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1. St Mary, Ashendon, Buckinghamshire, England

Parish church
Ashendon is in the W of central Buckinghamshire, seven miles W of Aylesbury. This small village is on a limestone hill on one of the network of minor roads in this area of pasture on the Kimeridge clay, and the church is in the centre of the village. St Mary’s consists of a nave with a S aisle and S porch, a chancel and a W tower. The church is of limestone rubble with patches of herringbone masonry in the N wall of the nave, where there is also a completely plain, round-arched doorway. At the E end of this N wall are signs of the former Falconers chapel in the form of a blocked arch and a roofline visible on the exterior. A date of 1554 is associated with this, but it is probably 14thc. in origin to judge from the arch profile and the W capital. The E capital is castellated and may reflect a 16thc. modification of the chapel. There are the remains of the rood-loft to be seen on both sides of the nave, and a squint from the S aisle into the nave at the E end. The nave was lengthened westwards at the beginning of the 13thc., for which a single plain lancet provides the evidence. The nave roof was heightened in the 15thc., when a clerestorey was installed. The S arcade is in two parts. At the W end is a single 12thc. round-headed bay cut through the wall, with broad rectangular piers to the E and W and the arch supported on imposts. The two eastern bays are 14thc., with moulded capitals, double-chamfered arch and an octagonal pier. The chancel is 19thc., and the low, two-storey W tower is 15thc., with diagonal buttresses and Perpendicular W doorway and window. The only Romanesque sculpture here is on the font.
2. St Mary, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England

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 Aylesbury superseded Buckingham as the county town in 1529, following a declaration by Henry VIII.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.
3. St James, Bierton, Buckinghamshire, England

Parish church
Bierton is a village on the NE outskirts of Aylesbury, extending for a mile along the A418 to Leighton Buzzard; a busy road that robs the village of much of its character. The surrounding landscape is largely pasture. The church is alongside the A418 on its S side, so that the main entrance is the N doorway, under a timber-framed and mortar-rendered porch. To the SW of the church is St Osyth’s Well. St James’s is a long, broad cruciform church with a low crossing tower. It is of coursed rubble construction and dates from the early 14thc. The nave is aisled, with 4-bay arcades. There is no clerestory in the central vessel but high-level windows were added to the aisles when their roofs were raised and the pitch flattened, perhaps in the 15thc. The arcades have quatrefoil piers and finely moulded capitals, and the crossing piers belong to the same campaign. The aisleless chancel has Y-tracery lateral windows with extra bar-tracery cusping, and a 4-light east Perpendicular window, probably c.1500. The N transept is now a chapel; the S has been converted for use as a vestry. The only Romanesque feature is the font.
4. Holy Trinity, Bledlow, Buckinghamshire, England

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.
5. All Saints, Brill, Buckinghamshire, England

Parish church (formerly a chapel of St Mary’s, Oakley)
Brill is in the W of central Buckinghamshire, ten miles W of Aylesbury and a mile from the Oxfordshire border. It formerly lay within the part of Bernwood Forest known as the forest of Brill by the 13thc. The village is on a limestone hill, and clusters around a junction of minor roads with the church at the centre, the Green to the S of it, and the village square with its 16thc. manor house W of the Green. All Saints is a large, low church with an aisled and clerestoried nave with a 19thc.–20thc. timber S porch, a low W tower and a chancel with a 19thc. N vestry. Construction is of rubble, but the nave and aisles have a grey mortar render. The entire church was rebuilt by J. Oldrid Scott in 1888, incorporating some of the older work. The nave dates from the early 12thc.; part of a blocked round-headed window is still visible above the 19thc. tower arch and the lateral doorways have been reset in the aisle walls. The aisles are wide and low with low-pitched roofs and 4-bay arcades in a Perpendicular style. The N aisle was added in 1839 and the S is Scott’s work. The chancel also contains a blocked lancet of c.1100 on the N side. It was extended eastwards by Scott, who installed the old E window of c.1400 above his own new one. The stubby W tower is 15thc. and of rubble. It has a lead spike, mostly concealed by Scott’s plain parapet. Photographs are included that show the Norman nave and chancel windows, but only the two nave doorways are described below.
6. All Saints, Buckland, Buckinghamshire, England

Parish church
Buckland is a village in the Vale of Aylesbury, some four and a half miles east of the centre of Aylesbury. It lies just to the north of Akeman Street, the Roman road running from London to join the Fosse Way at Cirencester. The village is built along a minor road running through flat pastureland, with the church at its centre. All Saints church has a nave with a N aisle and S porch, and chancel with a N vestry and a W tower. It was restored by the architect George Devey in 1867-69, and a photograph in the church shows its pre-restoration state. Devey added the vestry and the porch, moving the E window of the aisle to the E wall of the new vestry. A blocked arch on the N side of the chancel in this photograph indicates that a chapel had been removed well before the restoration; this arch was reopened when the new vestry was added. Devey also added large dragon gargoyles to the angles of the tower, and battlements to the nave and aisle walls. The chancel was refitted with a grand altar in place of the wooden table that now stands in the vestry. The present church was begun in 1272-73 and was dedicated in 1284, and most of the main features that are not Devey’s are late-13thc. or 14thc. The nave has N and S clerestories; a late-13thc. three-bay N arcade; a 14thc. Totternhoe S doorway with square rosettes in the arch and knight and lady label stops; and lower windows with Y- tracery or reticulated tracery, and upper ones square-headed with cusped arches. The chancel looks totally 19thc. The tower has diagonal buttresses, no W doorway or plinth, and cusped-headed windows and bell-openings. The church is constructed of local flints, with Totternhoe stone blocks incorporated more-or-less randomly, but mostly in the tower. The features recorded here are the font of c.1200 and a sheela-na-gig of uncertain date set in the chancel S exterior wall, presumably during Devey’s restoration. The parish is now part of the benefice of Aston Clinton with Buckland and Drayton Beauchamp.
7. St Nicholas, Chearsley, Buckinghamshire, England

Parish church
Chearsley is a village in the east of central Buckinghamshire, six miles SW of Aylesbury. It stands on the rising ground on the W bank of the river Thame, and the church is at the SE end of the village, in rolling wooded pasture near the river. The church has a nave with a S porch, chancel with N vestry and a W tower. The relation between nave and chancel is an odd one; the chancel is slightly lower than the nave, and offset to the N. A local tradition suggests that the lower walls of the chancel may have been part of a single-celled 11thc. chapel. There is certainly a change in the masonry, from very irregular rubble below to coursed and more regular rubble above. A priest’s doorway was added to the chancel in the 13thc., and it was completely remodelled in the 15thc., when ashlar buttresses (including diagonal ones at the E angles) and Perpendicular windows were added. The vestry was added c.1850. The nave has some herringbone masonry in the N wall, but no other signs of its early origins. The lateral doorways and two side windows are 13thc., and the N doorway has been blocked in its lower part to leave a window. The S porch is an 18thc. utilitarian brick structure, and the wooden W gallery of the nave also dates from this period. The tower is 15thc., and has a polygonal turret with a pyramid roof on the S side that rises above the battlemented parapet of the tower. The only Romanesque sculpture here is the font.
8. St Peter and St Paul, Dinton, Buckinghamshire, England

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.
9. St Mary, Haddenham, Buckinghamshire, England

Parish church
Haddenham is 5 miles to the SW of Aylesbury and a mile from the Oxfordshire border, on the old A418 trunk road to Thame. For a short time at the end of the 13thc. it had a market, but its charter was revoked after complaints from nearby Thame. Many of its inhabitants therefore consider it a village, the largest in the country, even though it has 5,000 villagers and its own station, library, museum, industrial area and commercial district. The village itself has Townsend to the N and Church End to the S, suggesting that it was originally in a clearing in the woodland. Church End certainly has a village character, with a large green with a duckpond surrounded by the church (to the S), and a picturesque jumble of timber-framed and thatched cottages. St Mary’s is a very large church, with an aisled nave, a chancel with N and S chapels and a W tower. The nave has no clerestory, but the combination of tall aisle arcades and big aisle windows makes it very bright. The arcades are of four bays and date from the 13thc. with cylindrical piers and moulded capitals. The aisle windows are a mixture of 14thc. flowing and 15thc. Perpendicular styles. The chancel arch is slightly earlier than the arcades; pointed but with late-12thc. capitals. The chancel is 13thc., as are its side chapels. Of these, the S is shorter and narrower and now serves as a vestry, while the N has a 13thc. piscina with dogtooth ornament, but was enlarged in the 15thc. when it was given two large Perpendicular windows. The tower is 13thc., with a W doorway and triple-lancet W window, an arcaded bell-storey and slender angle buttresses. There is no S doorway, and the N, facing the village green, is 13thc. with a 13thc. porch. The church is of coursed rubble in small pieces. Romanesque features recorded here are the chancel arch and two fonts; one in normal use in the church and the other in use as a planter outside.
10. St Mary Magdalene, Upper Winchendon, Buckinghamshire, England

Parish church
Upper (or Over) Winchendon is 4½ miles W of Aylesbury. The village consists of just the church and a few houses along a minor road in an elevated setting overlooking the Vale of Aylesbury. The church consists of a nave with a N aisle and S porch, chancel and W tower. Nave and chancel are of limestone rubble; the tower is 14thc., of coursed limestone rubble with diagonal buttresses and a S stair, polygonal at the top with a pyramid roof. The bell-openings are of two lights with a mouchette quatrefoil in the head. The plain tower arch, double chamfered and of two orders dying into the jambs, is also 14thc. The nave S doorway, with its heavy angle roll, scalloped capitals and decorated nook-shafts, dates from the mid-12thc. The N aisle of the nave simply consists of three arches pierced through the wall, with wide piers between them. There are no imposts or capitals. This suggests an earlier 12thc.. date for the aisle, and if so the S doorway must be a later addition. The aisle appears to have been widened, and its windows date from the mid to late 14thc. The chancel dates from c. 1200-10, with a pointed and chamfered chancel arch carried on plain jambs, slightly pointed plain lancet windows and similarly plain early-13thc. sedilia and piscina. Below the SW lancet are the remains of a low-side window, now blocked. The pulpit; a 14thc. wooden example with flowing tracery decoration, is by far the earliest in Buckinghamshire and among the oldest in the country. The church was restored in 1877 by William White of Wimpole Street, London. The font is a plain 12thc. tub, and a 12thc. corbel is reset in the chancel S interior wall. The S doorway, font and corbel are described below.
11. All Saints, Wing, Buckinghamshire, England

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.