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All Saints, Bisham has a lovely setting on the banks of the Thames but it is included here because of its magnificent Tudor shrine to the Hoby family.
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Chiltern Society PhotoGroup
In November 2013 a PhotoGroup member, Susan Tripp, suggested we should bring together in one album photos of all the churches in the Chilterns. I pondered the amount of work that would be involved and settled for a selection of the best of them. But who would dare to choose the best? We quickly realised that someone had already made a personal choice that had resulted in a best-selling book published in 1999: Simon Jenkins and his ‘England’s Thousand Best Churches’. Following his selection would save us a lot of time and we thought our pictures might well complement his text.
This was going to be a major project so we put together a team of members who were keen to contribute new photos of the Chiltern churches. The brief they had was to photograph the features that Jenkins thought were outstanding and warranted the churches’ inclusion in the book. They could also photograph anything else in or around the churches that appealed to them.
So throughout 2014 Michael Bowker, Don Collier, Roland Gillott, John Hockey, Keith Hoffmeister, Chris Howe, Dennis Jeffrey and Susan Tripp shared the workload and I am most grateful to them. I think we have indeed succeeded in adding value to the descriptions of Chiltern churches featured in England’s Thousand Best.
Quiller Barrett
Website Editor
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All Saints, Bisham has a lovely setting on the banks of the Thames but it is included here because of its magnificent Tudor shrine to the Hoby family.
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10 obrazów
Holy Trinity at Bledlow is crumbling a bit, but as Jenkins said in 1999 ‘everything needs attention but mercifully failed to get it’. It has a superb Aylesbury font made at the end of the 12th century from Totternhoe quarry stone.
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Chalgrave church has wall paintings of ‘All Saints’, sadly rather faded.
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The Bedford Chapel in St Michael’s church is full of the Russell family’s funeral monuments.
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St Peter, Dunstable is listed mainly because of its Norman west front and some excellent modern glass.
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St Mary, Eaton Bray is renowned for its arcades and the outstanding quality of its Early Gothic stone carving.
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Tudor almshouses are linked to St Mary’s church by a covered stairway. Inside the church are dazzling tombs of descendants of Geoffrey Chaucer.
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Simon Jenkins describes St Mary’s as the largest and jolliest church in Hertfordshire.
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St Mary’s church has a fine 13th century arcade with some superbly carved capitals
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Jordans Meeting House has 17th century Quaker fittings
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All Saints has the most extensive wall paintings in Buckinghamshire.
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Norman round arches and ancient wall paintings can be found in St John’s church.
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Medieval elegance and beauty in the heart of Luton
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St Paul’s Walden has a very remarkable chancel.
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St Giles is included as one of the best Chiltern churches on the strength of a poem: Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy written in a Country Churchyard’.
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