St Laurence's Church, Wyck Rissington

St Laurence's is the parish church of Wyck Rissington, a small village with a pond about 2.5 km east of Bourton-on-the-Water, across the Eye and the Dikler. It was consecrated in 1269, keeps work of the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, and is listed Grade I. The young Gustav Holst was organist here in 1892 and 1893, and it is open every day in daylight.

History

St Laurence's is a medieval church with three later stories attached to it. Its listing records that before 1264 the advowson gave its rents to Eynsham Abbey, and that the monks of Eynsham may have built the chancel and the tower. The church celebrated its 750th anniversary in 2019, counting from the consecration of a church at Wick by the Bishop of Worcester in 1269, which the Victoria County History takes to be this one.

Restoration

In 1879 a restoration by J. E. K. Cutts pulled down the transepts, which had been added in 1822, raised the nave roof and built the north aisle and porch, giving the church its present plan.

Gustav Holst

Holst, born in Cheltenham in 1874, was organist and choirmaster here in 1892 and 1893, fresh from school in Cheltenham, as the parish council puts it. An inscription on the organ, which is still in use, records that he played it as parish organist in those years. The parish council points to the Holst Museum in Cheltenham for more on his time here, and the 28-mile Gustav Holst Way from Cranham ends at the church.

Canon Cheales's maze

Canon Harry Cheales, a twentieth-century rector of the parish, made a hedge maze in the rectory garden, which has since gone. Below his memorial in the church (he died in 1984) is a wall mosaic of its plan, about 90 cm by 60, made by Adrian Fisher Maze Design in 1988, according to the Tiles and Architectural Ceramics Society's gazetteer. The Cotswolds National Landscape's walk leaflet points it out too.

What to see

Outside, look for the twelfth-century corbel table, a row of carved stone brackets under the eaves, on the north and south walls of the nave. The tower rises in four diminishing stages, the lower two probably thirteenth century, to a parapet of blind trefoil arcading with a pinnacle at each corner.

The chancel's east wall is the church's best feature: two pairs of tall, thin lancets, each pair with a diamond-shaped light with concave sides above it, and another diamond near the top of the gable, while three more lancets light the north side. The parish council calls the church one of the earliest examples of primitive plate tracery. Inside, look for:

• twelve round plaques of olive wood on the chancel walls (there were once fifteen), probably Flemish work of the fifteenth or sixteenth century, showing the mysteries of the rosary;
• the tub-shaped font of about 1200, and the tall fifteenth-century tower arch;
• the medieval wagon roof over the chancel;
• fragments of early fourteenth-century glass in the chancel lancets, and windows by Kempe of 1917 and by Powell and Sons of 1928;
• the mosaic of Canon Cheales's maze, below his memorial;
• in the porch, a reset twelfth-century doorway and an early headstone, crudely lettered, whose worn inscription seems to end with the date 1638.

Visiting

St Laurence's is open every day in daylight hours for prayer and quiet, and entry is free. Holy Communion is on the second Sunday of the month and Matins on the fourth. A Church Near You gives no accessibility information, so check ahead if you need step-free access. The walk leaflet places its pubs, cafés and shops in Bourton, so bring what you need or eat there.

Getting there

The best way to come is on foot. Bourton-on-the-Water and Wyck Rissington, a 4-mile walk from the war memorial in Bourton without stiles, crosses Greystones Farm, follows the Oxfordshire Way over the Eye and the Dikler, and comes through the village past the pond and the church at about its halfway point, returning by Rissington Mill. By car, the village is reached by narrow lanes and we found no public car park, so park considerately or start from Bourton's Rissington Road car park, GL54 2BN.

Nearby

On the way out from Bourton the walk passes Salmonsbury Camp, the Iron Age enclosure on Greystones Farm. Back in Bourton, St Lawrence's Church and St Mary's at Lower Slaughter are the neighbouring churches, and the Old New Inn, the Willow and the Croft are where the walk ends up for food. Our story on famous people with Cotswold connections follows Holst's life from Cheltenham.