The story of St. Mary Magdalen's potentially begins in the old Saxon city, despite lying just outside the boundary of the old city walls; it may have begun life as a daughter church of St. Frideswide's Priory in the city (now Christ Church Cathedral) and suffered burning at the hands of Viking raiders, but there is not a huge amount of evidence in support of this claim. The church was definitely in existence by 1074, however, as at this time, Robert D'Oyly, builder of Oxford Castle, founded the castle chapel of St. George, with St. Mary Magdalen's church forming part of the endowment for its maintenance (yes, Oxford has history outside of the university!). As such, a Norman Romanesque building definitely stood on this site, and much of its foundations still remain beneath the surface.

The church was expanded in the late 12th century by St. Hugh of Lincoln; in 1194 the north and south aisles were added, with only the south aisle and east chancel wall remaining from this period. In the late 13th century, Dearbhfhorghaill (Devorguilla) of Galloway (what a name!), made alterations to the north aisle for use as a college chapel dedicated to St. Catherine serving her husband's foundation, Balliol College. The Lady Chapel to the south was added c.1320 with the popular story being that the chapel was founded by Carmelite friars living near Gloucester Green, but this is now seen as unlikely.

The 16th century saw considerable changes, with the nave arcade being rebuilt and the south porch with its priest's room above being added early that century. The tower began construction in the early 1510s and the building work continued throughout the unrest of the Reformation, with it later being able to incorporate stones taken from the recently dissolved Rewley Abbey, a 13th century Cistercian foundation formerly located near the city's current train station. The churchwardens' accounts from this period of religious upheaval records eight altars being removed from the church.

The next work to be done to the church was, of course, the inescapable Victorian restoration. The church underwent multiple restorations by multiple architects, the first of these being in the early 1840s under the direction of the young Sir George Gilbert Scott and his assistant William Bonython Moffatt. Now, Gilbert Scott generally manages to remain a respectable name in architectural history; while the restorations of many churches were being bungled by amateurs, he was more sympathetic to the centuries of history which these buildings contained, even going so far as to publish a paper entitled 'A Plea for the Faithful Restoration of our Ancient Churches' in 1850. Scott's name attached to a restoration generally warrants a sigh of relief, and as a skilled architect and designer in general, often involves many items of his own creation which are of considerable interest in themselves.

However, if I have managed to kindle even the tiniest of flames of hope in your heart with these previous few sentences, I am afraid I must now ask you to prepare for them to be violently doused by the incessant, infernal floodwaters of blundering Victorian arrogance and ahistoricism. It cannot all be blamed on Scott, but he was only a young man when he restored St. Mary Magdalen's, and this inexperience unfortunately led to the entire north aisle being rebuilt and overhauled in a crass Gothic Revival style. This was carried out to complement the nearby Oxford Martyr's Memorial, also of Scott's design, but to the detriment of the church's historical fabric. Around the same time, Edward Blore carried out some more limited rebuilding work in the south aisle. Possibly the worst alteration (and I am not sure who exactly is the culprit in this case) was the rebuilding of the chancel, which involved the utter obliteration of the east window and its reconstruction as a fanciful, Victorianised iteration, and the demolition of the only remaining Norman fabric of the church, the long-standing chancel arch, reflecting the Victorian desire to alter the historical fabric in front of their eyes in order to 'fix' history and make it fit a mould of their own construction.

Yet another restoration occurred in 1875 at the hands of William Wilkinson (designer of the famous Randolph Hotel nearby). This involved the fairly typical removal of the galleries and and the replacement of the seating and the roofs. The tower was also repaired at this time, which is presumably the origin of the rather severe ashlar facing. The tower parapet was further restored in 1890, and the final of these misguided restorations (this time post-Victorian) occurred in 1912-13 when Henry Wilkinson Moore restored the south and southwest windows of the Lady Chapel and added statues in niches inside the buttresses on the same face of the building. Thus ends the plight of St. Mary Magdalen's church!

The information here has been taken variously from the church guide (leaflet available from the church), the archived church website, and the Historic England listing.

St. Mary Magdalen's is located at the exceptionally busy centre of Oxford, at the confluence of touristic areas, university areas, and retail areas. The church is marooned on an island between two roads which are often overrun with bikes and buses, and one can hardly stand stationary on the bustling pavement for too long to take the building in, but still the church stands proud, vying with nearby collegiate buildings for dominance of the immediate skyline. The church is wider than it is long, with so many aisles and chapels being built onto the core of the building, and expansion lengthways being limited by the roads.

I have often been deceived into thinking that the church is closed, as the south porch is always kept locked, but entry is in fact gained through a strangely placed door at the west end of the north aisle, one of Gilbert Scott's additions, no doubt. Immediately in front of you as you enter will be the font - you may be tempted to turn back round and immediately go back out of the building again after seeing this single treasure (!), but no matter how crushingly Victorian the rest of the church looks, it is still always worth thorough exploration.

This is undoubtedly the church's saving grace and is what convinced me that it was worth visiting in the first place, it having caught my eye in an old gazetteer. The font is placed at the west end of the north aisle and dates from the middle of the 14th century, a time when the Decorated Gothic style was giving way to the uniquely English Perpendicular Gothic style. The influence of both traditions can be seen in the fantastic tracery adorning font, with smooth, flowing curvilinear lines in harmony with regimented panels, the eight identical faces blending into one another seamlessly.

The composition of the font is pleasingly contiguous, with the stem erupting into the main faces of the bowl with their highly ornamented trefoil design. A floral band separates this layer from the solid parapet crowning the bowl, each of the eight faces split into three, square panels, each decorated with a quatrefoil with a shield at its centre. The font has received some battering over the years, but the artistic vision of the design is no less exquisite than the day it was carved. We can count our lucky stars that the Victorians didn't throw it out and replace it with some ghastly creation of their own.

This carved wooden chest is located in the south aisle between the pews and the sanctuary and dates from c.1300. It is a gorgeous piece of work, being richly decorated on its front face with three blind arcades ornamented by flowers at its centre and flanked by courses of geometric patterns and dragons. Additionally, the lid of the chest was evidently once decorated with four cusped arches on either end, but these are very well worn and survive only in the most ghostly of forms.

While being distinctly medieval at heart, the chest owes much of its present appearance to the 17th century. The Civil War was sure to leave a mark on every church, and in St. Mary Magdalen's case, the chest suffered badly; after the Royalist Storming of Cirencester in 1643, captured Parliamentarian prisoners were brought to Oxford Castle, with St. Mary Magdalen's church acting as a temporary overspill prison. The prisoners defaced the chest, and King Charles I subsequently ordered it to be repaired that same year. As such, a lot of the design on the front looks a great deal fresher than one might expect for a 700 year old chest, but a restoration lasting nearly 400 years is still respectable!

This example of a memorial brass would be uninspiring to any other visitor, but I cannot possibly pass it by as a self-proclaimed brass enthusiast! The figure with its inscription dates from 1580 and commemorates the physician William Smith. It can be found remounted on a wooden board on the north wall of the Lady Chapel among a series of other brass inscriptions of the 16th and 17th centuries. The figure of Smith is shown dressed in his gown and hood, kneeling in prayer with his psalter on a desk in front of him, a grave expression on his face. The Latin Blackletter inscription is rather long and exceptionally difficult to decipher, but it seems that he was something of a polymath, being a musician and an astrologer as well as a physician, and belonging to Merton College.