Patrick Comerford
I was in Maids Moreton, on the edges of Buckingham, earlier last week, looking for the Old Rectory as part of my continuing research into the work of the Stony Stratford architect Edward Swinfen Harris (1841-1924).
Maids Moreton is a pretty Buckinghamshire village that retains its rural and rustic charms despite its proximity to Buckingham, with many timber framed houses and thatched cottages in the village. But the oldest building in Maids Moreton is the Parish Church of Saint Edmund, said to date from the late 14th century but probably standing on the site of an earlier Anglo-Saxon church.
Saint Edmund’s is dedicated to the ninth century Anglo-Saxon King Edmund who was martyred and beheaded by the Danes in Essex in the year 869. He is buried at Bury St Edmunds and Saint Edmund and Saint Edward the Confessor were the patron saints of mediaeval England until they were replaced by Saint George in the 15th century. Saint Edmund’s Day is later next week, on 20 November.
Saint Edmund’s Church is a simple structure with a chancel, nave and tower, north and south porches and a south vestry that was extended in 1882. It is of exceptional quality in the Perpendicular style, a uniquely English variation of Gothic architecture that emphasises verticality, light and proportion. This is seen in the large windows with vertical mullions that continue downwards to stone seats. The most notable feature of the church are the four fan vaults that are contemporary with the building and among the earliest to be seen today.
The church was entirely rebuilt ca 1450, and later legends and local lore associate the founding or re-founding of the church with two women who became known as the Maids of Moreton. They were said to have been daughters of the last Thomas Pever, who died in 1429, and are said to give Maids Moreton its name.
The legend and its dating is further confused by a stone slab, originally in the centre of the nave and now under a section of the floor that can be lifted. It has the outline of the brasses of two women dated to ca 1380-1420. They too have been identified with the two women said to have given Maids Moreton its name.
A late 12th century font and some 12th century moulded stones, reused in the rear arches of the windows of the north porch, are parts of an earlier church, and the list of rectors of the parish begins in 1241 with one Robert.
The windows throughout the church, with their tracery of vertical mullions and horizontal transoms, are the most obvious feature in the Perpendicular style. The original oak roofs of the nave and chancel remain. All the vaults in Saint Edmund’s are of an early design and construction, similar to the cloisters of Gloucester Cathedral, with the ribs doubling and re-doubling in number as the cone expands.
These architectural details suggest Saint Edmund’s Church was completed before 1400, and the unusually large number of stone seats, especially in the chancel, suggest it may have been intended for a singing school.
The chancel is the oldest part of the church and may have been built before the Black Death in 14th century, with the nave and tower built after that. The chancel roof is of two bays, the carved boss at the centre of the tie-beam shows Christ in Majesty sitting on a throne holding the world in his left hand while his right hand is raised in blessing.
The east window has a three-centred arch that is flat at the top rather than pointed in the Gothic tradition. Pieces of mediaeval glass at the top of the window indicate it originally depicted the Tree of Jesse, illustrating the genealogy of Jesus through King David.
The stained glass in the east window is the work of Percy Charles Haydon Bacon (1860-1935), who founded the firm of Percy Bacon & Brothers in 1892. He also made windows in Saint James the Great Church, Hanslope, and Saint Simon and Saint Jude Church, Castlethorpe.
The window by Percy Charles Haydon Bacon was installed in 1898 to mark Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee the previous year. It shows five major events in the life of Christ: the Nativity; the Baptism of Christ in the Jordan by Saint John the Baptist; the Crucifixion; the Resurrection or Noli Me Tangere; and the Ascension, though with only two of the disciples, Saint Peter and Saint John.
The altar or communion table replaced the pre-Reformation stone altar that may once have held relics of Saint Edmund, and a later Reformation-era table. The carved oak Jacobean table is dated 1623 and the carvings include dragons with grape vines emerging from their mouths, symbols of the Holy Spirit and the fruit of the Spirits, a rose and thistle symbolising the united crowns of England and Scotland, various faces and shields with the name of the donor John More, the donor, and the coat of arms of the More family.
The sedilia on the south side of the chancel has an elaborately carved canopy above the seats for the priest, deacon and subdeacon. The canopy is of chalk, and probably dates from the late 15th century. The painting behind is of uncertain date. It showed the Last Supper, and was defaced probably by Cromwellian soldiers.
The door on the north side of the chancel is made of wide vertical planks, mostly elm, and may have been made hastily to replace a door that Cromwellian soldiers broke through.
An elaborate monument in a recess in the centre of the north wall of the chancel commemorates Penelope Bate and her husband Edward Bate, the son of George Bate, who was the physician to Charles I, Oliver Cromwell and Charles II.
The lectern, now in the chancel, has an oak base and support, with an oak carving of an eagle. It was donated by Eliza Nickols of Oxford, in 1933, in memory of her mother, who was born in Maids Moreton.
The oak chancel screen dates from the 15th century. When Hugh Harrison, a consultant conservationist, examined the screen in 2012, he found convincing evidence that it was no later than the 15th century and had always been in its location. He said ‘the screen is one of the most complete, least altered or damaged mediaeval screens that I have ever seen.’
He found signs of the original red and green polychrome decoration. On top of the screen, at either end of the chancel arch, are two blackened oak figures with shields displaying the hammer and nails of the crucifixion. They may have been corbel fronts or bosses from an old roof.
The nave is divided into four bays by the spacing of the roof trusses. In each of the first, second and fourth bays on either side is a tall, finely-proportioned window of three transomed lights, cinquefoiled in both stages, with vertical tracery in a two-centred head.
In the third bay on either side are the north and south doorways, each set in a recess of the same character as those in the chancel, and rising to the same height as the heads of the windows.
The nave roof has four bays with carved bosses and a carved with a figure of Christ in Judgment sitting on a rainbow. The roof was renovated in 1882, overlaid with new timbers and reroofed.
The pulpit has carved oak rails in the Gothic style. It was presented by Edmund Harold Browne (1811-1891), Bishop of Ely, Bishop of Winchester and Norrisian Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, in memory of his parents, who lived at Moreton House and are buried by the church tower.
On the wall behind the pulpit, an 18th century tablet recalls Penelope Packe (1699-1718), a granddaughter of Edward Bate, who is commemorated on the north wall in the chancel, and the first wife of Richard Verney (1693-1752), 13th Lord Willoughby de Broke; she died when she was only 18.
The remains of a piscina – a drain used in rinsing the Communion vessels – in the south-east corner of the nave indicate an altar was originally in that place. The side chapel may have been the Lady Chapel, with a niche in the corner and a peculiar squint or hagiascope, that provided a view of the High Altar, so that the elevation at the two celebrations could take place at the same time.
The font, which is from the earlier church, is of late Norman character, and has a large circular bowl resting on a large octagonal base and stem. The bowl is decorated with a series of six ornamented and beaded semi-circles, each enclosing a large acanthus leaf, with smaller leaves in the intermediate spaces. The bowl is believed to have been made in the workshop at Saint Peter’s in Northampton in the 1140s or 1150s.
Above the north door is a 17th century painted inscription with the arms of the Peyvre family, commemorating the Maids of Moreton, the legendary founders of the church.
An early Victorian bread basket on the wall near the north door was once used to hold bread distributed to the poor of the parish after evensong in winter. The bread was paid for through a bequest from of John Snart who died in 1743. The basket was rediscovered in the attic of the Old Rectory in 1904. The loaves were last distributed in 1970.
An early 17th century double door in the outer entrance of the north porch is set in a frame with a balustered fanlight in the head, bearing the date 1637 and a shield with the heraldic arms of the Pever family.
The porch has embattled parapets, winged figures representing cherubim, and a handsome fan-vaulted ceiling.
The design and execution of the vault is almost identical to the cloister of Gloucester Cathedral. In the rear arches of the windows are some 12th century moulded stones, probably re-used from the original church.
The south porch is smaller and less elaborate than that the north porch – it is without buttresses and has a plain parapet in place of battlements. The roof is fan-vaulted and the internal door was installed during restoration work in the 1880s.
The west doorway has an elaborate canopy, supported by two richly panelled cones of fan vaulting. The west window has remains of 15th century glass. At the top corners of the tower are winged figures identical to those on the north porch.
The tower has a ring of six bells that are regularly rung. The bellringers’ gallery was built as a memorial to the dead of World War II. On the south wall of the gallery hangs the old south door with musket-ball holes made by Roundhead troops in 1642.
The Uthwatt family commissioned Edward Swinfen Harris to rebuild the Old Rectory (1878-1879) beside Saint Edmund’s Church. A major, but sympathetic, restoration of the church was undertaken in 1882-1887. At the time, the Rector of Maids Moreton was the Revd Bolton Waller Johnstone (1823-1903). His parents, the Revd John Beresford Johnstone and Elizabeth Waller of Castletown Park, Co Limerick, were married in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, and he was born in Kilkenny and educated at Trinity College Dublin.
The church was reordered in 2015 when the chancel was cleared of accumulated furnishings and a level oak floor and a kitchen and toilet were added under the bellringers’ gallery.
The North Buckingham Parish is in the Diocese of Oxford and includes the villages of Akeley, Leckhampstead, Lillingstone Dayrell, Lillingstone Lovell and Maids Moreton and their churches, as well as part of the town of Buckingham.
The Revd Hans Taling is the Rector and the Revd Cathy Pearce is the Associate Priest.
• The Sunday services in Saint Edmund’s Church, Maids Moreton, at at 10:30, with Holy Communion on the second and fourth Sundays. Tn addition there are services at 8 am on the first and third Sundays and at 6 pm on the fourth Sunday.
