This is an old church, originally founded in the 12th century. It is close to Frideswide Square, Oxford Railway Station or what used to be Rewley Abbey.
With all of the recent works and construction associated with works around the opening of a new rail bridge (long, long overdue) at the Square, it was quite nice to take a stroll past the now empty Jam Factory to this slightly dilapidated church.
Here I found and had a brief chat with volunteers who were energetically cutting back and tidying the surrounding church yard. That did look like hard work. The church itself is dark and foreboding. A quick look at the clock tower revealed its clock face now gradually pealing away, as it has been doing for a few years now.
With the churchyard tidied up it would be nice if there were the funds to repair the clock…
So there is a bit of a theme here – with all of the new construction and re-development works around Oxford, some of the city’s older buildings are falling into disrepair. Hopefully that is just temporary and could get corrected. As elsewhere, hopefully it might be found that the old and the new can complement each other.
The front of the old Jam Factory
The clock tower at St Thomas’s Church
My watercolour of the St. Thomas A’ Becket Church…
St. Frideswide information board
Plus various links to previous posts…
