Haddenham is 5 miles to the SW of Aylesbury and a mile from the Oxfordshire border, on the old A418 trunk road to Thame. For a short time at the end of the 13thc. it had a market, but its charter was revoked after complaints from nearby Thame. Many of its inhabitants therefore consider it a village, the largest in the country, even though it has 5,000 villagers and its own station, library, museum, industrial area and commercial district. The village itself has Townsend to the N and Church End to the S, suggesting that it was originally in a clearing in the woodland. Church End certainly has a village character, with a large green with a duckpond surrounded by the church (to the S), and a picturesque jumble of timber-framed and thatched cottages. St Mary's is a very large church, with an aisled nave, a chancel with N and S chapels and a W tower. The nave has no clerestory, but the combination of tall aisle arcades and big aisle windows makes it very bright. The arcades are of four bays and date from the 13thc. with cylindrical piers and moulded capitals. The aisle windows are a mixture of 14thc. flowing and 15thc. Perpendicular styles. The chancel arch is slightly earlier than the arcades; pointed but with late-12thc. capitals. The chancel is 13thc., as are its side chapels. Of these, the S is shorter and narrower and now serves as a vestry, while the N has a 13thc. piscina with dogtooth ornament, but was enlarged in the 15thc. when it was given two large Perpendicular windows. The tower is 13thc., with a W doorway and triple-lancet W window, an arcaded bell-storey and slender angle buttresses. There is no S doorway, and the N, facing the village green, is 13thc. with a 13thc. porch. The church is of coursed rubble in small pieces. Romanesque features recorded here are the chancel arch and two fonts; one in normal use in the church and the other in use as a planter outside.

In 1086 Haddenham was held by Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, and was assessed at 40 hides, of which 18 were in demesne. The population consisted of 40 villans, 16 bordars and 15 slaves, and there were two mills. There was meadow sufficient to feed 6 plough-teams and enough pasture for the livestock. Gilbert the preist held 3 hides of this land from the archbishop, along with a church and its tithes. Before the Conquest this land was held by Earl Tosti. The manor was granted to bishop Gundulf of Rochester by William II, in exchange for Gundulf's building of a royal castle at Rochester, and he and archbishop Lanfranc immediately granted it to the monks of Rochester priory. It was still in their possession in 1295, when charters for a weekly market and an annual fair were granted by Edward I to the prior and chapter of Rochester Cathedral, both to be held at the manor. The charter for the market was withdrawn in 1302 at the request of the bishop of Lincoln, presumably because his own market at nearby Thame was losing revenue. Haddenham is now in the benefice of Haddenham with Cuddington, Kingsey and Aston Sandford

Pevsner describes the font (V.1.(i)) as one of the Aylesbury type, and the decoration of the bowl as 'rough fluting', which it certainly is not. To the present author the links with the Aylesbury group seem very tenuous: the bowl is the wrong shape, there is no fluting, the dragon motifs of the upper border appear nowhere in the Aylesbury group, and there is nothing resembling the typical inverted scallop base. In fact an analysis of the motifs used at Haddenham point to a date earlier than the 1170-90 range normally accepted for the Aylesbury fonts; perhaps c.1140-50.