Patrick Comerford
In Oxford last week, after visiting Holy Rood Church and Saint Matthew’s Church in Grandpont, searching for the extensive site of Greyfriars, the mediaeval Franciscan friary, and walking through the sites of the old gasworks and the slum clearance programmes in Saint Ebbe’s parish in the 1950s and 1960s, I decided to see once again whether I could see inside Saint Ebbe’s Church.
Saint Ebbe’s Church on Pennyfarthing Lane in central Oxford describes itself as a ‘conservative evangelical’ church, identifying with groupings such as ReNew, Gafcon and ReNew network’s Alternative Selection Panel (ASP).
Saint Ebbe’s has been part of life in Oxford for more than 1,000 years. Although the mediaeval and later church was largely rebuilt in the early 19th century, the tower and parts of the nave were retained and, along with the finely carved 12th century doorway, they form an imposing composition.
The church stands on the site of an earlier church dedicated to Saint Æbbe before 1005. Most sources suggest that this was the Northumbrian Saint Æbbe of Coldingham, but it has been suggested that Æbbe of Oxford was a different saint. The name was first recorded ca 1005, when the church was granted to Eynsham Abbey by Ealdorman Æthelmær the Stout and it was already recorded as the ‘ancient Saint Ebbe’s.’
The earlier church had a nave and north aisle under the same roof, a chancel and north chapel, with a tower and north and south porches. The church seems to have been rebuilt ca 1170, and this is the date of the earliest surviving fabric The nave dated from the 12th century or earlier. The north wall was 15th century, as was the chapel.
When the Franciscans arrived in Oxford in 1224, they settled beside the church, outside the city wall, where they built a large friary, Greyfriars, that completely overshadowed Saint Ebbe’s. The Franciscans were given permission to make a ‘little gate’ in the city wall, to give them access to the city, and this is reserved in the name, Littlegate Street.
Meanwhile, the mediaeval synagogue in Oxford was established in 1228 close to Saint Ebbe’s Church, opposite Pennyfarthing Lane. Among the great Franciscan scholars in Oxford by the end of 13th century, Roger Bacon, was a philosopher and scientist whose work included research into light, lenses and gunpowder. He died in 1294 and was buried in the parish. He gives his name to Roger Bacon Lane, where Saint Ebbe’s church offices are now located.
For centuries, Saint Ebbe’s Parish was one of the poorest parts of the city. The church was partially rebuilt in 1648 after part of the church tower fell in 1648, and the whole church was thoroughly repaired in 1696.
By 1813, two architects reported the church was in a dangerous condition. On their recommendation it was demolished, but for the lowest part of the tower, probably dating from the 12th century, and 22 ft of walling at the south-west corner.
A new church, including the nave and chancel, was built 1814-1816 to a design by William Fisher in the Early English style on the same site but extending further north to include the site of the former rectory house on the corner of Saint Ebbe’s Street and Church Street.
The new or rebuilt church was paid for mainly by the Bishop of Oxford and Oxford colleges, but was already described as being too small by 1826. However, it was not enlarged until 1862-1868, when it was enlarged and restored under the diocesan architect, George Edmund Street, who added a south aisle with windows in the Decorated style, created a north aisle by inserting an arcade, and rebuilt the top stage of the tower.
The East Window is a memorial to Thomas Valpy French (1825-1891), who was the Rector of Saint Ebbe’s until 1850. He went to Lahore in Pakistan as a missionary, became the first Bishop of Lahore, and died in Muscat.
The church tower was heightened in 1904-1905 to designs by the Oxford-based Gothic Revival architect Alfred Mardon Mowbray (1849-1915). At the same time, a 12th century door from the old church was inserted in the west wall to the south of the tower base. This Norman doorway, from ca1170, had been taken from the south wall in 1813. It has two orders of colonettes, decorated scallop capitals, an inner arch order of beakhead and an outer order of zig-zag.
The Church of Holy Trinity, Blackfriars Road, was designed by the Oxford-based architect Henry Jones Underwood (1804-1852), who was best known for his Gothic Revival architecture. The church opened in 1845, but it was deemed unsafe in the 1950s, it was demolished in 1957, and the parish was merged with Saint Ebbe’s.
During slum clearance programmes in the 1950s and 1960s, many families in the area relocated to newer housing estates on the periphery of Oxford, the gasworks beside the church were demolished in 1960, and the surrounding tightly-packed residential terraces were replaced by new houses and commercial property.
The parish of Saint Peter-le-Bailey merged with Saint Ebbe’s in 1961, when Saint Peter’s Church was transferred to Saint Peter’s College for use as the college chapel.
Many of the properties in the parish of Saint Ebbe’s were demolished in the 1960s and 1970s to make way for the Westgate Shopping Centre, now Westgate Oxford. The church underwent further restoration in 2017 under the direction of Quinlan Terry. During that restoration, some of the internal fittings were sold off as architectural antiques and the organ was moved to Saint Denys Church, York.
The old Saint Ebbe’s Rectory in Paradise Square stands in the last remaining part of the grounds of the Greyfriars, the mediaeval Franciscan friary. It was once ‘a large plot of ground partly enclosed by a rivulet and whereon was so pleasant a grove of trees, divided into several walks, ambits and recesses, as also a garden and orchard adjoining, that by the citizens of Oxon was called Paradise.’
The rectory was designed by GE Street and built in 1852 and altered in 1868. This two-storey stone house has gables, mullioned windows and a stair turret can be seen in this view.
A blue plaque on the former rectory commemorates the Revd Dr John Stansfeld (1854-1939), the Rector of Saint Ebbe’s in 1912-1926. As a civil servant, he studied part-time for degrees in theology (Exeter College) and medicine, and he ran the Oxford Medical Mission in Bermondsey before moving to Saint Ebbe’s parish.
Saint Ebbe’s was then a poor and overcrowded parish. He set up a medical dispensary in the rectory garden and fought to have public baths built in Paradise Square. As in Bermondsey he was a firm believer in the importance of boys’ clubs and recruited undergraduates to run them.
Canon Stansfield used his personal resources in 1919 to buy 20 acres of land at Shotover to set up summer camps and a country retreat for the urban poor of Saint Ebbe’s. It continued until 2014 as the Stansfeld Outdoor Study Centre.
The former rectory was the Cherwell Tutorial College in recent years and it now houses the Oxford Centre for Anxiety Disorders and Trauma.
Today, Saint Ebbe’s describes itself as a ‘conservative evangelical’ church, but the Guardian has described it as ‘a hardline evangelical church in Oxford.’ The church has passed resolutions to reject the ordination of women and female leadership in the church. It receives alternative episcopal oversight from the Bishop of Ebbsfleet, Bishop Rob Munro, and before him from Bishop Rod Thomas when he was the Bishop of Maidstone.
Canon Vaughan Edward Roberts has been the Rector of Saint Ebbe’s since 1998. He was educated at Winchester College, studied law at Selwyn College, Cambridge, and studied for ordination at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. He was ordained deacon in 1991 and priest in 1992. He joined Saint Ebbe’s in 1991 as a curate under the Revd David Fletcher, who once ran the controversial, abusive Iwerne camps associated with his brother Jonathan Fletcher and the late John Smyth. When David Fletcher retired from Saint Ebbe’s, Vaughan Roberts succeeded him as rector in 1998.
Jonathan Fletcher, who had a high-profile and influential ministry, was the vicar of Emmanuel Church, Wimbledon, and was also a regular preacher in Saint Ebbe’s. A recent report has exposed his bullying, coercive and abusive behaviour over many years, with a long-running pattern of sexual and spiritual abuse.
Since 2009, Roberts has also been Director of the Proclamation Trust, founded to train ‘conservative evangelical’ preachers by Dick Lucas and Jonathan Fletcher. ReNew network’s Alternative Selection Panel (ASP) was involved in the recent ‘alternative ordinations’ this year and last year conducted by Bishop Martin Morrison of the breakaway Reformed Evangelical Anglican Church of South Africa at the East London Tabernacle, a Baptist chapel in Mile End.
These ‘alternative ordinations’, which have been reported in the Church Times (4 July 2025 and 26 June 2026). But the men involved have not been named, and I cannot find out whether any of them are linked with Saint Ebbe’s. Five of the seven deacons are graduates of the Proclamation Trust’s Leaders’ Training Course (LTC), formerly known as Cornhill Plus.
Vaughan Roberts was one of more than 100 clerics who signed a letter in 2018 criticising the approach of the bishops in the Diocese of Oxford to sexual ethics, claiming ‘the situation [in the diocese] is serious.’ In a recent book, he described struggles with unwanted same-sex attraction, and later confirmed this in an interview, but said he does not define himself as homosexual and that he has chosen to remain celibate.
When I arrived at Saint Ebbe’s last week, the church was closed, and even the garden beside the church was padlocked on a hot sun-soaked summer afternoon.
The parish is formally Saint Ebbe with Holy Trinity and Saint Peter le Bailey. The clergy team includes Canon Vaughan Robets, the Revd Peter Wilkinson, the Revd Glenn Nesbitt, the Revd Josh Skidmore, the Revd Al Horn, the Revd Tim Dossor and the Revd Ben Vane.
Saint Ebbe’s has three services each Sunday at 10 am, 4 pm and 6:30. Weekday services from Monday to Friday are at 8:45. The church possesses beautiful Communion plates of Elizabethan and Jacobean date. The church says all of these are still in regular use, and it uses gluten-free Communion and non-alcoholic Communion wine. But I am still unable to find when or how often the Eucharist is celebrated in Saint Ebbe’s, and I have still not been inside the church.
