
The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland

St Nicholas the Confessor (medieval)
Parish church
The village of Forest Hill is 6 miles E of Oxford. The church occupies an attractive hilltop site with views south across the valley to Shotover Park. The original church was not documented until c. 1140. It now comprises a chancel, nave, N aisle and S porch, dominated at the W end by a high gabled bellcote that required propping up by two massive buttresses in the 17thc. In the early 13thc., the S wall, the N chancel wall, the greater part of the bellcote and the S porch were rebuilt. Remaining Romanesque features from the earlier church are the large chancel arch with its plain imposts and the probably reset outer doorway of the porch, Transitional into Early English, with stiff leaf capitals and plain square imposts.