St Marys Bampton is open daily from 10am – 5pm
Address: Church View, Bampton, OX18 2LZ
Accessibility, Facilities, and Parking: Please visit our dedicated accessibility page here
St Mary’s Photo Gallery Click here
Church & Congregation
The church of St Mary the Virgin is located in the older part of the town. It dates from the 9th century, with a 13th century spire and carved stone reredos of Christ and his Apostles from about 1400. St Mary’s history is well documented in ‘A brief History and Description of St. Mary the Virgin ‘ by Reverend David Lloyd and with photographs by Janet Rouse.
St Mary’s is also used as the set of St Michael and All Angels Church in the television series Downton Abbey; Churchgate House is additionally used as the set of Crawley House, the residence of Isobel and Matthew Crawley.
Services are a mixture of Sung Eucharists, Morning Prayer and Family Celebrations.
Choir
The Choir sings regularly at sung services and is available for weddings. For more details please contact the Parish Administrator here.
Care & Share
The Care & Share takes place every Wednesday at 8:00am via Zoom. If you would like to join in please contact Janice and ask for the Zoom link.
Men’s Breakfast
The parish Men’s Breakfast takes place every second Saturday from 9:00am at Bampton Coffee House. This is a monthly social event for men to which all is welcome churchgoer or not. We enjoy a good breakfast, socialising, and putting the world to right!
Youth Group
St Marys has recently started a new youth group! We meet regularly and plan to have yearly trips away. To find out more please contact us here.
Bellringing
St Marys has a peal of 8 bells, some of which date back to the 17th Century. In late 2006 the bells were restored for the first time in 100 years at a cost of about £40,000, and all but the heaviest two were removed by Whites of Appleton. The bell ringers would welcome new members, both experienced and those wanting to try to learn a new skill. If you are interested in finding out more about bellringing please contact our Parish Administrator here.
Flower Guild
Our team of flower arrangers produce wonderful floral displays for weddings and throughout the year. The Annual Flower Festival in church takes place over the late May bank holiday weekend. To find out more about about the guild please contact Barbara Farrell at [email protected]
Friends of St Mary’s
The Friends of St Mary’s are delighted to announce another season of afternoon talks for 2024! Please keep an eye out on the news page here for information about the talks, for information about the Friends, please visit their page here.
Bampton Beer Festival
The Bampton beer Festival will return in August 2025. Please look out for more information nearer the time.
Roman Catholic Services
The Parish of St. Joseph’s Carterton (a Roman Catholic parish) no longer hold regular services at St Mary’s, but the church is used for RC weddings and funerals. For more information and contact details please visit their website here.
Churchwarden
Darrell Jacobs
Location & History
The Church of St Mary the Virgin, Bampton, Oxfordshire lies at the centre of an ancient parish within an Anglo-Saxon royal estate and on the site of a late Anglo-Saxon Minster from 950 or earlier. The parish was the largest in Oxfordshire and incorporated some 11,238 acres as late as 1877. Evidence suggests that there was a church on the site much before the Norman Conquest, although the earliest surviving document records the gift of the church (and Deanery Manor) by William the Conqueror to Leofric, Bishop of Exeter and the Church of Peter the Apostle and Martyr Exeter (Exeter Cathedral) in 1069.
It is likely that any earlier building was severely damaged in the siege of Bampton that had taken place in 1142. The only surviving element of the church from before that time is the Anglo-Saxon tower (now housing the staircase to the bellringing chamber) evidenced by the fine herringbone stonework. It seems likely that work on the present building began in 1153 when the parish was split in two by the see of Exeter. The present appearance of the church is largely a result of a remodelling of 1270, when the spire was built and the aisles were added.
Bampton, also called Bampton in the Bush, is a civil parish in the Thames Valley about 4.5 miles southwest of Witney. It includes the hamlet of Weald. The 2011 census recorded the population as 2564 but this number has surely increased with the building of new homes in the last 7 years and is set to rise further. Unemployment is generally low but despite this, there is limited availability of low cost or social housing and house prices are generally well above the national average. This creates small pockets of social deprivation on and general difficulty for young people to buy their own property and stay in the area.
Bampton is variously referred to as both a town and a village! It has a town hall and a village hall. It was recorded in the Domesday book as a market town in 1086 and the area has had settlements since Iron Age and Roman times. The first written facts about Bampton were recorded in the 7th century AD.
More recently, Bampton has been host to the popular drama, Downton Abbey, with the village and church scenes being filmed here and leading to interested tourists now frequently visiting! It is also the setting for the fictional crime novels, The Chronicles of Hugh de Singleton, set in about 1366 by Mel Starr.
Nowadays, there are not so many shops but we are blessed with a primary school (detailed earlier), Post Office, a butcher, a general store, a coffee house and tea room, an antique and collectable emporium, a GP surgery, Art Gallery and a number of small businesses , including a solicitor, two hairdressers and a Chinese takeaway. It also has the Charity shop, which for many years has raised thousands of pounds for local good causes and is staffed by volunteers. There are still four pubs to frequent!
Despite these adventures, many residents travel outside the town for employment and since there are now only limited bus services to the surrounding towns there is a need to travel by car and therefore issues with parking in certain areas.
Bampton has a long tradition of Morris dancing and every Whit Monday Morris dancers congregate to dance from dawn to dusk around the town. Bampton also enjoys annual donkey derbies, shirt race s and firework display s, and numerous clubs and societies, including The Bush Club a lunch club for the elderly run weekly by volunteers.
Bampton is a wonderful place to live. It is a pretty village with many customs. The people are warm hearted and there is a strong sense of service, community and welcoming visitors. Village website: http://www.bamptonoxon.co.uk/