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- 1. St Mary, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England
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Parish church Aylesbury is an ancient settlement in the centre of Buckinghamshire. An Iron Age hill fort was excavated in the town centre in the 1990s, and the town lies on Akeman Street, the Roman road from Bicester. In the Anglo-Saxon period it was already an important market town, although the county town was then Buckingham, in the NW of the county. Aylesbury superseded Buckingham as the county town in 1529, following a declaration by Henry VIII. According to rumour Henry was trying to please Thomas Boleyn, who held the manor and whose daughter, Anne, the king wished to marry, but Aylesbury was also growing quickly at that time, and was more centrally sited than Buckingham.
- 2. Holy Trinity, Bledlow, Buckinghamshire, England
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Parish church Bledlow is a village on the northern edge of the Chiltern Hills, in the east of south Buckinghamshire. The village is two miles SW of Princes Risborough and a half mile east of the Oxfordshire border. The church stands in the centre of the village. Holy Trinity has an aisled nave with a S porch, a chancel and a W tower. The nave is 4 bays long, with 13thc. arcades with stiff-leaf capitals indicating an early-13thc. date for the aisles. A scar against the E tower wall indicates an earlier roof that was much steeper. The clerestorey windows are three-light, trefoil-headed bar-traceried openings under square heads, and appear to date from the later 13thc. Both aisles have been extended westwards alongside the tower. The N aisle contains a reset 12thc. doorway, indicating the original date of the unaisled nave. The aisle windows are a mixture of geometric and flowing tracery on the N and geometrical and Perpendicular on the S; both the W aisle windows are early 13thc., contemporary with the arcades, but they may have been reset when the aisles were lengthened. The chancel arch is contemporary with the arcades too, but the original, short chancel was 12thc. (indicated by the arch of the former priest’s doorway in the S wall). It was lengthened eastwards and refenestrated in the 13thc. The church was reseated and restored by G. G. Scott in 1875–77, and repaired in 1961–62 by H. J. Stribling of Slough, and in 1967 and 1975–76 by Roiser and Whitestone, architects of Cheltenham. At the W end of the N aisle is a display of loose stones, some Romanesque, that were found in the wall of the tower. The font is also 12thc., and belongs with the Aylesbury group.
- 3. St Peter and St Paul, Dinton, Buckinghamshire, England
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Parish church Dinton is in central Buckinghamshire, 3.5 miles SW of Aylesbury. The church and Dinton Hall are detached from the rest of the village, which is 0.5 mile to the SW. The church is of rubble and consists of a nave with S aisle and S porch, chancel and W tower. The 3-bay chancel is 13thc. with lancet windows in the side walls and a triple lancet (of 1868) in the E wall. The chancel arch and the blocked S priest’s doorway are also 13thc. The 12thc. S nave doorway, reset in the aisle and protected by a 13thc. porch, is the oldest feature of the church, with a justly-famous tympanum with composite beasts and a Tree of Life. The 13thc. N doorway is plain. The nave has a 13thc. 5-bay S aisle and a S clerestory of quatrefoil lights in the 3 E bays only. There is also a 13thc. W doorway, reset in the W wall of the 14thc. tower. This has reticulated bell-openings, W angle buttresses and an irregular polygonal SE stair turret that rises higher than the main parapet and has its own battlement. Work was done in the 14th-15thc., replacing windows in the nave and aisle walls. The church was restored in 1868, and again in 1951. The S doorway is described here, along with the font, which may be a remodelled example of the Aylesbury group.
- 4. All Saints, Wing, Buckinghamshire, England
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Parish church Wing is in the E of the county, in the ancient hundred of Cottesloe. It is a substantial settlement on the road from Aylesbury to Leighton Buzzard, 6 miles NE of Aylesbury and a mile from the Bedfordshire border. The village stands on a hill in the Vale of Aylesbury, with the church in the centre.
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