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- 1. All Saints, Buckland, Buckinghamshire, England
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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.
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