the churchyard. Those executed are commemorated on a plaque close to the porch.
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