St Mary's Church, Banbury


St Mary's Church is a Church of England parish church in Banbury, Oxfordshire in the Diocese of Oxford. The church is a Grade I listed building.

History

St Mary's Church was built in the 1790s to replace the Medieval one damaged during the English Civil War. The church was designed by Samuel Pepys Cockerell, with a tower and portico added by Charles Robert Cockerell in 1818 to 1822.
The inside of the church was re-ordered in the 1860s and 1870s by the then vicar Henry Back, an Anglo-Catholic, to make it more suitable for Eucharistic worship. He commissioned Arthur Blomfield oversee the re-ordering and to decorate the church in a Byzantine style.

Present day

St Mary's Church stands in the Central tradition of the Church of England.
Since 1993, the church have been shared by the Church of England and the United Reformed Church; it is not, however, a Local Ecumenical Partnership.
The church's Resurrection Chapel is home to one of the 84 Lamps of Brotherhood that were made after World War II as a sign of reconciliation between nations.

Notable clergy