to eight. One of the new bells is named St Mary; the other Fairport Convention Festival Bell. St Mary's parish is now part of the Benefice of Shires' Edge along with those of Claydon, Great Bourton, Mollington and Wardington. By the 13th century Cropredy was associated with the legend of Saint Fremund, a Mercian who was said to have been martyred in the 9th century. Fremund's relics are supposed to have been moved from Offchurch in Warwickshire to Prescote, where they were lost for a time and then rediscovered and moved to Cropredy. They were then moved to the Augustinian Priory at Dunstable, probably in 1207, but an association with Fremund remained at Cropredy. There are records of gifts to a chapel and shrine to the saint here in 1488 and 1539, and a chantry priest serving in St. Fremund's chapel in 1489. During the English Reformation under Edward VI the Crown sold the chapel and its contents in 1549 and it was probably demolished. No trace remains, its site is unknown and it is not clear whether the shrine chapel was at St. Mary's church or elsewhere in the parish. A Methodist chapel had been built by 1822. The congregation outgrew it so a larger chapel was built on a new site in 1881. Transport Building of the Oxford Canal began at Hawkesbury Junction on the Coventry Canal in 1769 and reached Cropredy in October 1777. The canal passes between the River Cherwell and the village. There is a canal lock here, and at the south end of the village a wharf was built. This originally handled coal from the Coventry coalfield, and now serves the canal's popular leisure traffic. The wharf was briefly the canal's terminus, until the section from Cropredy to Banbury opened in March 1778. The canal finally reached Oxford and the River Thames at the end of 1789. The Oxford and Rugby Railway had been built from northwards past Cropredy by 1852. It never reached , but at it met the Birmingham and Oxford Junction Railway and thus became part of an important north–south main line. The Great Western Railway took over the O&RR before it was completed, and opened Cropredy railway station to serve the village. British Railways closed the station in 1956, but the railway remains open as part of the Chiltern Main Line. Cropredy's public transport is bus route 503 between Banbury