Читать книгу Betjeman’s Best British Churches - Richard Surman - Страница 10

NORTH CRAWLEY: ST FIRMIN – a noble church dating from the 13th century

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

Buckinghamshire is a somewhat curious county as regards its church architecture. It has never had a cathedral or any major monastic church. There are few large town churches to compare with those in many other counties – Aylesbury, High Wycombe, Chesham and Amersham being about the largest. There are few outstanding churches of major architectural note. But what the county lacks in this respect is more than made up for in variety.

There is no ‘Buckinghamshire type’ of church, spire, tower or window, and in this county the architecture follows, in most instructive and interesting fashion, the geological formations of the land. The churches in the extreme south, in or bordering the Thames Valley, have an enormous variety of materials where stone is absent – brick, in such places as Dorney, Hitcham, Penn and elsewhere. The earliest brickwork in the county, though it does not appear in the Chapel, is at Eton College, 1442. Then in the Chiltern belt there is, as one would of course expect, extensive use of clunch, chalk rubble and flint, with stone employed only for the dressings.

The Vale of Aylesbury provides a further variety of materials, while the north of the county, penetrating into the limestone belt, produces good stone building in many of its churches, comparable with that in the neighbouring counties of Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire.

The only ‘groups’ that can be identified in Buckinghamshire are those of stone-carvers. At Ivinghoe there is a very fine set of mid or late 13th-century carved capitals in the nave, which obviously came from the same mason’s workshop as Pitstone, Eaton Bray, Flamstead, Chalgrave and several other churches in the neighbourhood. Masons’ marks also relate work at Eton College, North Marston and Hillesden with a group of travelling masons.

LITTLE MISSENDEN: ST JOHN BAPTIST – an Aylesbury font

Then there is the series of Aylesbury fonts – a fine late 12th-century group taking its type-name from the font in Aylesbury church. Others may be seen at Bledlow, Buckland, Chenies, Great Kimble, Great Missenden, Little Missenden, Wing, Pitstone and Weston Turville, with some in Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire, besides several more obviously deriving from the same source.

AYLESBURY † St Mary

St Mary’s Square

OS SP817139 GPS 51.8179N, 0.8160W

The church stands on the highest point of the town in a large churchyard surrounded by 17th- and 18th-century houses. It is large, handsome and cruciform, with an interesting outline to its lead spirelet, and has an intriguing plan full of surprises, with side chapels in unusual places. Substantially 13th-century, its character is a good deal spoilt by over-heavy Victorian restoration. A major re-ordering has closed off the W. bays of the nave and added a gallery. The fine font, c. 1180, is the prototype for a group in this and surrounding counties.

BIDDLESDEN † St Margaret

6m/10km N.W. of Buckingham

OS SP632398 GPS 52.0535N, 1.0783W

The little box-like church is remote, on the Northamptonshire border. It was once the private chapel of Biddlesden Park, part of the stable block, and is of the same date as the house, 1730, which occupies the site of a Cistercian abbey. There are undistinguished 18th-century fittings and clear glass; its charm subsisting in its situation and pleasant texture.

BIERTON † St James the Great

2m/3km N.E. of Aylesbury

OS SP836152 GPS 51.8297N, 0.7880W

Here is a really good architectural composition, with lofty 14th-century arcades and central tower on clustered piers. The walls retain much old plaster and whitewash, with glimpses of paintings peeping through here and there; the floor is a pleasant mixture of square red tiles or bricks and stone. There are several good details and fittings, including the Bosse monuments by W. Stanton.

BLEDLOW † Holy Trinity

2m/3km S.W. of Princes Risborough

OS SP778021 GPS 51.7129N, 0.8747W

Splendidly placed on the lower Chiltern slopes, on the brink of the Lyde – a chalk coombe – Holy Trinity overlooks the Vale of Aylesbury. The church contains many worthwhile things – nave arcades with carved capitals of about 1200; an Aylesbury font; fragments of wall-painting, including an amusing Adam and Eve; and a splendid S. doorway and porch, 13th–14th-century, with traces of original colouring. The whole plan is very irregular, and the inclusion of the tower within the aisles lends interest and importance to the interior at the W. end.

BRADENHAM † St Botolph

4m/6km N.W. of High Wycombe

OS SU828971 GPS 51.6668N, 0.8037W

St Botolph occupies a perfect village green setting. There is a Norman S. door, and the N.E. chapel has monuments and Tudor heraldic glass. Restored by Street, 1863–5.

BROUGHTON † St Lawrence

3m/5km E. of Milton Keynes

OS SP893401 GPS 52.0522N, 0.6979W

Churches Conservation Trust

This 14th-century church with 15th-century tower is notable for its extensive 14th- and 15th-century wall-paintings, which include St George and the Dragon, a Doom and an unusual work combining a Pietà with the Wounds of Christ.

CHALFONT ST GILES † St Giles

3m/4km S.E. of Amersham

OS SU991935 GPS 51.6316N, 0.5695W

In a village green setting, the church is approached through an old lych gate that passes under a 16th-century house. It affords an interesting development of plan throughout the Middle Ages; there are some wall-paintings.

CHEARSLEY † St Nicholas

7m/12km W. of Aylesbury

OS SP720103 GPS 51.7869N, 0.9572W

A charming place, the church lies at the foot of a steep lane below the village, which overlooks the Valley of the Thame and its rich water meadows not far from Nodey Abbey. The nave is 13th-century, the tower and chancel are from the 15th. Like Nether Winchendon nearby, it has mercifully escaped serious restoration and has a gallery which features the wooden support for the serpent, the largest of the instruments played by the band before the days of organs. There are two sets of Royal Arms, excellent modern pews and glass, a Norman font and a brass of 1462. The step down into the chancel is unusual, and the whole place has a pleasant, mellow, uneven quality.

CHETWODE: ST MARY AND ST NICHOLAS – this remnant of an Augustinian priory contains some exceptionally fine Early English work, such as the five-lancet east window

CHENIES † St Michael

4m/6km E. of Amersham

OS TQ015983 GPS 51.6748N, 0.5325W

The church must be included here; for while it is, in the main, architecturally unimportant and somewhat spoiled by ‘improvement’, it stands most delightfully among the trees above the Chess Valley, hard by the mellow brick manor house of the Cheneys and Russells and the ‘model’ cottages of the village. Its principal feature is the fabulous series of monuments to the Russells, Dukes of Bedford, and their connections, in the N. chapel. Regrettably difficult to see, they are kept separate in the locked Bedford Chapel. Nikolaus Pevsner described them as ‘a rich a store of funeral monuments as any parish church of England’.

CHETWODE † St Mary and St Nicholas

5m/8km S.W. of Buckingham

OS SP640298 GPS 51.9630N, 1.0693W

The choir or chancel of a small Augustinian priory, it became a parochial church as long ago as 1480, when the then parish church was ruinous and the monks were hopelessly impoverished. It has the best 13th-century work in Bucks., and, though some of it is reset and restored, the range of dog-toothed and deeply cut sedilia, the great five-lancet E. window, and the triple-lancet on the S. with 13th- and 14th-century glass, would be notable anywhere. The 14th-century N. chapel has become the manor pew with fireplace. There are hatchments and other good things, including the earliest heraldic glass in any English church, depicting Henry III’s coat of arms.

CHICHELEY † St Laurence

2m/3km N.E. of Newport Pagnell

OS SP904458 GPS 52.1037N, 0.6807W

Here is one of those splendid mixtures of dates and styles, from medieval to Comper, that make so many English village churches the delightful places they are. The church stands near the Hall and has a Decorated nave and N. aisle, a 15th-century central tower not unlike Sherrington, and a Classical chancel with delicate detail dated 1708, probably by Francis Smith of Warwick, who built the Hall. The central space is early Comper, and is effective. There are good Renaissance monuments to Caves and Chesters.

CLIFTON REYNES † St Mary the Virgin

9m/14km N. of Milton Keynes

OS SP899513 GPS 52.1534N, 0.6873W

Awkwardly placed (from the tourist’s point of view) on the S. side of the Ouse, away from Olney and thus happily secluded, the church is of great interest. A Saxon origin is suggested by the odd proportions of its tall nave, though most of what we see is 13th-, 14th- and 15th-century. The principal features are the font, with figures of saints (14th-century), and the series of medieval monuments to the Reynes family, including the great rarity of two pairs of early 14th-century wooden effigies.

DINTON † St Peter and St Paul

4m/6km S.W. of Aylesbury

OS SP766110 GPS 51.7930N, 0.8895W

Late Perpendicular predominates here, with the exception of a celebrated Norman door with inscribed tympanum bearing a Tree of Life and beasts.

DORNEY † St James the Less

3m/4km W. of Slough

OS SU924790 GPS 51.5024N, 0.6688W

The church dreams away in a backwater beside the splendid timbered house of Dorney Court. With its Tudor brick tower and bits of every period of architecture before and since, from Norman times to a 19th-century window of King Charles the Martyr, everything is on an intimate and miniature scale. Note especially: the 12th-century font; W. gallery, 1634; S. porch, 1663; 15th-century stalls and base of screen brought from elsewhere; 17th-century communion rails and other woodwork; and the fine Garrard monument, 1607, by Nicholas Johnson, in the little N. chapel.

DUNTON † St Martin

4m/6km S.E. of Winslow

OS SP823243 GPS 51.9118N, 0.8038W

A church with hardly any village, St Martin’s is small and pleasantly unrestored. There are box pews and a W. gallery with texts and rectors’ and churchwardens’ names of the 18th century painted on the front. The ceiling shows a hint of medieval timbers above. Many Bucks. churches must have been like this 150 years ago.

EDLESBOROUGH † St Mary the Virgin

10m/16km E. of Aylesbury

OS SP970190 GPS 51.8617N, 0.5927W

Churches Conservation Trust

Below the Chiltern scarp and sited on a great mound, isolated and exposed to all the winds that blow across the vale, the church was horribly maltreated in the 19th century (plaster stripping inside, cement rendering out) but contains the most wonderful things – complete screen, stalls, pulpit and tester, and roofs of the 15th century; transverse arches in the aisles, and a series of exceptionally interesting brasses, as well as a complicated succession of medieval building periods.

FAWLEY † St Mary

3m/4km N. of Henley-on-Thames

OS SU753867 GPS 51.5743N, 0.9140W

In a scattered Chiltern hill-top village, the chancel of St Mary’s, rebuilt in 1748, contains fine woodwork thought to be by Grinling Gibbons: font, pulpit, stalls, rails and panelling – all were formerly in the chapel of Canons House, old Middlesex. There are two formidable mausolea in the churchyard and Piper stained glass.

FINGEST † St Bartholomew

6m/10km W. of High Wycombe

OS SU776911 GPS 51.6138N, 0.8796W

The mighty Norman tower, with unusual twin saddleback roof, dwarfs the rest of this well-known church, which is set in a delightful village nestling in the Chilterns.

GAYHURST † St Peter

6m/10km N. of Milton Keynes

OS SP846462 GPS 52.1082N, 0.7653W

A complete rebuilding in 1728 of a medieval church in the grounds of the great Elizabethan house nearby – designer unknown. The tower has urns at the corners, and a charming, airy little cupola in the centre. The sides of the nave are unusual, with a central pediment, pilaster and doorway. The interior is practically unaltered, with good plasterwork, pews, pulpit and panelling. There is a splendid monument to Speaker Wright and his son, variously attributed to Roubiliac and William Palmer.

GREAT LINFORD † St Andrew

2m/3km N. of Milton Keynes

OS SP850423 GPS 52.0728N, 0.7602W

Pleasantly situated, it is reached past a handsome manor house and a 17th-century range built as village school and almshouses, and is a happy blend of the early 18th century and Decorated Gothic. The alterations inside to accommodate an increasing congregation are understandable but regrettable. At least the changes resulted in the discovery of a 15th-century tiled floor, part of which can still be viewed beneath the modern one.

HADDENHAM † St Mary the Virgin

3m/4km N.E. of Thame

OS SP741080 GPS 51.7658N, 0.9267W

A good 13th-century and later church, it lies at the extreme end of one of the most remarkable and complicated villages in Bucks., where many of the houses and walls are largely composed of wichert – a hard, compressed chalk marl. The W. tower overlooking the green is a good Early English composition, and inside the spacious church, work of this date as well as of many other periods is found. Note the 15th-century glass in the N. transept window. A flat plaster ceiling of early 19th-century date tantalizingly hides a 14th-century timber roof. A rewarding mixture.

LITTLE MISSENDEN: ST JOHN BAPTIST – a wall-painting of the 13th century depicts St Christopher on the left and episodes from the life of St Catherine on the right

HANSLOPE † St James the Great

6m/10km N.W. of Milton Keynes

OS SP803467 GPS 52.1129N, 0.8274W

Set in a windy village on high ground, the steeple is seen for miles around and is the tallest in Bucks. With a Norman chancel, the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries are all represented here; the 15th-century N. aisle added great width to the body of the church. The spire was rebuilt to only two-thirds of its original height after being storm-damaged in 1804. Despite scraping, the interior has good fittings – pulpit, Royal Arms, hatchments, an unusual family pew and brasses.

HEDGERLEY † St Mary the Virgin

3m/4km S.E. of Beaconsfield

OS SU970873 GPS 51.5766N, 0.6006W

The best Victorian Gothic church in the county – by Benjamin Ferrey, 1852 – it is built of the local flint, with a little stone and conglomerate, and stands high on a grassy slope surrounded by trees. It is the third church on the site, and has some oddments from the older buildings: a medieval font with Jacobean cover; an old painting of the Commandments; some brasses; and a reputed piece of Charles I’s cloak.

LITTLE MISSENDEN: ST JOHN BAPTIST – the south chapel

HILLESDEN † All Saints

3m/4km S. of Buckingham

OS SP685287 GPS 51.9531N, 1.0036W

This is another of Buckinghamshire’s lovely and lonely places. The church is almost entirely of the 15th century, and of a quality encountered hardly anywhere else in the county. There are contemporary roofs, seats, a screen and glass (legend of St Nicholas) and a Te Deum frieze of alternate instrument-playing and scroll-bearing angels in the chancel. Note also good monuments, and the lovely canopy over the stair turret attached to the two-storey vestry and sacristy. This is the church that inspired Sir George Gilbert Scott with his Gothic passion – his father was a clergyman at Gawcott nearby – and it was he who gently restored it in 1874–5.

NORTH CRAWLEY: ST FIRMIN – the 15th-century screen, with images of prophets, saints and kings, is Buckinghamshire’s only such screen to remain complete

HITCHAM † St Mary

4m/6km W. of Slough

OS SU920825 GPS 51.5347N, 0.6750W

This small church has an admirable mixture of materials and styles, lending both texture and interest: much of it is flint, with a 16th-century brick tower and chalk and plaster nave. The chancel arch is Norman, and the chancel itself a 1330–40 rebuilding. The chancel windows retain much of their original glass, depicting the Nine Orders of Angels and the Four Evangelists. Good monuments and brasses; the whole set among trees in a well-kept churchyard surrounded by ancient tawny brick walls.

IBSTONE † St Nicholas

6m/10km W. of High Wycombe

OS SU756923 GPS 51.6248N, 0.9092W

This small, intriguing church is sited away from the main village, overlooking the beautiful Turville Valley. It is primitive, mainly 12th- and 13th-century, and has a Norman S. doorway, weather-boarded bell-turret and Perpendicular pulpit.

IVINGHOE † St Mary the Virgin

8m/13km E. of Aylesbury

OS SP945161 GPS 51.8362N, 0.6291W

A noble cruciform church, 13th–15th century, St Mary’s is set in a large churchyard. Particularly fine are the stiff-leaf capitals of the nave arcades, the carved Apostles on the roof wall-posts, and the poppyheads on the benches, which include a mermaid and some haunting Green Men.

LATHBURY † All Saints

3m/5km N. of Milton Keynes

OS SP874449 GPS 52.0964N, 0.7248W

Another dead-end place down by the Ouse just outside Newport Pagnell, All Saints church is dark and mysterious, with fragments of painting and robust carvings from its Norman past. Outside it is pleasantly embattled with a good stone texture.

LILLINGSTONE DAYRELL † St Nicholas

4m/6km N. of Buckingham

OS SP705398 GPS 52.0523N, 0.9729W

Reached by a long cart track, this interesting church has an 11th-century chancel and tower arches. The tower is 13th-century, as is the chancel which contains a curious Easter Sepulchre, Dayrell brasses, a Renaissance tomb chest, old tiles and a funeral pall of 1699.

LITTLE HAMPDEN

† dedication unknown

7m/12km S. of Aylesbury

OS SP860035 GPS 51.7241N, 0.7556W

Humble and withdrawn among a few cottages and scattered farms, its simple interior is decorated with 13th- to 15th-century wall-paintings, including the earliest St Christopher in England. It leaves a great impression of the medieval hamlet church. The timbered, two-storey N. porch is unique in Bucks. There is a tombstone by Eric Gill to his neighbour Mary Bernadette Nuttgens.

LITTLE KIMBLE † All Saints

4m/7km S. of Aylesbury

OS SP826064 GPS 51.7504N, 0.8041W

Small and undistinguished externally, with a little W. bell-turret, All Saints stands amidst beeches and greenery on the edge of Chequers park. Inside are to be found, artistically, the best wall-paintings in Bucks., including St Christopher, St James major, St George (a notable standing figure), St Lawrence, St Francis preaching to the birds (only two in England), St Clare, St Bernard, and assorted ecclesiastics, plus part of a Doom, and a life of St Margaret and St Catherine, all early 14th-century. There is also a square of Chertsey tiles under a mat in the chancel, with enchanting scenes from the life of King Mark of Cornwall and other Arthurian romances.

LITTLE MARLOW † St John Baptist

2m/3km N.E. of Marlow

OS SU874878 GPS 51.5825N, 0.7399W

St John Baptist is in a good Thames-side village at a dead end and consequently almost unspoiled. The church has the unusual feature of a triple-gabled E. elevation, reminiscent of Devonian or Cornish churches; and has a light, limewashed interior. The chancel shows good 13th-century detail; the S. aisle and chapel were ‘beautified’ by Sir Nicholas Ledewich, so the inscription on his tomb tells us, about 1430.

LITTLE MISSENDEN † St John Baptist

3m/4km W. of Amersham

OS SU920989 GPS 51.6821N, 0.6694W

The church stands by the manor house and a number of pleasant houses in the village. Externally it is very picturesque; of flint and brick with a dormer window in the nave roof. An exquisite E. window has three double-shafted lancets. The church is principally renowned for its series of 13th- and 15th-century wall-paintings, which include St Christopher, a vivid Martyrdom of St Catherine and a Crucifixion.

MONKS RISBOROUGH † St Dunstan

Adjoins Princes Risborough to N.

OS SP812044 GPS 51.7326N, 0.8246W

The general effect of this church is especially pleasing from the exterior, as it stands in a good churchyard with high hedges and trees and the old Rectory hard by. The main part of the structure is 15th-century; inside there are good things to see, such as the 12th-century font, 14th-century tower arch and brass, a somewhat reduced painted screen and remains of old glass.

NETHER WINCHENDON † St Nicholas

4m/6km N.E. of Thame

OS SP732122 GPS 51.8042N, 0.9388W

One of the most attractive church interiors in the county and entirely unspoiled, in a rural village setting, at the foot of a steep hill. The structure is medieval, but the atmosphere is of the 18th century, all lit by brass Jacobean candelabra, with gallery and high pews, hatchments, sentences and a Jacobean three-tier pulpit. Recent restorations to the nave floor, gallery stairs, pews and pulpit are sensitive and of fine quality. Notice an unusual modern memorial to Lieut-Colonel Francis Tyringham Higgins-Bernard, a 20th-century version of a medieval knight’s tomb.

NORTH CRAWLEY † St Firmin

6m/10km N.E. of Milton Keynes

OS SP926446 GPS 52.0924N, 0.6485W

An important medieval church, it was restored in the 18th century. The rebuilding of the chancel in the 13th century is recorded by a rare carved inscription outside the E. window. The nave has a S. arcade of c. 1200 with good carved capitals and a 14th-century N. arcade. The 15th-century screen is the only painted one to remain complete in the county; the figures on the panels are those of prophets, kings and saints.

NORTH MARSTON

† Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

6m/10km N. of Aylesbury

OS SP777227 GPS 51.8974N, 0.8721W

The church is associated with John Schorne, rector in the late 13th and early 14th century, who performed miraculous cures of the gout and became venerated as a saint. The S. aisle contains the original (14th-century) remains of his elaborate shrine, and the nave has good medieval work of various dates. The canons of Windsor filched Schorne’s relics and, probably as a sop to the disgruntled parishioners, paid for the building of the superb chancel and two-storey vestry and sacristy in the late 15th century. The church was restored in 1855 at Queen Victoria’s expense in memory of John Camden Neild, a local landowner who left his fortune to the Queen after his death in the 1850s.

OLNEY † St Peter and St Paul

8m/13km N. of Milton Keynes

OS SP889509 GPS 52.1499N, 0.7008W

The view from the S. across the water meadows of the Ouse is memorable. The tall broach spire and the splendid chancel windows, all of the 14th century, remind one that Northamptonshire is only a mile or two away. Inside is large and airy, but heavily scraped. The pulpit in the S.W. corner was used by John Newton, vicar in the 1760s, who, with his friend William Cowper, wrote the Olney Hymns.

PENN † Holy Trinity

3m/4km N.W. of Beaconsfield

OS SU916932 GPS 51.6309N, 0.6775W

There are splendid views from the churchyard. The church, of wonderfully varied textures and materials, with two great porches, has a medieval structure, the roof of c. 1400 being one of the finest in the county. But it was much altered by the Penns and Curzons in the 18th century, which is the date of the chancel and its fittings, and many of its monuments. The great treasure is the 15th-century Doom painting on oak boards set over the chancel arch; it was found in the roof in 1938. The series of brasses is good for costume; and in the centre aisle is the tombstone of a descendant of William Penn, Quaker and founder of Pennsylvania.

TATTENHOE: ST GILES – some of the stonework and architectural details of this humble little church are thought to have come from nearby Snelshall Priory, a ruin by the mid-16th century

PITSTONE † St Mary

8m/13km E. of Aylesbury

OS SP942149 GPS 51.8251N, 0.6341W

Churches Conservation Trust

This small church lying in chalk fields below the Chilterns has a most satisfactory interior, with work of many dates and textures; 13th-century capitals like Ivinghoe, 15th-century nave arcades, a 12th-century font – the whole dominated by a fine Jacobean pulpit and tester.

QUAINTON † Holy Cross and St Mary

6m/10km N.W. of Aylesbury

OS SP749201 GPS 51.8749N, 0.9120W

The church stands a little apart from the village in a group with almshouses and a Carolean rectory, and commands a lovely view over the vale. It was badly mauled by 19th-century restorers, who endowed it with a monstrous roof and hideous tiles, but it is notable for the finest 17th- and 18th-century sculpture in the county. In the nave are monuments by Stayner, William Stanton, Leoni and M. C. Wyatt, but inside the tower (too often locked) are the moving figures of Justice Dormer and his wife sorrowing over their dead son – a work of genius long attributed to Roubiliac, but more latterly believed to have been sculpted by Michael Rysbrack, c. 1728.

RADNAGE † St Mary

6m/10km N.W. of High Wycombe

OS SU786979 GPS 51.6748N, 0.8646W

Perched on the wooded slopes of the tumbled ground behind the Chiltern scarp below Bledlow Ridge is a scattered village of several ‘endships’, one of which is clustered around the church and rectory. The exterior, of partly plastered chalk and flint with brick repairs, fits perfectly into the landscape. Much of the structure is of about 1200, with aisleless nave and chancel and a plain tower between. The simple village interior retains its original plaster, covered with a medley of medieval paintings and post-Reformation texts.

WING: ALL SAINTS – the compelling classical monument to Sir Robert Dormer, d. 1552

STEWKLEY † St Michael and All Angels

5m/8km W. of Leighton Buzzard

OS SP852261 GPS 51.9269N, 0.7622W

This very fine Norman church, with central tower, is comparable with Iffley, Oxon. The W. front is particularly rich Norman work, with blind arcades and an odd hanging keystone. Inside, a restoration by Street took away something of the texture, but enhanced the lofty scale, culminating in a distant, dark chancel, whose chevron-carved stone vaulting is very fine.

STOKE POGES † St Giles

3m/4km N. of Slough

OS SU975827 GPS 51.5351N, 0.5949W

The poet Thomas Grey wrote his ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ here, and the association rather obscures the main points of interest: a 14th-century timbered and traceried porch; the limewashed walls of the oddly placed 13th-century tower; and the renovated Hastings chapel in which one rather regrets the disappearance of a good gallery. Fine panels of 17th- and 18th-century glass have been placed here.

TATTENHOE † St Giles

4m/7km S. of Milton Keynes

OS SP829339 GPS 51.9979N, 0.7938W

Tiny St Giles used to stand wistful and remote in the midst of moats, banks, ditches and other evidences of a deserted village. That remoteness has been compromised in recent years, and the church now stands on the edge of a much-reduced patch of scrubland, primarily for the use of dog walkers, on the edge of a late 20th-century housing development. There is a simple interior with box pews for each of the three farming families that formed the nucleus of Tattenhoe from the 14th century to the 20th. Betjeman’s ‘authentic aroma of the past – stale paraffin and mouldy hassocks’ has now succumbed to the 2007 installation of electricity and heating.

TERRIERS † St Francis

N.E. district of High Wycombe

OS SU877944 GPS 51.6423N, 0.7337W

By Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the church was consecrated in 1930, and is one of his best designs. Light and shade are artfully employed within, and the impressive exterior is suitably enhanced by a lofty central tower.

TWYFORD † St Mary

5m/8km S. of Buckingham

OS SP665266 GPS 51.9346N, 1.0340W

A church of exceptional interest for its details and fittings, whose various architectural styles have created something of a jumble. The Norman doorway is notable, and inside there are fine 13th-century arcades, with a good deal of 15th-century woodwork – roof, pews and screen with some painting. There are worthwhile monuments, both medieval and later.

WEST WYCOMBE † St Lawrence

2m/3km W. of High Wycombe

OS SU827949 GPS 51.6474N, 0.8056W

Medieval in origin, the church is dramatically placed within an Iron Age earthwork; the curiously wrought flinty Dashwood Mausoleum lies to the E. Much of the church, including nave, upper part of the tower and mausoleum, were rebuilt and rededicated in the mid-18th century on the direction of local landowner Sir Francis Dashwood, one of the founders of the secretive Knights of St Francis – later and more commonly known as The Hellfire Club. There were several such clubs at the time, based upon a philosophy of licentiousness. Dashwood’s Hellfire Club met on several occasions in the caves beneath the church and, if perhaps only to play cards, in the golden globe that tops the tower. The nave walls are lined by engaged Corinthian columns and there is good plasterwork and ceiling painting. The furnishings, though, are more curious than beautiful.

WESTON TURVILLE † St Mary the Virgin

3m/4km S.E. of Aylesbury

OS SP859102 GPS 51.7847N, 0.7557W

The church is at the end of a lane near the 18th-century manor house in whose grounds is the motte of a Norman castle. The building is of many styles and of an attractive irregularity with things in it to please everyone – a 12th-century Aylesbury font, 13th-century arcades, 14th-century chancel with good window tracery, 15th-century tower, fragments of old glass (a tantalizing medley, this), 17th-century pulpit, and so forth.

WILLEN † St Mary Magdalene

2m/3km N.E. of centre of Milton Keynes

OS SP878412 GPS 52.0624N, 0.7200W

Like a city church transported to the remote countryside, with dramatic effect, this delightful church is a confection of brick, stone, Classical pilasters, urns, high pews, pedestal font and all the rest; the apsidal chancel is Victorian. The church is to the design of Robert Hooke – Curator of Experiments to the Royal Society and architect of The Monument in London – and was built around 1680 through the munificence of Dr Busby, the famous headmaster of Westminster School. Now the church stands as a bulwark against the sprawling housing of Milton Keynes.

WING † All Saints

3m/4km S.W. of Leighton Buzzard

OS SP880225 GPS 51.8949N, 0.7221W

With a polygonal apse like the prow of a ship, this is the most important Saxon church in the county, and contains much of interest from many dates. The Saxon crypt was opened in 1878, and there is a fine 15th-century carved oak roof, ornamented with back-to-back angels. Conspicuous and flamboyant monuments to the Dormer family abound; in contrast a touching simple brass memorial to ‘Honest Old John Coats that sometime was porter at Ascott Hall, hat now (alas!) left his key, lodge, fure, friends and all to have a room in Heaven.’