Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

A HISTORY OF ST MARY’S, THE PARISH CHURCH 113 The carved wooden heavenly angels in the south aisle roof are rightly well known, showing musicians playing, from east to west, the lute, viol, tabor, dulcimer and hurdy-gurdy. It is believed that the carver copied these instruments from those in use in the church at the time. Beneath them, against the roof trusses, are wooden carvings of St Stephen (clutching the stones with which he was martyred) in the southeast corner and several carvings of bishops and abbots, all once richly painted and quite recognisable to the parishioners of their day. These all date to the late 1430s and are a joy to behold. The octagonal limestone font, its blank shields once painted with benefactors’ coats of arms, also dates to around this building period. Filled with holy water annually at Easter for use throughout the coming year, the font had a cover, which was locked to prevent the theft of the water for evil purposes. A modern, iron reinforced oak lid now covers the lead-lined interior. The stone corbels supporting the south aisle roof timbers portray various grotesque faces and figures intended to illustrate sin, and its consequences, for the benefit of erring villagers! The carved faces above the north arcade, meanwhile, are quite different as they present several ladies’ heads with remarkable examples of medieval hairstyles; at least one of which may be from an earlier nave as the hairstyle predates the time of this construction. Once again it is important to remember that these images would originally have been painted and have been surrounded by related frescoes depicting stories from the Bible. Bishop Gray died in Buckden in February 1436 and, as sometimes happens with men seeking to make their mark for posterity, he left his great work unfinished. No doubt with the ongoing encouragement of John Depyng, the bishop’s successor Bishop William Alnwick completed Gray’s plans. To ensure that he too was remembered, Alnwick built the clerestory; adding his ‘cross moline’ arms to the stone corbel angel shields. Yet he is perhaps better remembered as being the wise advisor who inspired King Henry VI to endow and build Eton School and King’s College, Cambridge. The Finishing Touches 1460-1490 and the Stained Glass The mid-fifteenth century saw the height of worship of the Virgin Mary as the mother of God. There is evidence in the stone carving, the piscina and aumbry (a small cupboard for the Communion chalice and plate) and in the remains of stained glass, that the south aisle was a separate Lady Chapel with its own altar. There are also remains of fixings in the walls and arcade indicating where a wooden screen would have separated this chapel from the nave. Similarly, the north aisle has its own piscina and aumbry and traces of wooden screen fittings, which again would suggest a local guild or chantry chapel there in its early history. Around 1470 or 1480 in Bishop Rotherham’s or Bishop Russell’s time, a rood screen and loft were inserted into the chancel arch. The south stairway, door and upper entrance remain, as does the chiselled step cut into the chancel arch, at the top of the columns. This step or notch was inserted to accommodate the large beam necessary to bear the weight of the rood (cross) and the walkway for the choir and musicians. The screen and loft would last for only fifty or sixty years, yet the circular stairs are surprisingly well worn for such a short period of use. As mentioned, very little remains of the original stained glass dating from this period. That which does, is intriguing, having been preserved in the upper lights of the eastern and western windows of the south aisle. They were possibly saved from destruction by being plastered over or perhaps they were too high to remove with a few swings of an iron bar, albeit the principal characters have been disfigured. Christopher Woodeforde identifies this glass as the work of the Norwich School of glassmakers, showing their trademark ‘ears of barley’ in rows on the ground by the angels’ feet (Woodforde, 1950). The eastern window portrays angels surrounding the Coronation of the Virgin, and the scrolls they hold contain the Latin sentences of a prose sung at Easter in the medieval church. Two of the angels stand on rings, perhaps referring to the ‘living creatures’ in Ezekiel 1.18. The Annunciation of St Mary is portrayed in the west window. All the figures except one are headless, and the Archangel Gabriel is missing (Woodforde in 1972 states, knowingly, that this figure was in a private collection….). The words in the scrolls are from an anthem sung during Vespers, the evening service. There does not appear to have been a wholesale simultaneous breaking of all the windows at Buckden, rather intermittent flurries of destruction over many years. The iconoclasms of Edward VI’s reign, and later the Puritans, were responsible for the loss of some images. Indeed in the 1640s there were major expenses for window repair. However, in a Visitation on 21 July 1684, the inspectors were still able to record 36 coats of arms in all of the main windows. And as we have already heard, in Browne Willis’ publication of 1730, he states that Bishop William Gray (1431-1436) was a great benefactor of St Mary’s ‘as appears by his arms, which I have seen, in a great many of the windows there’. So, it would appear that persons unknown removed the