The rebuild (cont)

The altar table (1626), the church chest (1637) and the poor box still remain, as does a pall to cover the coffin at funerals, made in 1635, though the embroidery is now very fragile. Six corbels carved with heads support the roof. Although interesting, they do not fit naturally into the church, and are not a set. On the south side of the nave are a woman with a close-fitting wimple, perhaps a nun, and a hatless man with short curling hair and forked beard; these corbels have rounded tops. On the north side are a king with forked beard and moustache and a neat crown, and a larger carving of a man playing bagpipes, wearing a liripipe hat with the tail hanging down over his arm; these have five-sided tops. All four probably came from various parts of Cumnor, their varied size suggesting they were made for a larger building, probably in the second half of the fourteenth century. The two corbels in the chancel appear to have been made for the church. On the south is a young man with curling hair and a laurel wreath round his head. On the north is a man wearing what must supposedly be a mitre. They may portray the Earl of Abingdon and John Fisher, Bishop of Salisbury 1807 - 1825, in whose diocese Wytham then was. The hammerbeams of the roof above the corbels were decorated with painted shields - de Wytham and Golafre in the chancel, and the Earl's own ‘battering rams’ for Bertie and de Wytham impaling Golafre on the south side of the nave. Those on the north side of the nave are more obscure. Above the corbel ‘king’ are the ‘Ancient’ Royal Arms of England while above the other are the arms of Edward the Confessor, presumably representing the similar arms of Abingdon Abbey.