Cropredy - Church and Chapels

Church and Chapels

The Church of England parish church of Saint Mary the Virgin is built of the local ironstone, which is a ferrous Jurassic limestone. Parts of the south aisle date from the 13th century. However, most of the present building is Decorated Gothic and was built in the 14th century, including the chancel arch, nave arcades, east window and most of the windows in the south aisle. In the 15th century Perpendicular Gothic alterations were made including a clerestory added above the nave, the north aisle rebuilt with new windows, and both aisles extended eastwards to form side chapels.

The church had a clock by 1512, when the vicar, Roger Lupton, left £6 13s 4d in his will in trust for the churchwardens to pay someone to keep the clock running and chiming every quarter hour and the village curfew. Lupton's will prescribed that the wardens be fined 6s 8d per month of £10 per year if they were to fail. A new clock may have been installed around 1700, and Lupton's clock may then have been transferred to Claydon. The later clock was itself replaced in 1831 with a new one made by John Moore and Sons of Clerkenwell, London.

The bell tower has a ring of bells. There were six, but in 2007 two new treble bells increased this to eight. One of the new bells is named St Mary; the other Fairport Convention Festival Bell.

St. Mary's parish is now part of the Benefice of Shire's Edge along with those of Claydon, Great Bourton, Mollington and Wardington.

By the 13th century Cropredy was associated with the legend of Saint Fremund, a Mercian who was said to have been martyred in the 9th century. Fremund's relics are supposed to have been moved from Offchurch in Warwickshire to Prescote, where they were lost for a time and then rediscovered and moved to Cropredy. They were then moved to the Augustinian Priory at Dunstable, probably in 1207, but an association with Fremund remained at Cropredy. There are records of gifts to a chapel and shrine to the saint here in 1488 and 1539, and a chantry priest serving in St. Fremund's chapel in 1489. During the English Reformation under Edward VI the Crown sold the chapel and its contents in 1549 and it was probably demolished. No trace remains, its site is unknown and it is not clear whether the shrine chapel was at St. Mary's church or elsewhere in the parish.

A Methodist chapel had been built by 1822. The congregation outgrew it so a larger chapel was built on a new site in 1881.