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St Botolph, Bradenham, Buckinghamshire

Location
(51°39′59″N, 0°48′15″W)
Bradenham
SU 828 971
pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales) Buckinghamshire
now Buckinghamshire
  • Cristian Ispir
  • Ron Baxter
26 October 2011

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Feature Sets
Description

Bradenham is a small village in the Chilterns, consisting of a few houses, a pub, the church and a manor house all on a minor road off the A4010, some 3 miles NW of High Wycombe. Church and manor stand side by side facing an enormous green in the hilly, wooded landscape. The church consists of a chancel (rebuilt 1863-65) with a 2-bay N chapel added in 1542, an aisleless 12thc nave with a 19thc S porch and a short 15thc W tower with a pyramid roof behind a plain parapet. The church was restored by G. E. Street in 1863 and 1865. Construction is of flint and the chapel is rendered. Romanesque sculpture is found on the S doorway.

History

Bradenham was recorded in the Domesday survey under the lands of Leofwine of Nineham Courtenay, but the text records that it was held by Swaerting and Hearding from the king. It was assessed at 2 hides. Before the Conquest it was held by two unnamed brothers from King Edward. The tenancy in any case passed to the de Bohuns at some time in the 12thc, and Humphrey de Bohun (d.1183) gave it to his sister Maud on her marriage to Henry Doyley. Their son, also Henry, died without issue and Bradenham passed to Henry, Earl of Warwick, who had married Maud’s daughter Margaret. It stayed with this branch of the Warwicks until the late 13thc, when it reverted to Walter de Daventry, another heir of Maud and Humphrey.

The advowson of the church followed the ownership of the manor.

Features

Exterior Features

Doorways

Comments/Opinions

Pevsner & Williamson (1994) note the presence of Anglo-Saxon features in the Norman S doorway; specifically the half-shaft outer order supports. The heavy roll mouldings are also indicative of an early date, perhaps c.1100 as implied by English Heritage and VCH in their dating of the nave.

Bibliography

Buckinghamshire County Council, Historic Environment Record 0242300000.

EH, English Heritage Listed Building 46549.

VCH, Victoria County History: Buckinghamshire. III , London 1925, 35-37.

N. Pevsner and E. Williamson, The Buildings of England: Buckinghamshire, London 1960, 2nd ed. 1994, 118.