St Cross Church

About

St Cross Church is a former parish church, now a historic collections centre, in Oxford, England, to the northeast of the centre of the city. The church is on St Cross Road at the junction with Manor Road, just south of Holywell Manor. Also close by is Holywell Cemetery.

St Cross Church was once a dependent chapelry of St Peter-in-the-East on Queen's Lane, north of the High Street in central Oxford. The precise date of the church's foundation is not known, but it has been suggested that St Cross was first built around AD 890 by St Grimwald. However, archaeological investigations in 2009 did not show evidence of a pre-Norman church. The chancel arch is late 11th or early 12th century and the nave was built in about 1160. The tower and aisles were added in the 13th century, the upper stage of the tower was rebuilt in 1464 and the north arcade and aisle were rebuilt in the middle of the 15th century. A few of the windows are original Perpendicular Gothic; the remainder are Victorian Gothic Revival. The aisles were rebuilt again in the 19th century — the north (except for its west end) in 1839 and the south in 1843 — the latter to designs by the architect J. M. Derick...