Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

A HISTORY OF ST MARY’S, THE PARISH CHURCH 109 CHAPTER 5/ A HISTORY OF ST MARY’S, THE PARISH CHURCH Barry Jobling Why are we here? eautiful old church, and so alive’, Ilford. ‘Overwhelming’, Bavaria. ‘Truly, God is here’, Essex. ‘A lovely cup of tea’, West Sussex. ‘A church of outstanding beauty and with amazing angels’, Cambridgeshire. These are a few of the comments from the Visitors' Book at St Mary's Church, each reflecting people's thoughts of their visit that day. As each of us enjoys different aspects and experiences when visiting old buildings - especially those of a spiritual nature - it is difficult to know how to describe St Mary's, Buckden, where God and man have been at work for around 1300 years. While I shall focus mainly on the fabric of the church, and the events and people that have helped shape its life, it is important to remember that St Mary’s is a living church serving the needs of today's community and being served by its active congregation. The history of a village and its parish church are naturally closely entwined, please forgive any duplication with other chapters. This church has such a cohesive feel that many have remarked that it seems to have dropped ready- made from Heaven. It is true that the building does appear to be of one character and design; this is partly due to the fact that a lot of what we see today dates from a very short period between 1432 and 1440. Credit is also due to the empathetic work of many in the intervening centuries; this work continues today with the Buckden Living Stones Project to build facilities for village use, including a kitchen and toilets. Meantime with a little diligence it is possible to find the handiwork of each of the twenty-two generations since 1437; let's have a look.... ‘Why are we here?’ is a meaningful question to ask in a church. But long before Christianity this site was important, sitting as it does at the junction of one of the main north/south roadways in England (now the A1) and an early vital east/west crossing of the River Ouse from East Anglia and the coast (now Mill Road/Church Street). Pagan shrines or sacred sites were often located at woodland groves, springs or ponds; all three were here in antiquity, the springs and ponds remaining today. It is possible that this area was a site of worship, thanks to the combination of these physical mysteries and the roadway junction – we may never know. Christianity came to this area during Roman times. The earliest known British Christian church plate, dating to about AD 275, was excavated twenty miles north of Buckden, at Water Newton on the Great North Road; and a coin of Emperor Tetricus of Gaul (AD 270-273) was found during excavations near the church’s north wall. In nearby Godmanchester, a fourth century lead tank bearing the Chi-Rho Christian symbol has been recovered. In AD 673, monks from Peterborough founded a monastery at Ely and began missionary work in the Ouse valley. Parishes as we know them today began to be formed around that time and there may have been sufficient population in the Buckden area to support a small wooden Christian church by about AD 700. A natural choice for its site would be in the area of a previously pagan shrine, if indeed Buckden had had one. The Early Church Domesday Book ( 1086) records that the parish and lands of Buckden belonged to the bishops of Lincoln. The early history of the diocese is complicated. In Anglo-Saxon times there was a bishop of Lindsey, whose seat was at Lincoln. In 971, the bishop of the time united this diocese with another, based on Dorchester-on-Thames in Oxfordshire. The resulting diocese of Dorchester, of which Buckden was a part, spread from the River Humber to the River Thames. In 1066 the Saxon king, Harold, passed near Buckden heading northwards with his army to defeat the Scandinavians at Stamford Bridge. Soon after he was heading south to his death at Hastings; and the B