Hardwick, Cherwell

Gothic Revival niche over the south porch of the church of St Mary the Virgin, with a relief of the Madonna and Child

By the middle of the 12th century the parish was a chapelry of Stoke Lyne, and by 1249 or 1250 Hardwick had become a separate ecclesiastical parish.[1] The Knights Hospitaller owned the advowson by 1252, and held it until Henry VIII suppressed the Order in England 1540.[1] In 1545 The Crown sold the advowson to an associate of William Fermor, the lord of the manor.[1] The advowson remained with the Fermors until the middle of the 19th century,[1] when their direct line died out and their estates at Tusmore and Hardwick were sold.

The earliest parts of the Church of England parish church of St Mary the Virgin are the north and south doorways. Dr Mary Lobel says the doorways are from late in the 12th or early in the 13th century,[1] but Sherwood and Pevsner states they are Decorated Gothic[5] which would give them a later date of 1250–1350. The chancel is Decorated Gothic[5] and certainly from the 14th century.[1] The nave was rebuilt in the 15th century[1] with a large new Perpendicular Gothic west window.[5] In 1877 Henry Howard, 2nd Earl of Effingham commissioned George Gilbert Scott, Jr. to restore the church. Scott virtually rebuilt it[5] and added the south aisle, porch and bell-turret.[1]

The east window of the chancel has some 14th-century Medieval stained glass plus a 19th-century Gothic Revival panel by Clayton and Bell. The Gothic Revival west window of the nave is by Burlison and Grylls but incorporates late 15th- or early 16th-century Gothic panels.[6]

St Mary's is now a member of the Shelswell Benefice.[7]

The Fermors were recusants and supported the continuation of Roman Catholicism in the area from the English Reformation in the 16th century until after the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791. Late in the 16th century and early in the 17th there were few recusants in Hardwick, but after the Fermors moved from Somerton to Tusmore in 1625 their numbers increased.[1] Roman Catholics formed more than half the village by the 1760s and the overwhelming majority by 1802.[1] Roman Catholic villages went to Mass at the Fermor chapel in Tusmore until 1768, when Tusmore House was being rebuilt and the chapel was closed for refurbishment.[1] A chapel was then established in the attic of Hardwick Manor Farm, which remained in use for worship until the priest died in 1830. The chapel was succeeded in 1832 by a newly built Roman Catholic church at Hethe, just over 1 mile (1.6 km) east of Hardwick.[8]