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I Location

II General Description

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.

III Exterior Features

1. Doorways

(i) Nave S doorway.

Round-headed, of two orders, under timber-framed medieval porch, much restored.

First order

Plain, slightly chamfered jambs supporting hollow-chamfered imposts with a low roll towards the bottom of the face. The arch is plain and unchamfered.

Second order

Detached en-delit nook-shafts on worn roll and hollow chamfered bases. The W shaft is carved with single cable; the E diapered with concentric lozenges with central drilled bosses and alternate hollow and roll mouldings making up each lozenge. The shafts support triple-scalloped capitals that share a cone at the angle and have plain roll neckings. Imposts are as the 1st order, and the arch has a fat angle roll with a face hollow and a flat fillet to the extrados. The label is chamfered inside and out with a quirk to the inner chamfer.

Dimensions

IV Interior Features

5. Interior decoration

c. Miscellaneous

(i) Roll corbel.

Set in the S wall of the chancel is a roll corbel, chamfered at the ends, with a chamfered top and a row of nailhead on the chamfer. The E end of the corbel is damaged at the top, and traces of red paint survive around the chamfered end of the roll and below the row of nailhead.

Dimensions

V Furnishings

1. Fonts

(i)

The font stands in bay 2 of the N nave arcade, alongside pier 1. It is a plain tub font on a later octagonal stem with a moulded base and capital. The rim of the bowl has a large crack at the NE with lead visible inside, and a mortar repair opposite at the SW indicates the places where lock staples were removed. The entire E half of the upper section is broken horizontally, some 0.15 m below the rim, and below this crack is an extensive, triangular mortar repair. The bowl is lead lined and stained with fungus on the N side.

Dimensions

VII History

Upper Winchendon was held before the Conquest by the prior and canons of St Frideswide, Oxford, and they continued to hold the manor until the Dissolution. The parish is now part of the Schorne team benefice, i.e. Dunton, Granborough, Hardwick, Hoggeston, North Marston, Oving with Pitchcott, Waddesdon with Over Winchendon and Fleet Marston, and Whitchurch with Creslow.

VIII Comments/Opinions

The chancel arch at Cold Brayfield has features similar to the doorway, including decorated nook-shafts, similar bases and imposts, plain scalloped capitals and a heavy angle roll in the arch.

IX Bibliography