Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

A HISTORY OF ST MARY’S, THE PARISH CHURCH 123 The pulpit was moved to its present position in 1908 ‘Confirming our meeting in Buckden church yesterday. I propose to strip the plaster from the nave & aisles £100, if I strip the tower £20, and the chancel £35. I strongly recommend the same except where ancient frescoes remain & I doubt whether there are any considerable portions of frescoes in Buckden church. To reseat the nave (250 sittings) @ 35/- ea. We need to alter the floor, take it up, then concrete bed & wood block the floor all over £180; to economise we could install boards under pews for total £100-120. No monuments or memorial stones to be interfered with (per the faculty)’ The congregation at a Vestry meeting agreed to all the above except, once more, they did not want their recently furnished pews replaced. Again, they were overruled, and George Page & Sons of Buckden carried out Inskipp-Ladds’ proposals in full. Just prior to the main job going ahead, John Grundy's Warm Air Heating Apparatus Co. installed a new under-floor heating system. This involved digging a coal chute in the porch and excavating a fuel stoking space below the church floor, then fitting the furnace beneath the south part of the aisle crossing. Sufficient warm air was supplied through floor gratings that Grundy guaranteed an inside temperature of 60F degrees when it was 32F degrees outside. Work commenced once the faculty was granted, and the old floor level was discovered three inches below the present surface but it was not possible to reuse any of the old flooring or old tiles, as only indications of them at the base of the piers, were found. Thompson & Co. of Peterborough carved the new poppy-headed seating, which is in use today. During the stripping of the plaster from the nave walls the workers found several unexpected features. Rather surprisingly, they found the doorway to the rood loft, which had been completely plastered over. Also uncovered at this time were the aumbries and piscinae in the north and south aisles. The remains of some fourteenth century window tracery and a gable-cross were uncovered above the north aisle piscina. Undoubtedly, the most mysterious of the finds was that of a bearded face high up on the extreme west of the north wall of the north aisle. This early, possibly twelfth century, carved stone was reused as rubble when the wall was completed around 1480. Those who know of his presence find it comforting to have an older member of the congregation looking over their shoulder. One has to presume that the plaster strippers did not find any medieval wall paintings, which most certainly had been there at one time; whether the frescoes had been removed during iconoclastic days or the plaster strippers were not very careful, we shall never know. Very minor traces of medieval paintwork remain in the church. The care of the chancel now rested with the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and they were prevailed upon to take the opportunity to perform similar work at the east end of the church. Once again, Thompsons re-pewed the area, this time replacing the 1774 bishop’s ‘old deal pews with doors & uncomfortable straight backs’. However, when it came to stripping the chancel plaster, the original thirteenth century wall was found to be so deteriorated and unsound that parts of the south-west chancel window collapsed. The window was repaired, the wall reinforced and the plaster replaced and whitewashed. Now that there were no high box pews remaining, the seventeenth century raised pulpit was lowered and moved to the north side of the chancel arch. The font was moved from the south aisle to the tower (it was later to be returned to its current position so that the bell ringers could ring from the ground floor of the tower). New wrought iron lamps were installed, and several small donations were made to improve the lighting, altar railings and comfort of the services. Perhaps the most touching of these donations was the pair of brass altar candlesticks still in use, given by his sister in memory of Arthur Marshall killed in 1907 when thrown from his horse at his home in Richmond, Virginia, USA. The Bishop of Ely presided over the reopening ceremony of the refurbished church on 29 April 1909. Even though they could not keep their well-loved pews, the parishioners had raised £1123 for the complete refitting of St Mary’s.