St Peters Church - Bucknell - Oxon - This Old Church on Waymarking.com

church history :Church.
The earliest evidence yet found for the existence of a church at Bucknell dates from 1074, when a grant of the tithes was made From the first recorded presentation to the rectory in 1243–4 ) the advowson descended with the manor until 1348, when Sir Richard Damory, no doubt because of his financial difficulties, sold it to the rector William Peek (probably acting as agent for Oseney Abbey) for £66 6s. 8d. in 1350 Peek conveyed it to Oseney, who immediately attempted but failed to exchange the advowson and that of Swerford for Mixbury advowson. A similar attempt was made in 1396 to exchange Bucknell and Cornwell advowsons for that of Mixbury, which was said to be much more convenient to them, being near their manor Fulwell.
Oseney held the advowson until its dissolution in 1539; it at least twice sold the right of presentation and once was guilty of simony. In 1547 the advowson was granted to Thomas, Lord Seymour; in 1551 to Walter Mildmay, a prominent civil servant, but by 1552 it was in the hands of a Richard Weston. In 1574 Jeremiah Weston of Essex sold it to Mrs. Alice Ball of Lichfield, who gave it in 1578 to her son Robert, a Fellow of New College. He gave it to his college in 1611, on condition that it always presented a scholar of the college, and preferably one of his own relatives. New College is still patron.
In the Middle Ages the rectory was of medium value. In 1254 it was worth £6 13s. 4d. and in 1291 £10, plus the pension of 10s. to Oseney In 1535 it was valued at £13 16s. net. ) Around 1600 it was said to be worth £60, and in the early 18thcentury £120. By the mid-19th century its value had risen to £350.
In addition to the tithes, there was glebe consisting of 4 yardlands with common for three. At the inclosure in 1780 the glebe was exchanged for 82 acres and the tithes were commuted for 254 acres, about a seventh of the land in the parish. In 1956 only 5 acres of glebe remained. Tithe was paid on 6 acres near the Middleton Stoney border until 1850, when it was commuted for £1 16s.
In 1074 Robert d'Oilly granted two-thirds of the demesne tithes of Bucknell, along with those of some 70 other manors, to the church of St. George in Oxford castle. In 1149 the church and all its possessions were given to Oseney Abbey. In the 13th century Oseney was receiving 10s. a year for these tithes and in the 15th century it used to lease them to the rector for 13s. 4d. In 1502 the abbot successfully sued the rector Edmund Croston for eight years' arrears of this sum. The sum continued to be paid until Oseney's dissolution. (
A tithe case of 1615 shows that it had been customary for 50 years past for every landowner to pay each year a bushel of malt, or its equivalent in money, on every yardland to repair the church or supply necessaries for it. Sometimes the malt was used for the Whitsun Ales, from which £4 or £3 10s. were afterwards received for the church.
Some of the medieval rectors were distinguished men. Such a one was Master John de Cheam (rector 1243–64), who was also papal chaplain and Archdeacon of Bath. In 1259 he became Bishop of Glasgow, but continued to hold Bucknell, perhaps because he was unable to get recognition in his Scottish diocese. According to the Lanercost chronicler, he always preached piety but never practised it. Another rector, Roger (1264–92), was a member of the local Damory family and may have been responsible for the beautiful 13th-century chancel. A later one, Ichel de Kerwent (1291–1335), perhaps a Welshman, Ithel from Caerwent, for several years disrupted the church life of the parish. In his first year there, the tax assessment on his church was raised from £6 13s. 1d. to £10, and he refused to pay the clerical subsidy. The church was accordingly put under an interdict; he was summoned before the Exchequer, and his living put into the hands of trustees. When in 1298 he finally made submission and the interdict was revoked, the trustees refused to give the church back. The rector appealed to the bishop, who excommunicated the intruders and forbade the ministers of surrounding churches to admit them to their services. The rector was reinstated and remained in office until his death in 1335. The frequent exchanges at the end of the 14th and in the 15th century show that by this time the church was regarded by its rectors principally as a source of additional income. Several are known to have had other occupations: Master Alexander Sparwe alias Herbard (1415–19), an illegitimate son, was Archdeacon of Salisbury; Master William Symonds (?–1431) was Official of the Archdeacon of Oxford; Thomas Darcy (c. 1437–69), who had papal dispensation to hold another church, was allowed to rent his benefices for seven years, even to laymen, while studying at a university.
Two early-16th-century rectors were outstanding men: Edmund Croston (1498–1503), later Principal of Brasenose Hall in Oxford, and Bryan Higden (1505–24), Principal of Broadgates Hall, who in 1516 became Dean of York. At the visitation of about 1520 it was noted that he was non-resident and that the chancel windows were broken.
Throughout the second half of the 16th century (1552–92) the living was held by Richard Bennett, a graduate of Christ Church; he survived all the religious changes of this period, and the inscription on his brass, once in the church, said that he had lived in the parish for 40 years. After New College got the advowson, the living was held until the 19th century by successive fellows. They lived in comfort: their house, called a manorhouse, was the second largest in the parish in the 17th century, and had a dovecote, pigsties, stables, and other outhouses attached to it.
The religious life of the parish was disrupted by the Civil War. John Gardner, rector from 1643, was ejected in 1654; replaced by Giles Woolley, the brother of a prominent Worcestershire nonconformist, and restored in broken health in 1660. ( His successor, William Morehead, a nephew of General Monck, caused great dissatisfaction in 1678 by living at his other cure at Whitfield (Northants), and leaving Bucknell in the charge of young nonresident curates. The parishioners, headed by the churchwardens, protested to the bishop that their rich and ancient parish, worth £100 a year, had always supported a resident minister, 'who hath not only performed the duty of his ministry, but also afforded great relief to the poor, by good hospitality and by setting them on work'. The deficiencies of the young curates from Oxford, who neither did these things, nor visited the sick, nor punished vagrants nor sent them out of the parish, were listed; they only rode over on Sundays, neglected to catechize and to read prayers on holidays, and held services at dinner-time. The parishioners' plea for a resident minister of at least 24 years old was evidently not granted, for Morehead seems to have continued to live mostly at Whitfield. In 1687 he was the only Oxfordshire minister who subscribed to the address thanking James II for his declaration about liberty of conscience; and in 1688, when he read the king's declaration on this question in Bucknell church, was one of the few ministers in the county to do so. He died at Bucknell in 1692. Morehead's successor, John Coxed (1692–1709), was resident with his family and was clearly a conscientious pastor. He improved the parsonage; gave communion on four instead of the more customary two great festivals; kept lists of his communicants, of whom there were usually between 20 and 30, and a record of the alms given. Rectors resided throughout the 18th century, but after the inclosure award, when the new Rectory estate with the Rectory house, by now described as 'very indifferent', was granted to a farmer, non-residence became customary.James Yelden (1801–22), for example, whose brother-in-law bequeathed the Gauntlett charity, was Vicar of Weston-on-the-Green, where he lived. He gave the absence of a house and his gout as reasons for not residing at or serving Bucknell, which was once again left to a curate. With William Master (1833–78), a supporter of the Oxford Movement, there was a change for the better. He built the present Rectory on a new site, he restored the church building and had a school built. He had been Dean of Civil Law in the University and his interest in education led him in 1840 to start with others a middle-class school in Bicester, where he occasionally taught. This and his refusal to follow Bishop Wilberforce's suggestion that he should preach twice on Sundays account for the bishop's comment: 'Master no preacher but shines in schoolroom.'
Edward Miller, his successor, was another outstanding parish priest. Although a distinguished Biblical scholar, his 'heart to had always been in parish work'. He came to Bucknell from Butler's Marston (Warws.), and found his new parish comparatively backward in education and church matters, but not in general civilization. With some difficulty, he started a village library and readingroom; he catechized the children in church on one day a week, and visited the school every other morning. He alleviated poverty by letting out the glebe in ¼-acre allotments.
The church dedicated to ST. PETER is a stone building comprising a chancel, clerestoried nave, south porch, and central tower. The church is a fine example of 13th-century architecture, but the massive tower, placed between chancel and nave, is 12thcentury and belongs to an earlier church; another story with windows and battlements was added in the 15th century. The tower stands on plain Romanesque arches; the north and south ones have filled-in arches with small 12th-century windows under them, but the eastern arch was rebuilt in the 14th century. On the north side of the tower there is a 12th-century stair turret, and on the south side a door leading into the Victorian vestry.
The chancel, which is exceptionally long (35 ft. by 19 ft.), is a fine specimen of early-13th-century work. At the east end there are three lancet windows with elegant shafts and deeply cut arch mouldings. On the north and south sides are lancet windows and two low windows, lancet outside and square-headed inside. In the north wall of the chancel is a blocked doorway and (externally) the piscina of a vanished vestry; the barrel roof of wood was formerly (1846) concealed by plaster.
The 13th-century nave has a lancet window at the west end, with shafts and moulded rear-arch. The striking south door is carved with unusual mouldings, and supported by clustered shafts; the northern door is also of early-13th-century workmanship. On the south side of the nave there is a 13th-century holy-water stoup, and there are the remains of a piscina and altar at the north-east corner of the nave. The absence of aisles is singular, and it is possible that the blocked arches on the north and south sides of the nave were intended to open into the transepts. The nave roof and a clerestory with square-headed two-light windows were added in the 15th century. The flat plastered ceiling which concealed the roof in the 19th century has been removed.
The church, described by Rawlinson in 1718 as beautiful and in good repair, a has preserved its distinctive medieval character, in spite of later alterations. It was ordered to be painted in 1633; was beautified in 1706; was again ordered to be repaired in 1757; and in 1829 the old seats were replaced by high deal pews and a western gallery was built, both of which have since been removed. In 1855 the parish spent £50 on repairing the inside of the church, and in the following year the rector spent £220 on repairing and partially rebuilding the chancel walls. More thorough restoration was undertaken in 1893 (architect A. Mardon Mowbray). The nave was refloored and a new oak roof was inserted; the top story of the tower was rebuilt; a new arch put in the south porch; new choir seats were installed in the chancel and a vestry and a heating system were added, at a total cost of £740. In 1955 the church retained its 19th-century oil lamps.
There is a plain octagonal font on an octagonal base of two tiers, ) and a fine pulpit of carved oak, probably of Jacobean date. The organ is early 19th-century. An oak altar table was given in 1872. In the chancel there is a brass tablet to Edward Ewer (d. 1638) and Margaret Poure his wife, daughter of Francis Poure of Bletchingdon, and another to their eldest son Francis Ewer. There are also a number of memorial slabs on the chancel floor, now mostly indecipherable or partially concealed under pews. Rawlinson mentions memorials to William Rawlinson (d. 1643); Richard Bennett, rector (d. 1591/2); John Gardner, rector (d. 1670); John Coxed, rector (d. 1709) and others to his family. In the nave there are a number of well-carved marble monuments to the Trotman family; to Samuel Trotman (d. 1684/5) and Mary his wife (d. 1667); to Lenthall Trotman (d. 1709/10); to Samuel Trotman (d. 1719/20); to another Samuel Trotman (d. 1748/9); to Thomas Trotman (d. 1751) and his son Samuel (d. 1775); and a modern brass to Lt.Col. Frederick Drummond Hibbert (d. 1897) and his wife (née Trotman).
The armorial glass in the chancel mentioned by Wood has disappeared, as have also the windows containing figures and inscriptions to the Larwoldes, the Freemans, and to Robert and Thomas Clement and their wives.

in 1552 it was recorded that the church was furnished with one silver chalice, four pairs of vestments, a pall of blue damask and four copes. It had three great bells and a sanctus bell. The church's post-Reformation plate was acquired in the 18th century during the incumbency of John Woodford (1710–45) and includes a silver chalice and flagon (1723) and a paten, all inscribed 'Bucknell'. In 1955 the earliest of the three bells dated from 1597, but the bell frame was medieval.
The registers date from 1653.
The ancient base of a cross, restored in the 19th century, is in the churchyard.
Nonconformity.
A few Roman Catholics are recorded in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Among the gentry, Thomas Ashe, the lessee of the manor, was noted in 1592. In the 1620's Margaret Ewer, the daughter of Francis Poure and wife of Edward Ewer,

details taken from British history online

Date the Church was built, dedicated or cornerstone laid: 01/01/1199 Age of Church building determined by?: Other reliable source If denomination of Church is not part of the name, please provide it here: Church of England If Church is open to the public, please indicate hours: From: 9:00 AM To: 5:00 PM If Church holds a weekly worship service and "all are welcome", please give the day of the week: Sunday Indicate the time that the primary worship service is held. List only one: 12:00 AM Street address of Church: St Peters Church Bainton Road Bucknell, Oxfordshire United Kingdom none Primary website for Church or Historic Church Building: Not listed Secondary Website for Church or Historic Church Building: Not listed

Visit Instructions:
1) A photo of the church is required for visits to a waymark.

2) Please share some comments about your visit.

3) Additional photos are encouraged. If you can have information in addition to that already provided about this church, please share it with us.

Recent Visits/Logs:

Date Logged Log User Rating   08/07/2017 K8)rose visited it 03/08/2009 Gribbin visited it

View all visits/logs