
The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland

St Cecilia (now)
Parish church
Adstock is a village towards the N of central Buckinghamshire, 4 miles SE of Buckingham to the N of the main road to Aylesbury. The compact village clusters around a junction of minor roads with the church at its SW edge.
St Cecilia’s consists of a nave with a S porch, chancel and W tower. The aisleless nave is 12thc with its N and S doorways in place; the former blocked and the latter covered by a porch bearing the date 1581 on a sundial in the gable. The chancel dates from the 14thc, and has a chancel arch on corbels decorated with naturalistic foliage, trefoil-headed piscina and windows with reticulated or flowing tracery. The N priest’s doorway has been blocked. The 15thc tower has an embattled parapet and the tower arch is tall and narrow with the arch orders dying into the jambs. Its construction may have been part of a major 15thc reconstruction, when the nave walls were rebuilt with two big three-light windows in each and an embattled parapet added. The church is of coursed rubble with ironstone blocks decoratively used on the quoins and buttresses. Romanesque sculpture is found on the two nave doorways.