Bampton Community Archive

St Mary The Virgin - photographs over the years

BCA - 2025.8125
Item
2025

St Mary The Virgin - photographs over the years

Nik Stanbridge

St Beornwald of Bampton by John Blair 1984

BCA - 2025.8124
Item
1984

St Beornwald of Bampton by John Blair 1984 He was an Anglo Saxon Saint and Bampton Church was originally called St Beornwald's
Bampton parish church was an Anglo-Saxon ‘old minster’. Scattered references show that St. Beornwald, described variously as ‘confessor’ and ‘priest and martyr’, was enshrined there from the mid 950s or earlier until the Reformation, and that the feast of his ‘deposition’ was celebrated on 21 December. A 14th-century gabled recess in the north transept may be part of his shrine; a monumental brass showing an ecclesiastic holding a crozier was possibly added in the early 15th century. It is suggested that Beornwald, who must have died between the mid 7th and mid 10th century, may have been head or founder of the minster community

Nik Stanbridge