St. Barnabas Church was designed by William Butterfield (1814 -1900), the famous Victorian architect, who also designed Keble College, Oxford. Butterfield, who was one of the leading proponents of the Gothic revival in this country, was a High Churchman who devoted most of his career to designing churches, including All Saint's, Margaret Street in London, and cathedrals in South Africa, India and Australia.
In 1867, whilst Keble College was being built, Butterfield became interested in the proposal to build a new church in Horton-Cum-Studley, to replace the chapel at Studley Priory which had been used by the villagers for worship since the Reformation. The money for the new church, as well as a vicarage and a school (which used to be beyond the north wall of the churchyard) was donated by the Cooke family of Beckley, who, for several generations, were vicars there. In the window on the right as you face the altar is a picture of the founder.
St. Barnabas Church consists of a chancel, nave, north aisle and west belfry. One of its most striking features is the colour of the brickwork, which is faded yellow banded with red and dark blue. The diaper pattern under the eaves is characteristic of Butterfield. The bricks which were used were hand-made locally. The fittings, including the font and the reredos behind the high altar, were also designed by Butterfield. The stained glass is by Fredeick Preedy and A. Gibbs, and the organ was built in recent years, in its position in the north arcade, by Gordon Curtis. During the Millennium year the church added a new window, designed by the local Christian artist Nicholas Mynheer. It is at the east end of the North aisle, and depicts St. Barnabas, the 'Son of Encouragement.'
St. Barnabas is not the first church on this site, and the carved capitals in the garden of the Old Vicarage (at the top end of the village) are probably all that remains of the previous church building.
The chair to the right of the altar, with a crown carved on its back, is the one which Charles I used when he dined at Studley Priory before the Battle of Boarstall. It has been given to the church on permanent loan by Captain John Henderson, whose family bought the Priory just after the church was built.
Mrs. Henderson, who became a nun in 1921, painted the War Memorial of the Great War, which is on the south wall of the church. It is unique and the men shown in it can be recognised.
Today Horton-Cum-Studley is one of the twelve parishes of the Wheatley Team Ministry, and shares a Team Vicar with Beckley, Forest Hill and Stanton St. John.