Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

A HISTORY OF ST MARY’S, THE PARISH CHURCH 114 remainder of the stained glass in the eighteenth or nineteenth century. Despite its loss, we are now blessed with a magnificently lit church, at its finest on a winter’s day with the sun streaming almost horizontally through the south-facing windows. The Wars of the Roses continued throughout this building period and Bishop John Russell, we must remember, in theory a neutral churchman, had been translated to Lincoln in 1480 by the Yorkist king, Edward IV; and Russell was a fervent supporter of Richard III. In Buckden, he is best known as the builder of the Tudor Buckden Palace (the Towers). In the church he was responsible for the building of the ornate south porch, c. 1485, with fine stone carvings within and without. After the battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, King Henry VII spent his first royal Christmas at Lincoln, possibly to test the loyalty of Russell. And, possibly to impress his brand new Tudor monarch, en route to Lincoln, Russell incorporated the double rose of Lancaster and York into the ceiling of Buckden church’s porch: perhaps it needed some last minute colour changes! At the centre of this beautifully classic vaulting is a splendid carving of the Virgin Mary crowned and in glory, intended to represent the Assumption. The complete ceiling would have looked quite stunning to the villagers of the day in its original lavish colours, as would the interior of the church. Around the outside of the porch is a carved string of various beasts including a monkey, a muzzled bear, a lion, a lamb, a fox stalking geese (often an uncomplimentary allegory concerning the priest and his congregation!), dogs chasing a rabbit, and a wise old owl lying on its side. Perennial favourites, however, are the little squirrels all in a row climbing each side of the entrance arch. The eroded and distorted faces on either side of the entrance were probably once of angels, although one appears to be wearing a mitre. The replacement figure of St Mary in the niche above the south entrance was commissioned in 1962 in memory of a recent vicar. The porch has an upper room, still known as the parvis chamber, accessible by a circular stair from its interior doorway, which was used for many years as a depository for the parochial library founded in the 1690s. In the 1870s, the books were transferred to Huntingdon, together with those of the diocesan library which the vicar had inherited along with the palace in 1837. There is a somewhat puzzling reference in some hundred-year-old records that the parvis chamber also contained, at that time, the remains of an ancient font that was reputed to have been used at Queen Anne’s baptism, in 1665. This association would seem most unlikely, but it possibly has a trace of truth to it; disappointingly the remains are no longer there for examination. The Church Bells While trying to make this history of the church a chronological one, this is probably a good time to take a break from a strict timeline and to talk about the bells. About the same year that Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa , a bell-founder called Thomas Bullisdon was casting in London Buckden’s oldest bell. It must be conceded that Leonardo was probably not aware of this at the time! This, our only surviving ‘Catholic’ bell, was cast around 1510. It is a treble bell with the inscription around it, ‘Sca Katerina ora pro nobis’, ‘St Katherine pray for us’. St Katherine was the patron saint of wheelwrights. The Edwardian Inventories record church silver, vestments and bells extant in 1552. Of course, the main purpose of the Inventories was to establish the current possessions of a church and to determine ‘that which is wholesome’ to remain, the rest being sent to the king’s London Jewel House or sold locally. Buckden’s list shows some fine vestments, two silver chalices, a large silver cross etc and six bells. The number of bells is extraordinary for a small village church. Most Huntingdonshire churches had three or four bells; Kimbolton, Brampton and Hartford had five, but Buckden was alone with six. This can only reflect its importance, being adjacent to the bishop’s palace, and the wealth of its benefactors (and not forgetting the strength of its tower). Legal permission to hang a bell was required from the diocese and the bishop would hardly have declined a licence for his own bell. The double rose boss in the porch