The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St Simon and St Jude (now)
Parish church
Originally a simple two-cell church, essentially Romanesque. The medieval portions are rubble wall, rendered, and painted white, rather upset by a large Victorian S transept and vestry, with a modern 2-bay arcade. The Romanesque features are a plain N door (behind a brick porch) and a late 12thc chancel arch.
Parish church
The font, which incorporates a 12thc. fragment, stands in an extension of the nave dating from 1961; there is no other Romanesque sculpture in the building.
Parish church, formerly chapel
Castlethorpe is a large village in the N of the county, 6 miles NW of the centre of Milton Keynes. It stands on the N bank of the Roiver Great Ouse, and the West Coast railway runs through its W side. It formerly had its own station with links to London and Birmingham, but this was closed in 1964. The church stands in the centre of the village on a raised site which is the inner bailey of the former castle (which survives only as earthworks). It has a long, tall chancel, a truncated low nave with 2-bay aisles and a clerestorey, and a W tower built after its predecessor collapsed in 1729. There are no lateral doorways to the nave and entry is gained through the W tower doorway. Of this the nave and N arcade are 12thc, the chancel is 14thc, and the S arcade and both aisle walls are 15thc.