3. The Suspended Tombs of the Croxford Chantry Chapel

In the early C14 the north transept was extended to provide a raised chantry chapel with a crypt below, an arrangement similar to that found in nearby Burford church which was probably built by the same mason. The crypt housed the cleaned bones of those formerly buried in the churchyard, whose souls would enjoy the after-care of chantry priests. The chamber also had a separate access from the outside. Above, in the chantry chapel itself, ‘soul masses’ were to be said by three priests in perpetuity for the donor of the building, whose effigy remains.

After the Reformation, and certainly by 1594, the chapel was lowered to the level of the rest of the church and the crypt sealed off, leaving the effigies apparently suspended some 2 metres above ground level.

The effigies have been painstakingly identified as those of John de Croxford of Kidlington and, most probably, his wife Elizabeth. The end-to-end arrangement of the two effigies is most unusual. Croxford was a local lawyer and collector of the wool subsidy for the Crown; he is here shown in the legal attire of a full-length gown with hood, his foot resting on a woolsack. These two attributions hardly ever occur together, endorsing the Croxford identification.

Above the effigies are finely-worked corbel figures: a male above Croxford and a female above Elizabeth. Boldly-cusped tracery springs from both corbels. The corbel figures formerly supported statues.