The Chapel is a fifteenth-century place of worship predating the great Tudor house at Rycote, near Thame in Oxfordshire, of which only a part survives. The main body of the Chapel indeed has hardly been altered from the fifteenth century, except to receive additional graceful fittings and monuments in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

This simple Chapel then is a place to encounter both the history of England and the long tradition of Christian worship in England.

The Chapel is a great survivor (the north-west corner of the mansion was destroyed by a fire in 1745, rebuilt, and then the house was mostly demolished in 1807 just for the value of its materials). The Chapel’s interiors and fittings present a beguiling aesthetic picture today, but are also the frank archaeological survivors of the different pressures, and the different and competing theological, social and political significances, which find their mark in this historic building.

It also takes commitment and devotion to keep the Chapel intact and open to the public, and the opportunity to share it with interested visitors is especially celebrated today.