The University Church of St Mary the Virgin | Oxford | Oxfordshire | England | United Kingdom
Oxford | Oxfordshire | England | United Kingdom | 23.04.2019
Bletsoe Church
St Mary's Church in Bletsoe, Bedfordshire, UK
Haunted, St Mary's Church, Clophill ?
A photographic visit around the infamous St Mary's Old Church at Clophill, Bedfordshire, reputedly haunted and the site of many strange happenings.
Old St. Mary church Clophill Bedfordshire
Music taken from: Trailer Music World I
The ruined church at the village edge is a Grade II listed building, first listed in 1961 and formerly called The Old Parish Church, but later re-listed under the name The Church of St Mary The Virgin. It was probably built c. 1350. It was built in the Perpendicular style, the fabric being mostly of coarse ironstone rubble with ashlar dressings.
St Mary's Parish Church, Woburn
St Mary’s Church is a Grade II* listed parish church in Woburn, Bedfordshire.
Footage shot 02/06/18
carlspencerphotography.co.uk
Oxford University Church of St Mary the Virgin with philharmonic Orchestra, live in the background.
The University Church of St Mary the Virgin(St Mary's or SMV for short) is an Oxford church situated on the north side of the High Street. It is the centre from which the University of Oxford grew and its parish consists almost exclusively of university and college buildings.
St Mary's possesses an eccentric baroque porch, designed by Nicholas Stone, facing High Street, and a spire which is claimed by some church historians to be one of the most beautiful in England. Radcliffe Square lies to the north and to the east is Catte Street. The 13th century tower is open to the public for a fee and provides good views across the heart of the historic university city, especially Radcliffe Square, the Radcliffe Camera, Brasenose College and All Souls College.
A church was established on this site, at the centre of the old walled city, in Anglo-Saxontimes; records of 1086 note the church as previously belonging to an estate held byAubrey de Coucy, likely Iffley, and the parish including part of Littlemore.
In the early days of Oxford University, the church was adopted as the first building of the university, congregation met there from at least 1252, and by the early 13th century it was the seat of university government and was used for lectures and the award of degrees. Around 1320 a two storey building was added to the north side of the chancel — the ground floor (now the Vaults cafe) became the convocation house used by university parliament, and the upper storey housed books bequeathed by Thomas Cobham, Bishop of Worcester, which formed the first university library.
When Adam de Brome became rector in 1320 the church's fortune became linked to what would later become Oriel College. In 1324 Brome founded St Mary Hall and appropriated the church's rectory house, including small tithes, oblations and burial dues for the college, an act confirmed in 1326 by the bishop, Henry Burghersh, after Brome had gotEdward II's patronage to refound the college. Brome diverted the revenues of the church to his college, which thereafter was responsible for appointing the vicar and providing four chaplains to celebrate the daily services in the church. Early provosts of the college were inducted into their stall in the church, and until 1642 fellows were required to attend services on Sundays and holy days.
St Mary's was the site of the 1555 trial of theOxford Martyrs, when the bishops Latimer andRidley and the Archbishop Cranmer, were tried for heresy. The martyrs were imprisoned at the former Bocardo Prison near St Michael at the Northgate in Cornmarket Street and subsequently burnt at the stake just outside the city walls to the north. A cross set into the road marks that location on what is nowBroad Street, the nearby Martyrs' Memorial, at the south end of St Giles', commemorates the events.
A section cut out of Cranmer's Pillar remains from the morning of Cranmer's death on 21 March 1556 when he was brought to the church for a sermon from Henry Cole, Provostof Eton College, who on Mary I's instructions, spelled out the reasons why he must die. Cranmer stood on a stage, the corner of which was supported by a small shelf cut from the pillar opposite the pulpit; withdrawing his recantations of his Reformed beliefs, he swore that when he was burnt, the hand which had signed them would be the first to burn.
Until the 17th century, the church was used not only for prayers but also for increasingly rowdy graduation and degree ceremonies. This phenomenon, The notion that 'sacrifice is made equally to God and Apollo', in the same place where homage was due to God and God alone was repugnant to William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, who in the 1630s initiated the erecting of a separate building for these ceremonies. This project was cut short by the fall of Laud and the outbreak of the English Civil War, but after the Restoration it was revived and carried through by John Fell, Dean of Christ Church, who commissioned Christopher Wren to erect what became the Sheldonian Theatre. Thereafter, the church was reserved for religious worship only.
During his time in Oxford, John Wesley often attended the university sermon, and later, as a fellow of Lincoln College preached sermons in the church, including the university sermon on Salvation by Faith on 18 June 1738 and the Almost Christian sermon on 25 July 1741. Following his denouncement of the spiritual apathy and sloth of the senior members of the University in his sermon Scriptural Christianity on 24 August 1744, he was never asked to preach there again — I preached, I suppose, the last time at St Mary's, he wrote in his journal, Be it so; I have fully delivered my soul.
In 1828 John Henry Newman became vicar and his sermons became popular with undergraduates. From the present pulpit John Keble preached the assize sermon of 14 July 1833, which is considered to have started the Oxford Movement.
The Bells of St Mary the Virgin, Woburn, Bedfordshire
Oxford Diocesan Guild
Woburn, Bedfordshire
St Mary the Virgin
Monday 29 August 2011 in 53mins (24-1-16)
1280 Plain Bob Major
Composed: Simon Read
1 John B Marchbank
2 Christine Marchbank
3 Alexandra J Marchbank
4 Raymond Watkin
5 B Douglas Hird
6 Nick Read
7 Alan J Marchbank
8 Simon Read (C)
Rung to celebrate the Silver Wedding Anniversary of Nick & Alison Read
[Wikipedia] Church of St Mary the Virgin, Keysoe
Church of St Mary the Virgin is a Grade I listed church in Keysoe, Bedfordshire, England. It became a listed building on 13 July 1964.
According to local legend, a builder named William Dickens was working on the steeple in 1718 when he slipped and fell. It is said that he was miraculously saved by reciting a prayer in mid-air.
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Restoration of The Bells, St Mary The Virgin, Bampton in Oxfordshire
The restoration of the 8 bells in the church of St Mary The Virgin, Bampton in Oxfordshire was begun in 2006 and completed early in 2007. The front six were removed, the front three went to the Whitechapel foundry in London to be tuned and then joined the other 3 at Whites of Appleton, near Oxford, to have new headstocks and sealed bearings. The very heavy back two remained in the belfry but were lifted out of their gudgeons and bearings to have new sealed bearings and headstocks fitted in situ. New wheels and stays were made and fitted. New ropes were fitted and finally we had a joyous service of dedication for the restored bells led by Rev. David Lloyd.
The Cathedral of the Marsh
Here I take a look around All Saints' Church Lydd.
Lydd lies in the middle of Romney Marsh between Dungeness and Appledore .
Originally on the coast it was a famous port and fishing town lying on an island on the opposite side of the estuary of the river Rother to New Romney . Lydd was founded on an island in the marshes by the Saxons and was known as Hylda .
Edward I in the Cinque Ports charter gave the rights to Lydd so that it shared taxes with New Romney on the catches of fish landed in the area.
The stonework of All Saints church was started by the Saxons, and some of this original stonework is still visible by the font. The wealth of Lydd enabled the church to be enlarged until it is now the largest of the churches on the Romney Marsh and is known as the Cathedral of the Marshes . The church tower was raised to 132ft high by Cardinal Wolsey in the 15th century.
In 1287 the Great Storm hit the channel and blocked the mouth of the Rother, changing its course to run south from Appledore to Rye . This change turned the harbour at Lydd into farmland and marsh, and destroyed its main claim to fame.
As the land grew around the island so the fishermen moved with it to the sea, today at Lydd on Sea about 3 miles south.
Accompanying music: Prelude No.13 in F Sharp Minor by Frederic Chopin.
Bellringing At St Mary The Virgin Attenborough
I sometimes ring the bells of Attenborough Church but today was just a visit so I filmed the bells ringing from the outside. I came to the church because it was my Grandpa’s Birthday but he died on 29th July 2017 so I came to lay some flowers down and wish him a happy birthday in heaven. The church was built in 903AD it’s got a set of 8 bells Tenor weighing 11cwt it’s a very nice of bells comment what you think and enjoy.
Sandy Flyby 1
Sandy - Bedfordshire UK from Phantom 3 Advanced, by Greg Lukosek
Music by Piano Guys :
The history of St Mary the Virgin's church Bettshanger
A brief history of St Mary the Virgin's church Bettshanger
St. Mary's Church, Longworth, Oxfordshire, England
A short film featuring the St. Mary's Church in the Oxfordshire village of Longworth. Views inside and out of this beautiful 13th Century church in the Diocese of Oxford. Filmed in August 2010
The Haunted Church of St Mary the Virgin, Clophill
The ruined church of St. Mary the Virgin at the edge of the village of Clophill was built around 1350. William Henry Page, writing in 1908, dated the two-light windows of the belfry, the two-light west window, and the tower arch to the 15th century, and noted that the nave walls are older than the tower. Improvements were made in the early 19th century, with a west gallery added in 1814 and a new east end to the chancel in 1819. By the 1820's the church's seating capacity had become insufficient. Plans to enlarge it came to nothing partly as a consequence of the rector falling ill. He died in 1843, and a new rector was appointed, who wanted to relocate the church to the village centre. So instead, a new church was built and the old one used, for a while, as a mortuary chapel for the graveyard, which remained in use.
In the 1960s the church became a focus of media attention after a widely reported incident of graveyard desecration was followed by a series of similar incidents, both at Clophill and across Britain. On 16th March 1963, in a street in Clophill, a local couple saw two Luton youths playing with a human skull, who claimed that they had taken it from inside St Mary's, where they had discovered it stuck on a broken piece of window frame that had been jammed into a wall. On the floor were a breastbone, pelvis and leg bones laid in the pattern used for the Black Mass, as it was described in newspaper reports of police statements. Scattered cockerel feathers and tracings of two Maltese crosses infilled in red, one newly done and the other somewhat weatherworn, were found inside the church. The rector at that time, Rev. Leslie Barker, reported that six graves of females had been tampered with before the stone slab above a seventh, that of Jenny Humberstone who had died in 1770 aged 22, had been dislodged and the coffin broken open. Barker, speaking to the press, stated that Satan worshippers are known to always use a female at the centre of their ceremonies, and his churchwarden ascribed the damage to some kind of devil worship. Similarly, police reportedly stated that, as animal sacrifice was commonly described in accounts of satanic rites, the cockerel was possibly sacrificial, and the crosses were possibly painted with animal blood (although on this point Barker disagreed, thinking them more likely to be simply red paint). The remains of Jenny Humberstone were reinterred on 23rd March, but the incident was not to be an isolated one, thanks to the newspaper publicity. Her grave was desecrated again on two occasions before 2nd April, and the church had become a night-time attraction for local teenagers. Humberstone's grave was resealed but was reopened on the night of the following full moon, and there was a run on books about magic at Luton Central Library. The discovery of the heads of six cows and a horse in Bluebell Wood, Caddington, south of Luton, on 9th April fuelled further interest. By then a local newspaper had interviewed a student from Silsoe Agricultural College who admitted to having visited the church two years previously with a group of students. They had killed a cockerel, spread its feathers and blood around, and drawn a Celtic cross as a huge joke that doesn't seem so funny now. Despite the admission, stories about St Mary's, and about Clophill in general, continued. Leslie Barker retired in 1969, and reported that since the first incidents in 1963 there had been numerous instances of graves being broken into and some sort of rite performed. The desecration of St Mary's in 1963 was followed by a spate of similar newspaper reports of black magic rites in churches in 1963 and 1964, including reports of a series of desecrations in Lancashire, symbols painted on the porch of a church in Bramber, Sussex, and a pentagram and a sheep's heart pierced with thirteen thorns in St Clement's in Leigh-on-Sea.
The incident was covered in the 2013 film 'Paranormal Diaries: Clophill'; and today the church is regarded as one of the most haunted places in Britain; being haunted by numerous spirits including a hooded monk. Another significant observation is that it is said the church is facing in the wrong direction. Churches traditionally face east, the direction from which the sun rises, which in the Christian religion is associated with the location of heaven and the return of the Messiah. Churches are positioned with the altar facing east so people will pray in that holy direction. Some have claimed that because St Mary The Virgin faces away from God, it thus opens its doors to Hell. Indeed, the church has a long history of reported hauntings and supposed satanic rituals.
Filmed on my Sony Cybershot DSC-H55 digital camera and iPhone 6 in day and night on 1st July 2016.
The history of Saint Mary the Virgin's church Nonington
A brief history of Saint Mary the Virgin's church Nonington Kent
Descending the tower at University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford
oh you know. just my usual quirky, awkward self narrating my climb down the clock tower of the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford, UK! :)
The history of Saint Mary the Virgin's church Stalisfield
A brief history of Saint Mary the Virgin's church Stalisfield Kent.
The Bells of St Mary the Virgin, Woburn, Bedfordshire (2)
A plain course of Bristol Surprise Major being rung on Thursday 26th January at the church of St Mary the Virgin, Woburn, Bedfordshire
The Church of St Mary, Iffley
Flown for non commercial purposes with permission from the guardian of the parish.