CUMNOR CHURCH.
In Domesday Book the place appears as “Comenore,” but we hear of it in Anglo-Saxon times as “Colmonora”; and it is supposed to have obtained the first part of its name from one St. Colman, or Cuman, a seventh-century Gaelic saint. The termination, “ora,” doubtless refers to the shores of the Thames; not, however, nearer than a mile and a half, and at a considerably lower level.
Cumnor had, apparently, an early church, replaced by the existing fine Transitional Norman and Early English cruciform building, not yet ravaged by the “restorer.” Cumnor Place, built about 1350, as a sanatorium for Abingdon monastery, after the fearful experiences of the “Black Death” pestilence, stood very closely adjoining the picturesque churchyard, on its south side, and, after several changes of owners, and at last sunk to the condition of a roofless ruin, was finally demolished in 1811, and its stones used in the rebuilding of the church at Wytham.
There is much of interest belonging to Cumnor church, from the battered old altar-tomb in the churchyard, with barely legible inscription, to Lieutenant William Godfrey, “who faithfully served King Charles ye I. from Edgehill Fight to ye end of ye unhappy wars,” down to the curious epitaph on the exterior east wall, upon “Christian, the wife of Henry Hutt”:
“Could exemplary Worth, or Virtue Save
One happier Woman had escap’d the Grave.
From every Vice, and female Error free,
She was in fact, what Woman ought to be.