The University Church of St. Mary the Virgin, the High, Oxford.
The floodlit remarkable decorated spire of the 1320's and the extravagant south porch, added in 1637.
The porch is highly ornate, with spiral columns supporting a curly pediment framing a shell niche with a statue of the Virgin and Child, underneath a Gothic fan vault. The style was too close to Roman baroque and Catholicism for the puritans of the day and the porch itself was used as evidence in Archbishop Laud's execution trial, citing its "scandalous statue" to which one witness saw "one bow and another pray". Only five years after the porch was erected the statue of the Virgin Mary and Child had their heads shot off by passing puritan Cromwellian soldiers in 1642. They were later restored but the body still contains bullet holes.
The University Church of St. Mary the Virgin, the High, Oxford.
The floodlit remarkable decorated spire of the 1320's and the extravagant south porch, added in 1637.
The porch is highly ornate, with spiral columns supporting a curly pediment framing a shell niche with a statue of the Virgin and Child, underneath a Gothic fan vault. The style was too close to Roman baroque and Catholicism for the puritans of the day and the porch itself was used as evidence in Archbishop Laud's execution trial, citing its "scandalous statue" to which one witness saw "one bow and another pray". Only five years after the porch was erected the statue of the Virgin Mary and Child had their heads shot off by passing puritan Cromwellian soldiers in 1642. They were later restored but the body still contains bullet holes.