St Mary's Church

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The Church of St Mary the Virgin, Aylesbury, is an Anglican church of the Diocese of Oxford, in the centre of the town of Aylesbury. There is evidence of a church from Saxon times, but the present building was built sometime between 1200 and 1250, with various additions and alterations in the 14th, 15th, 19th and 20th century.The church is one of the most recognisable sights of Aylesbury; its ornate clock tower dominates the skyline. The church is currently a Grade I listed building as it is a building of exceptional interest.HistorySaxon periodAylesbury possessed a church in Saxon times; 19th-century renovations to the chapel revealed the remains of an ancient crypt, with stone steps leading from the church in the west end of the crypt, and were uncovered as fully as possible without encroaching on the south transept. There is one prominent arch in it, which those competent to decide have unhesitatingly pronounced to be Saxon. The crypt was probably the remains of an old Saxon church, possibly dating from circa 571 when Aylesbury was a Saxon settlement known as Aeglesburge.Probably in troublous times this subterraneous chamber was used for worship but later it appears to have been used as a charnel house: piles of human bones were found within. These were removed and re-interred in the churchyard.It is not impossible that this may have been the very site of the Saxon building where St. Osyth is said to have been buried in the 9th century. St. Osyth's burial site in Aylesbury became a site of great, though unauthorized pilgrimage; following a papal decree in 1500, the bones were removed from the church and buried in secret. However much, if any, of this has a historical basis; it is even uncertain whether there were two Osyths or one, since both Aylesbury and Chich claim her relics. However what appears to be known is that following her death in 700AD her father, King Redwald (in some accounts Penda), and mother, Wilburga, took her to Aylesbury to be interred.