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Church of the Holy Rood,
Ampney Crucis Village,
Ampney Crucis, Gloucestershire.

Cemeteries

This Church has (or had) a graveyard.

Note: any church within an urban environment may have had its graveyard closed after the Burial Act of 1853. Any new church built after that is unlikely to have had a graveyard at all.

Church History

This Place of Worship was founded in the Saxon period, and we understand it is still open.

Kelly's Directory of 1923 tells us that the church of the Holy Rood, or Sanctæ Crucis, is a building of stone in the Early English and Perpendicular styles, consisting of chancel, nave, transepts, south porch, and an embattled western tower containing 5 bells. Inside, are several tablets to the Pleydell and Blackwell families, and eight stained windows, the east window being a memorial to Mrs. Elizabeth Dunn, and there are others to the Gifford family. In the churchyard is a cross, said to have been erected by Abbot Parker about 1410-1415. It is 13 feet high, with four niches in the head, flanked by "richly carved buttresses", containing sculptured figures representing the Virgin and Child, a crucifix, with figures of the Holy Virgin and St John on either side, St Lawrence in deacon's garb holding a gridiron, and Robert Fitzhamon, the donor of the cross.

The Church is Grade I Listed, and said by the British Listed Buildings website to be of Saxon foundation. The Churchyard Cross is mentioned as a separate item, of which the site says the head had been hidden in the old stair to the rood tower, but was rediscovered in 1860, and replaced in its original position. Also Listed are remains of a medieval roadside cross, with "two large square steps, square base chamfered towards top and partly held together by iron cramps, with approximately 0.70m of shaft remaining".

Following the "Crucis" theme, another cross, on the outskirts of the village, was erected in 1920 as a War Memorial, which in Kelly's Directory of 1923 was said to commemorate "the men of the parish who fell in the Great War, 1914-18". Since then, the names of those who died in WWII have also been added - see Stuart Flight's collection of Parish Records for a transcription.

There may be more information available by by selecting one or more of the accompanying images on the right.

Denomination

Now or formerly Church of England.

If more than one congregation has worshipped here, or its congregation has united with others, in most cases this will record its original dedication.

Maps

This Church is located at OS grid reference SP0650701896. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

• Church of the Holy Rood, Ampney Crucis shown on a Google Map.
• Places of Worship in Ampney Crucis shown on a Google Map.
• Streetmap.co.uk (arrow on map shows the Place of Worship's location) (verified 2018-10-15)
• Bing (Ordnance Survey option) (verified 2018-10-13)
• Bing Maps ('Bird's Eye' View) (verified 2018-10-15)
• Ordnance Survey "getamap" (NB some of the 'Change Map' options may require a subscription) (verified 2018-10-15)
• OpenStreetMap (Maps © OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA) (verified 2018-10-15)
• A Vision of Britain Through Time - useful for Boundary Changes (verified 2018-10-15)
• www.magic.gov.uk (Modern Maps with various overlays) (verified 2018-10-15)

Resources

I have found many websites of use whilst compiling the information for this database. Here are some which deserve mention as being of special interest for Ampney Crucis, and perhaps to Local History and Places of Worship as a whole.

• Learn more about Buildings of special or historical interest on the British Listed Buildings (null) (verified 2018-09-19)
• Stuart Flight's webpages of Parish Records (null) (verified 2018-11-08)

The above links were selected and reviewed at the time I prepared the information, but please be aware their content may vary, or disappear entirely. These factors are outside my control.