who performed miraculous cures of the gout and became venerated as a saint. The S. aisle contains the original (14th-century) remains of his elaborate shrine, and the nave has good medieval work of various dates. The canons of Windsor filched Schorne’s relics and, probably as a sop to the disgruntled parishioners, paid for the building of the superb chancel and two-storey vestry and sacristy in the late 15th century. The church was restored in 1855 at Queen Victoria’s expense in memory of John Camden Neild, a local landowner who left his fortune to the Queen after his death in the 1850s.
OLNEY † St Peter and St Paul
8m/13km N. of Milton Keynes
OS SP889509 GPS 52.1499N, 0.7008W
The view from the S. across the water meadows of the Ouse is memorable. The tall broach spire and the splendid chancel windows, all of the 14th century, remind one that Northamptonshire is only a mile or two away. Inside is large and airy, but heavily scraped. The pulpit in the S.W. corner was used by John Newton, vicar in the 1760s, who, with his friend William Cowper, wrote the Olney Hymns.
PENN † Holy Trinity
3m/4km N.W. of Beaconsfield
OS SU916932 GPS 51.6309N, 0.6775W
There are splendid views from the churchyard. The church, of wonderfully varied textures and materials, with two great porches, has a medieval structure, the roof of c. 1400 being one of the finest in the county. But it was much altered by the Penns and Curzons in the 18th century, which is the date of the chancel and its fittings, and many of its monuments. The great treasure is the 15th-century Doom painting on oak boards set over the chancel arch; it was found in the roof in 1938. The series of brasses is good for costume; and in the centre aisle is the tombstone of a descendant of William Penn, Quaker and founder of Pennsylvania.
TATTENHOE: ST GILES – some of the stonework and architectural details of this humble little church are thought to have come from nearby Snelshall Priory, a ruin by the mid-16th century
PITSTONE † St Mary
8m/13km E. of Aylesbury
OS SP942149 GPS 51.8251N, 0.6341W
Churches Conservation Trust
This small church lying in chalk fields below the Chilterns has a most satisfactory interior, with work of many dates and textures; 13th-century capitals like Ivinghoe, 15th-century nave arcades, a 12th-century font – the whole dominated by a fine Jacobean pulpit and tester.
QUAINTON † Holy Cross and St Mary
6m/10km N.W. of Aylesbury
OS SP749201 GPS 51.8749N, 0.9120W
The church stands a little apart from the village in a group with almshouses and a Carolean rectory, and commands a lovely view over the vale. It was badly mauled by 19th-century restorers, who endowed it with a monstrous roof and hideous tiles, but it is notable for the finest 17th- and 18th-century sculpture in the county. In the nave are monuments by Stayner, William Stanton, Leoni and M. C. Wyatt, but inside the tower (too often locked) are the moving figures of Justice Dormer and his wife sorrowing over their dead son – a work of genius long attributed to Roubiliac, but more latterly believed to have been sculpted by Michael Rysbrack, c. 1728.
RADNAGE † St Mary
6m/10km N.W. of High Wycombe
OS SU786979 GPS 51.6748N, 0.8646W
Perched on the wooded slopes of the tumbled ground behind the Chiltern scarp below Bledlow Ridge is a scattered village of several ‘endships’, one of which is clustered around the church and rectory. The exterior, of partly plastered chalk and flint with brick repairs, fits perfectly into the landscape. Much of the structure is of about 1200, with aisleless nave and chancel and a plain tower between. The simple village interior retains its original plaster, covered with a medley of medieval paintings and post-Reformation texts.
WING: ALL SAINTS – the compelling classical monument to Sir Robert Dormer, d. 1552
STEWKLEY † St Michael and All Angels
5m/8km W. of Leighton Buzzard
OS SP852261 GPS 51.9269N, 0.7622W
This very fine Norman church, with central tower, is comparable with Iffley, Oxon. The W. front is particularly rich Norman work, with blind arcades and an odd hanging keystone. Inside, a restoration by Street took away something of the texture, but enhanced the lofty scale, culminating in a distant, dark chancel, whose chevron-carved stone vaulting is very fine.
STOKE POGES † St Giles
3m/4km N. of Slough
OS SU975827 GPS 51.5351N, 0.5949W
The poet Thomas Grey wrote his ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ here, and the association rather obscures the main points of interest: a 14th-century timbered and traceried porch; the limewashed walls of the oddly placed 13th-century tower; and the renovated Hastings chapel in which one rather regrets the disappearance of a good gallery. Fine panels of 17th- and 18th-century glass have been placed here.
TATTENHOE † St Giles
4m/7km S. of Milton Keynes
OS SP829339 GPS 51.9979N, 0.7938W
Tiny St Giles used to stand wistful and remote in the midst of moats, banks, ditches and other evidences of a deserted village. That remoteness has been compromised in recent years, and the church now stands on the edge of a much-reduced patch of scrubland, primarily for the use of dog walkers, on the edge of a late 20th-century housing development. There is a simple interior with box pews for each of the three farming families that formed the nucleus of Tattenhoe from the 14th century to the 20th. Betjeman’s ‘authentic aroma of the past – stale paraffin and mouldy hassocks’ has now succumbed to the 2007 installation of electricity and heating.
TERRIERS † St Francis
N.E. district of High Wycombe
OS SU877944 GPS 51.6423N, 0.7337W
By Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the church was consecrated in 1930, and is one of his best designs. Light and shade are artfully employed within, and the impressive exterior is suitably enhanced by a lofty central tower.
TWYFORD † St Mary
5m/8km S. of Buckingham
OS SP665266 GPS 51.9346N, 1.0340W
A church of exceptional interest for its details and fittings, whose various architectural styles have created something of a jumble. The Norman doorway is notable, and inside there are fine 13th-century arcades, with a good deal of 15th-century woodwork – roof, pews and screen with some painting. There are worthwhile monuments, both medieval and later.
WEST WYCOMBE † St Lawrence
2m/3km W. of High Wycombe
OS SU827949 GPS 51.6474N, 0.8056W
Medieval in origin, the church is dramatically placed within an Iron Age earthwork; the curiously wrought flinty Dashwood Mausoleum lies to the E. Much of the church, including nave, upper part of the tower and mausoleum, were rebuilt and rededicated in the mid-18th century on the direction of local landowner Sir Francis Dashwood, one of the founders