St Laurence's Church, Combe

St Laurence's Church stands beside the green in Combe, a village above the River Evenlode on the western edge of Blenheim's park in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds, about 2 miles west of Woodstock as the crow flies. The monks of Eynsham Abbey built its nave in 1395, and inside are medieval wall paintings, a stone pulpit of the same years and glass of about 1450. It is listed Grade I.

History

St Laurence's is the second church Combe has had: the first stood down in the valley, on the north bank of the Evenlode near the present Combe halt on the railway, and the parish's own history says the village moved up the hill, probably as farming changed and the forest was cleared, and the old church stayed in use for a while after. In 1141 or 1142 the Empress Maud gave the church to the monks of Eynsham Abbey, and there has probably been a church on this site since the twelfth century.

The monks of Eynsham

The chancel was built, or more likely rebuilt, in about 1310 to 1320. In 1395 the monks raised the nave in the new Perpendicular style, perhaps reusing parts of an older building, and the date is cut on the fleur-de-lys finial of the south porch. Eynsham appointed the rectors until 1399, then kept the church's income and appointed vicars instead. In 1478 Thomas Rotherham, bishop of Lincoln, bought the living and gave it to Lincoln College, Oxford, which is still the patron. John Wesley, a fellow of Lincoln, preached here in 1731, 1737 and 1743.

Paintings, pews and a fire

At the Reformation the wall paintings were covered, and texts were painted over them: the Ten Commandments and the Creed in the sixteenth century, more in the seventeenth. The rood screen was taken out and burnt in 1852, and in 1855 oak pews came to Combe from the chapel at Blenheim Palace. In 1892, by the church's account, the rector, the Revd Stephen Pearce, began a restoration that uncovered the paintings again (the listing says they were found in 1894); the lime-water wash used to clean them reacted with the lead in the old pigments and damaged their surface.

Early on a March morning in 1918 the tower caught fire, from sparks that reached the birds' nests in it. The ring of five bells of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries cracked, the parish chest and the registers from 1646 were lost, and the one-handed clock was largely destroyed; a bucket chain saved the nave roof. The bells were recast at Taylor's foundry in Loughborough as a ring of six in the 1920s (1924 or 1925; the accounts differ). What was left of the old clock went to the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford, and a new clock by John Smith and Sons of Derby, with diamond-shaped faces designed by Sir Albert Richardson, was put up in 1948.

What to see

The paintings are the reason to come, and they are best read from the nave, facing east.

• Over the chancel arch, the Doom: Christ in judgement with the Apostles and St Peter, and the damned, among them a priest, a woman and a miller
• On the nave side of the chancel arch, a Crucifixion with the Virgin and St John
• Towards the east end of the south wall, part of an Annunciation: the angel's head and wing, a scroll and the hand of God
• On the south wall, the Ten Commandments between Moses and Aaron, painted over a great St Christopher; the fish, otter and mermaid of the river he fords still show round it

The listing dates the scheme to about 1440, while the church's own guide puts the paintings in the fourteenth century, so the date is uncertain.

The stone pulpit is rare: many-sided, carved with blind tracery and standing on a ribbed stem, it belongs to the late fourteenth century, the years the nave was built. In the glass, look high up in the windows for the four-winged cherubim standing on wheels, painted in about 1450, probably in Oxford, and in the east window for Christ and the Virgin at her coronation. A St James in the south-east window of the nave carries a line of the Creed on his scroll. The south porch keeps an old plank door with iron fittings, and the north porch an inner doorway with a round arch of the early twelfth century, older than the rest of the church.

Visiting

St Laurence's is open every day, from about 9am or 10am until 4pm or dusk if that comes first, and entry is free. Services are held on Sundays and on Wednesday mornings, and the church may be closed for a funeral, a baptism or a wedding. There is no toilet.

Getting there

The church is on Park Road, Combe (OX29 8NA), at the edge of the green. Combe is about 5 miles from Woodstock by road, round the western side of Blenheim's park. On foot, the Combe and Blenheim Park walk starts on the green a few steps away and goes into Blenheim's park on its public footpaths, past Fair Rosamund's Well and the lake.

Nearby

Blenheim's park begins at the edge of the village. Our walk passes the Queen Pool and comes in sight of the Column of Victory, and the palace itself, Blenheim Palace, is on the far side of the park. In Woodstock, St Mary Magdalene is the town church. For another village church with medieval work in the Windrush valley, see St Kenelm's at Minster Lovell.