The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St Edmund and St George (now)
Parish church
Hethe is a hamlet in NE Oxfordshire, 4 miles N of Bicester. A church existed here by the mid-12thc., probably a small two-cell structure with an apse. The present church comprises a square-ended chancel, a clerestoried nave, S and N aisles, a S porch and a W open wooden belfry and spire. In the early 13thc. the apse was replaced by the existing chancel with pilaster buttresses and part of a keeled half-roll string course. The S aisle was added in the 14thc. There was a drastic restoration by G.E. Street in the 19thc. Surviving Romanesque decoration is found in the chancel, in the E wall a re-set stone bearing a beast head, pilaster buttresses at NE and SE corners, and the remains of a string course, and in the S wall a priest’s door and a round-headed window. In the nave W wall is a similar window. The plain tub font may also be Romanesque.