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I Location

II General Description

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 Aylesbury superseded Buckingham as the county town in 1529, following a declaration by Henry VIII.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.

The Vale of Aylesbury runs from W to E through the town, and is a continuation of the Vale of the White Horse, largely in neighbouring Berkshire. It is a lowland, agricultural region on a clay substrate, supporting mixed farming and especially dairy cattle. The surrounding landscape is generally wooded with hedges. Aylesbury was always a market town rather than a manufacturing one, although flour was ground there for the surrounding parishes from the later middle ages until the 20thc. Aylesbury is now a dormitory town for London commuters, with a fast service to Marylebone. Large areas of its historic centre were demolished in the 1950s and ‘60s, and housing estates were built around the centre. St Mary’s is in the town centre, and the neighbouring streets, e.g. Parson’s Fee, contain attractive timber-framed houses, but the inner ring road presses very close on the historic centre. St Mary’s is a large cruciform church with a crossing tower. The nave has six-bay aisles with late-13thc. arcades. The E end of the N aisle was widened in the 14thc. The chancel is basically 13thc., but the E and S walls were rebuilt in the 19thc., and the present E window is a 19thc. replacement for a five-light Perpendicular window that is now in the grounds of Greenend House, Rickford’s Hill. The transepts and crossing also retain some 13thc. ornament, but this area too was heavily restored in the 19thc. A 14thc. Lady Chapel was added to the E side of the S transept, and is now divided into a vestry and the Chapel of St Luke. On the N the corresponding site is occupied by the parish office. The tower is 13thc. with a plain parapet (although early views show battlements), and behind this is a square, lead-covered clock stage with a lead spike. Pevsner suggests that the upper parts are a 19thc. copy of a 17thc. timber spire. There was a major remodelling in the 15thc., when a clerestorey was added to the nave and many windows were replaced, but as Pevsner notes, the overall impression is of the 19thc. In 1840 Sir George Gilbert Scott found it in a dilapidated state, and he restored it progressively in campaigns of 1849-55 (rebuilding of nave and crossing piers, removal of galleries, repair of nave and aisle roofs), and 1866-69 (replacement of E window, rebuilding of upper parts of tower, renewal of exterior stonework). More recently the W end of the nave has been remodelled as a café (the refectory) and kitchen, with a stage erected in the three westernmost bays for the tables, the servery in the S aisle and porch, the kitchen in the N aisle and the lavatories to the W, under a modern gallery.

The only Romanesque feature is the font, an important example of the Aylesbury type, which is now in the centre of the refectory at the W end of the nave; its base partly concealed below the staging.

V Furnishings

1. Fonts

(i)

At the W end of the nave in the centre, now surrounded by the staging and tables of the refectory café is the grey clunch Aylesbury font. It was discovered broken into three pieces, buried in debris in various parts of the church. It is of the standard Aylesbury group type, with a fluted, cup-shaped bowl of cyma recta profile with a heavy upper rim carved with a relief border of Winchester acanthus. Below the bowl is a projecting double-roll, both rolls carved with directional chevron of alternate rolls and hollows. This stands on a double-scallop base with angle tucks; each shield carved with a relief plant design. This is all that projects above the staging, but presumably there is a plain step below. The fluting of the bowl has a scalloped upper edge, and between the scallops and the flutes is a horizontal joint where the bowl was broken. The upper rim decoration consists of pairs of grooved stems that spring from small, multi-lobed nodes on the lower fillet of the band, and curve symmetrically to form loops. The stems are clasped together with drilled beaded clasps in the centre of the loop, and continue to terminate in furled leaves within the loop. Each loop is similarly clasped to its neighbours on either side, and there are furled side leaves on the outside of each stem. The motifs are practically identical to one another. The font base is of inverted double scalloped form with angle tucks, and superimposed on the tuck between each pair of cones is a single spatulate leaf in relief.

These leaves vary in design as follows:

E face (centre): Bifurcated leaf, gouged out at the tip with thin parallel veins to either side forming a nested chevron design.

NE angle tuck: worn leaf with a central raised spine and nested chevron veins.

N face (centre): longitudinally grooved and turned over at the tip.

NW angle tuck: as NE angle but better preserved.

W face (centre): central raised wedge-shaped section with chevron vees to either side. SW angle tuck. Longitudinally bifurcated leaf with the tips turned over to show an overall grooved design on the reverse.

S face (centre): as N face. SE angle tuck. Damaged, but the main leaf is overlaid with a multilobed leaf at the tip.

The shields of the base are decorated as follows:

E face, S shield: Winchester acanthus. Two grooved stems forming symmetrical loops, clasped together at the centre with a beaded clasp, and with side shots having hooked or furled leaf terminals.

E face, N shield: Winchester acanthus. Similar to E face, S shield, but with a central lily-like flower at the top.

N face, E shield: Winchester acanthus. A symmetrical design growing from a node at bottom centre, with a central triangular vertical leaf and two grooved stems to either side; a short one that curves down to end in a hook at the bottom of the shield, and a long one that divides into two at a node, one branch curving up to form a loop with a furled leaf terminal, the other running horizontally with a furled leaf terminal.

N face W shield: Winchester acanthus. A symmetrical design growing from a node at bottom centre and consisting of five radiating stems, all terminating in leaves; the central one curled over at the tip, the rest furled.

W face N shield: Winchester acanthus. A symmetrical design growing from a daisy-like flower above bottom centre and consisting of five broad radiating stems, all terminating in leaves.

W face S shield: similar to the previous shield , but readable as a flower emerging from a pair of furled leaves at the bottom edge of the shield. The blossom has five long lobes, each with a multilobed terminal.

S face W shield: Winchester acanthus. A complex but symmetrical tangle of grooved stems consisting of a pair of loops with side shoots clasped together at the centre by a double clasp. The stems and side shoots have furled leaf terminals.

S face, E shield: Winchester acanthus. A design of radiating stems emerging from a pair of furled leaves at the bottom edge of the shield. In the centre is a vertical leaf with a nested-vee grooved surface and central spine that divides at the tip into a pair of furling terminals. To either side is a grooved stem that divides halfway to the perimeter, with side-shoots curving up and down and ending in furled leaves.

The bowl is lead lined, and there are inserted rim repairs at the E, NE and S.

Dimensions

VII History

Early traditions connect Aylesbury with Edith, the daughter of Penda of Mercia (d.655) and aunt of St Osyth. It came to the crown in the person of king Edwig, and was the site of a mint in the reigns of the latest Anglo-Saxon kings. Edward the Confessor was lord of Aylesbury, and it remained a possession of the crown until 1204, when king John granted the town to Geoffrey fitz Piers, earl of Essex. It remained in this family until John Fitz Piers threw in his lot with Simon de Montfort at Evesham, when it was seized by the crown and given to Gilbert de Clare. It was returned to the Fitz Piers in 1267–68. The male line failed in 1297 with the death of Richard Lord Fitz John, and Aylesbury eventually passed to the heirs of his sister, Joan Butler, and into the possession of James Butler, Earl of Ormonde. The Ormondes were dispossessed during the Wars of the Roses, but regained the town in 1485, when Thomas, the 7th earl came into possession. He was succeeded by his daughter, Margaret, married to Sir William Boleyn. In 1538 Margaret and her son Thomas sold it to Sir John Baldwin who, as Chief Justice of Common Pleas, had presided over the trial of Thomas’s daughter Anne Boleyn two years before. The parish is now in the benefice of Aylesbury (St Mary) with Bierton and Hulcott.

VIII Comments/Opinions

The font belongs to a group of 22 (according to Pevsner) centred on Aylesbury, of which thirteen (not all complete) are in Buckinghamshire. These are at Aylesbury, Bledlow, Buckland, Chearsley, Chenies, Great Kimble, Great Missenden, Linslade, Little Missenden, Monks Risborough, Pitstone, Weston Turville and Wing. Of these the finest are at Aylesbury, Chenies, Great Kimble, Great Missenden (base only), Weston Turville and Wing (base only). Others in the group have shallower or less complex carving, while a further three in the county, at Ludgershall, Saunderton and Haddenham, are less adept copies of the design. Outside Buckinghamshire there are related fonts at Duston and Eydon in Northants, and at Barton-le-Clay, Dunstable, Flitwick and Houghton Regis in Bedfordshire. These fonts are normally dated late in the 12thc., c.1170-90. Thurlby suggests, on the basis of comparisons of foliage forms on the Aylesbury and Weston Turville fonts with sculpture at St Alban’s Abbey dating from the abbacy of Simon (1167-83), and on the resemblance between these fonts and liturgical chalices, that the sculptors were copying St Albans metalwork, perhaps of the kind produced by one Master Baldwin according to an account by Matthew Paris. Of the other fonts in the group, the Weston Turville font is perhaps closest to the Aylesbury font. The two have similar rim decorations and both have fluted bowls, although the Aylesbury bowl has a double-curved (cyma) profile. The motifs on the shields of the base are similar too, although the Weston Turville base is single scalloped. The nested chevron central roll of the Aylesbury font is also more complex, having two units of chevron where Weston Turville has only one.

IX Bibliography