Betjeman’s Best British Churches. Richard Surman
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painted panelling and grille, and heraldic overmantel over the fireplace. There are hatchments, glass, carved Royal Arms, monuments and everything a church should have.
LECKHAMPSTEAD † St James
6m/10km N. of Newbury
OS SU439759 GPS 51.4809N, 1.3687W
A church by S. S. Teulon, 1859, it is cruciform, of flint with red-brick dressings and bands. The interior is rich in polychromatic brick, and the well-crafted timber roof has huge cusped trusses.
MAIDENHEAD † All Saints
Boyn Hill, 5m/8km W. of Slough
OS SU877808 GPS 51.5199N, 0.7366W
A Tractarian grouping, all by G. E. Street, 1854–7, of vicarage, school, church buildings and church. The separate tower and spire (1865) is in local red brick. The buildings look well from all directions. The interior of the church is vast, violently coloured, richly dark with, as in all Street buildings, careful detail in ironwork, wood and coloured decoration.
NEWBURY † St Nicholas
West Mills, 16m/25km W. of Reading
OS SU470670 GPS 51.4010N, 1.3249W
The church is an imposing example of town Perpendicular, much restored, with Gothic archways in the churchyard. The fine carved pulpit is of 1607 and there are some good 16th-century brasses. The Caen stone reredos is by Comper, and shows Christ and the four Evangelists.
PADWORTH † St John the Baptist
8m/12km S.W. of Reading
OS SU613661 GPS 51.3912N, 1.1199W
A simple and charming Norman church, with windows and roof replaced in Tudor times and a porch added in 1890. The exterior is still plastered and with charming limewash on the tracery of the five Perpendicular windows. The interior is impressive, with a Norman chancel arch and a semi-domed apse, now thankfully free of the overbearing Brightwell and Derby-Griffiths monuments that once cluttered it. The remains of a 13th-century wall-painting of St Nicholas are discernable by the chancel arch.
READING † Christ Church
Christchurch Road
OS SU722721 GPS 51.4440N, 0.9623W
H. Woodyer designed this spirited High Victorian essay, 1861–2, with rich reredos by Birnie Philip and Hardman glass. The upper part of the chancel arch is filled with Reticulated tracery in carved chalk, possibly symbolizing the Lifting of the Veil of the Temple. The church was originally a chapel of ease to cater for an expanding parish.
SHOTTESBROOKE
† St John the Baptist
3m/5km S.W. of Maidenhead
OS SU841771 GPS 51.4867N, 0.7895W
One of the grand medieval churches of the county, St John’s is surrounded by parkland in flat country near Maidenhead. From a distance it is like a miniature Salisbury. Externally and internally it is a singularly complete cruciform Decorated design with central tower and lofty, elegant spire, all after 1337, with deeply moulded Curvilinear window tracery. The church is clearly the work of one man, and he an architect with an outstanding sense of proportion. The white interior is tall and light and full of delicately carved 14th-century details, particularly the founder’s tomb (hard white chalk) in the N. transept, and the sedilia in the chancel. This complete church is just the sort of thing the more medievalist Victorians tried to copy and could not quite manage. The Victorian restoration by G. E. Street, 1854, did little harm.
SHOTTESBROOKE: ST JOHN THE BAPTIST – north transept, with the elegantly carved canopy in Decorated Gothic over the tomb of the founder, Sir William Trussell, and his wife
TIDMARSH † St Laurence
1m/2km S. of Pangbourne
OS SU634745 GPS 51.4664N, 1.0875W
The main features of note are the Norman S. doorway of two carved orders (chain and chevron patterns) and the rare 13th-century polygonal apse. The intriguing timber bell-turret arch bears wood carving by a former incumbent’s wife. A series of medieval wall-paintings has been restored.
WARFIELD † St Michael the Archangel
2m/3km N. of Bracknell
OS SU880722 GPS 51.4420N, 0.7351W
This is large and fine for Berkshire, mostly 14th-century Decorated, with a light, spacious and stately chancel, E. window with beautiful tracery and much carved chalk. There are remains of 14th-century glass, a 15th-century wooden screen and a loft in the N. aisle. The graceful 19th-century stone screen is by G. E. Street, who restored the whole church most carefully.
WICKHAM † St Swithun
6m/10km N.W. of Newbury
OS SU394715 GPS 51.4413N, 1.4335W
On a hill above the village stands an 11th-century tower to which has been added a church rebuilt in expensive knapped flint with stone dressings, by Benjamin Ferrey, 1854–9. The sumptuous interior is a mid-Victorian extravaganza. Lifesize elephants’ heads in papier mache decorate the N. aisle roof, and there are lime-wood angels in the nave roof; the windows are of mid-Victorian purple and red stained glass. The only inharmonious note is the later E. window.
NORTH CRAWLEY: ST FIRMIN – a noble church dating from the 13th century
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