The Lady Chapel

The Lady Chapel, endowed by the Bickell family in 1489 and replacing an earlier chapel whose roof line can be traced on the west wall behind. The quality of stone work is inferior, suggesting the original intention was to plaster these walls. Note also the very unusal double squint, enabling priests celebrating Mass at the altars here and in the South Aisle to see the priest at the high altar, so that they could all raise the bread and the wine at the same moment of consecration.

On the wall in the south west corner of the Chapel is an acrostic brass, a poem commemorating Mawd Parker Thomas, in which the first letter of each line spells out her name. The brass was erected by her husband, Thomas Parker, who came to Northleach with his wife and five children in about 1570, after which another fice children were born. The youngest, Michael, was born in 1584, but his mother Mawd died in childbirth - hence the reference in the last line of the poem: Five hundred thrice (1500) LXXX (80) fower (4). Thomas died in 1628 at the age of 100.

Just to the right, on the other side of the entry arch, are two further small brasses: one, consisting of two sets of children; the other, an evangelist's medallion. Both are part of a memorial to William and Margaret Bicknell and their children.