Before the Conquest......

Last week we celebrated the feast of St Edmund, King and martyr - one of the many Anglo-Saxon saints who made this land once an island of saints indeed. Today I visited Oxfordshire's most important Saxon church - dating from round about the time of the Conquest. The village of Langford, like many of these remarkable places, is a little difficult to find - I suppose in the important places the churches got replaced with modern ones whereas in the real backwaters things remained much the same.

This isn't quite true at Langford though the Saxon tower is the first thing one sees = and an unusually elaborate one at that. The richness of decoration and the awareness of all the latest in architectural practice suggests that the architect was not simply some local man doing his best. In Domesday book Langford is listed as a royal manor, so this may suggest that before the Conquest it formed part of the holdings of King Harold or King Edward.

Around 1200 aisles were added to the nave, giving the church something of the appearance of an early Christian Basilica. The arcades with their round arches have wonderfully slender pillars with cruciform capitals very much at odds with typical Norman work, and it suggests that the importance of Langford was still such as to warrant getting an architect who was in tune with all the latest developments to come in to supervise the work. The lightness of the arcades is a delight to the eye and gives the church a real sense of spaciousness. The proportions have an Early English Style and lightness which is quite unusual for this date. Soon after this the chancel was rebuilt on a grand scale, again with unusual features. The tracery of the East windows is both pleasing and unusual, and the chancel includes a most unusual 13th century aumbry divided into six compartments.

The church also contains Anglo-Saxon sculpture on the grand scale. The East wall of the porch displays a life-size (but sadly decapitated) figure of the Crucified Christ, while over the porch doorway is set another scene of the crucifixion - though when it was moved into its present position those involved assembled it wrong - the figures of St John and Our Lady are on the wrong sides, both of them looking away from the cross!

All this is in a remote corner of Oxfordshire (between Witney and Faringdon) - and a part that is perhaps not much visited - but there is so much to repay the visitor in the villages and the scenery. One other delight is the little Norman church at Kencot.

On the down side this part of the county includes the ghastly development of Carterton. At risk of offending its inhabitants I think that if I wanted to encourage crime of all kinds I would build a place like Carterton. Happily some efforts are now being made to make it a place fit for humans to live in.