The history of St Margaret’s : The church as it was.
The parish church, dedicated to St. Margaret of Antioch, is in a relatively obscure position, having been partly hidden when the market house was built and now dwarfed by the new office buildings. Ironically, it is not St. Margaret's that now shows itself on the horizon as a landmark, but the much less ancient church of St. Andrew. St. Margaret's from the outside is somewhat irregular in shape. The oldest known picture is the charming but rather amateurish drawing by Daniell King, believed to date from circa 1650. The most striking thing about it is that the church seems to be surrounded by open fields. This must be to some extent artist's licence, but it suggests a very different town from the one we know.
It is known for certain that there was a chapel dedicated to St. Margaret in 1245, when a series of hearings took place there in which the Abbot of Bec in Normandy brought an action against the rector of Great Wratting in Suffolk for non-payment of tithes. On parchments kept at St. George's Chapel, Windsor, in connection with this event, St. Margaret's is actually mentioned by name, and there are several other references between 1245 and 1247 to the "chapel at Uxbridge". Going back farther, there are somewhat ambiguous references in the Chronicles of Evesham which suggest that a chapel already existed in Uxbridge in the early part of the 12th century, but, whether or not this was the same one, we know that St. Margaret's was certainly built and in use by 1245. So it seems that the site of our church has been dedicated to Christian worship for a very long time.
The oldest portion of the existing building is part of the north tower, which was built in the late 14th century. The north aisle, together with the nave and its arcades, dates from the early 15th century, while the south aisle, with its fine hammer-beam roof, was added about 1450. The carved stone font was placed in the church soon afterwards, dating from about 1480.
In 1459 was founded the Shyrington chantry, an endowment for masses to be said in perpetuity for the soul of Walter Shyrington, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and a special chaplain was appointed for this duty. Some of the priests mentioned in connection with St. Margaret's were in fact Shyrington chaplains.
In 1558, it became obligatory for each parish to keep a record of baptisms, marriages and burials. The proposal had first been mooted in 1538 and St. Margaret's records begin from that date and are complete. As is frequently the case with old towns and villages, many of the names occurring in these registers, at least in the last 200 years, are still known amongst the townspeople.
Until the 1980s, St. Margaret's interior was fairly typical of parish church architecture except for the fact that the tower was not central but on the north side. The west door was seldom used, at least in more recent times, as it opened directly on to the road, and, as at present, one normally entered by the door under the tower. However, apart from its general shape, the interior before the 17th century must have looked very bare compared with the church we now know. The earliest known burial in the church was that of Dame Leonora Bennet, whose tomb is on the north side of the chapel. This took place in 1638. After that came Richard Wythie, attorney-at-law, in 1668. In their "History of Uxbridge", Redford and Riches state that his memorial stone was "under the Communion table", then at the east end of the south aisle, as were later those of John Jacques, 1718, and George Jacques, 1759, but during the reordering of the 1870s, Richard Wythie's memorial slab was moved to the north aisle and unfortunately during the reconstruction work of the 1980s it was irreparably damaged and no longer exists. Gradually more parishioners were interred within the crypt of the church, the last being the Footman family, circa 1815. The land for the burial ground in Windsor Street, about 300 yards from the church, was the gift of the Earl of Darby in 1576.
Other features of interest also appeared in the church from the 18th century onwards. The earliest is a tablet in memory of the Spooner family, Richard Spooner, "citizen and turner", having been interred in the church in 1704; the two chandeliers date respectively from 1695 and 1735; the ceiling of the nave was completed in 1734 and further adorned in 1771; the Moses and Aaron pictures - now all that remain of the former reredos of which they were part - were placed there in 1771 but dismantled in the 1860s. Originally, there would have been no seating, but - probably in the 18th century - box pews were installed and these remained until 1871. A ring of six bells was introduced in 1716 and a gallery was built.
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