Fairford United Church

Contact: Brian Routledge

Tel No: 01285-712853

Open times Weekly service at 10:00 on Sunday mornings

Address Fairford United Church, Milton Street, Fairford About Congregational / Methodist Church. Service at 10:00am every Sunday.

All Welcome!

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St Thomas of Canterbury Catholic Church

St Thomas of Canterbury Catholic Church Fairford, Gloucestershire Church history Following the closure of the recusant chapel at Hatherop Castle in 1844 a church was built at Horcott during the following year for the cost of £700. The first Mass was celebrated on Sunday, 12th October 1845.

This was five years before the Restoration of the Hierarchy in England and before the creation of the Diocese of Clifton. The stained glass window behind the altar depicts St. Thomas of Canterbury in the centre panel, with the date of 1845 still visible.

St Marys Church

The only parish church in the country to have retained its complete set of medieval stained glass windows.

In the 1490's a local wool merchant named John Tame added the present church onto an earlier tower built by the fifth Earl of Warwick earlier in the 15th century. The structure of Tame's church has remained virtually unchanged to the present day. The screens were added in the early part of the 16th century by his son, Sir Edmund Tame, and bear the symbol of Catherine of Aragon - a pomegranate.

The stalls in the Chancel, with their misericords, were probably made in the time of Edward I (1272-1307) for Cirencester Abbey and taken from there to Fairford after the dissolution of the monastery in 1539. Henry VIII must have attended the Church on the saint's day which occurred during his stay in Fairford in 1520; his attention would have been drawn to the Prince of Wales' feather and motto which had been included five times in the windows as a compliment to either his elder brother, Prince Arthur who died in 1502, or to Henry himself.