St Botolph's Church and Bradenham Manor overlook the village green, with cricket pitch in the centre, and cottages dotted around the edge. All on sloping ground, together they make one of the favourite village scenes in the Chilterns. The Church and Manor are not only close to each other, but have had close links for many centuries, with the Lord of the Manor also serving as Rector for 35 years at the end of the 19th century. In earlier centuries the Lord of the Manor held the Advowson or right to appoint the Rector, and would often choose a relative. Despite that they chose not to build the Rectory near the church but tucked away to the South of the Village Green.
The Nave of the church is an early Norman building, in a typical tall but narrow shape, as their predecessors Saxon churches usually were. In fact, the Normans could well have built the church on the layout of an earlier Saxon church which was probably on the same site. There is always much speculation about the date of the South doorway of the church, I will mention that below. The Norman windows of the Nave were replaced in the Decorated style around 1300. The West Tower was added around 1420, in the Perpendicular style, and still keeps its original stonework walls, although patched with bricks in many places. The last major addition to the church was in 1542 when a large Chantry Chapel was added to the North of the Chancel. As it was built so close to the Reformation, it could well have been the very last Chantry Chapel to have been built in England. It has monuments that remember many people associated with Bradenham Manor.
In the 1860s George Edmund Street restored the church, refacing the Nave walls with flint, rebuilding all the Chancel, but re-using some original fittings. Street replaced the Norman Chancel Arch with a Gothic one, and opened up the North wall of the Chancel with two large arches leading into the Chantry Chapel, furnishing the Chapel with 36 seats for children and a pew for the Lord of the Manor, a space now occupied by the organ. I also assume that Street re-roofed the Nave at that time, as it certainly looks like his work.
A very prominent Chancel Screen was fitted in the 1920s, it actually takes us right back to medieval times, when Nave and Chancel could appear to be quite isolated from each other.
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Exterior of Church
The front of the churchyard has not always had such an open aspect as we see today, this old postcard view from the 1910s shows there were large trees along the front of the churchyard. It also shows the very small entrance gate into the churchyard, before the Memorial Lych Gate was built.
The tower was built around 1420, and although sometimes described as squat, it dominates most views of the church. The Lych Gate is a 1st World War Memorial, and the only public entrance into the churchyard, with a private one from the Manor House.
This view shows the Tower from the NW, we can see a small stair turret that obviously only reaches up to the Ringing Chamber.
The tower contains three bells, two of which are amongst the oldest in the county. They were made around 1300 and are inscribed by their maker Michael De Wymbis of London. The third bell, dated 1799, is by Thomas Mears of London. As two of the bells are over a century older than the tower, they must have come from elsewhere. An Inventory of 1554 says that they were purchased from elsewhere. At that time it is quite likely they came from a monastic house following the Dissolution. The clock in the tower was made c1720, repaired in 1897, and fitted with an automatic winding mechanism in 2005.
A 2023 view of the South side of the Church, where the older stonework of the Tower looks different to the Nave, which was re-faced with new flints in the 1860s restorations.
This is a photo I took in 1986, when the yew trees had just been cut down, giving a clearer view of the church itself.
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These are the South and East walls of the church. On the far right (with the square window) is the Chantry Chapel built in 1542 by William Windsor who inherited the Bradenham estate in 1543 when he became William 2nd Baron Windsor. Behind where this photo was taken are the South and East boundaries of the churchyard which have the high walls of the Manor Gardens.
William 2nd Baron Windsor rebuilt the Manor as a Tudor house, which was sold around 1649, the year King Charles 1st was executed. It was bought by Sir Edmund Pye, but was soon destroyed by fire. Pye started rebuilding around 1670, but died in 1673, leaving his successors to finish the house around 1700.
This is part of the long high wall that divides the churchyard from the Manor House grounds. This early 18th Century part of vitreous brick with tiled coping is listed with the gates, railings and piers of the Manor House entrance.
This is the North side of the church. In the centre is the Nave, which has two windows that match those on the South side. On the left, with the rendered walls, is the Chantry Chapel of 1542, with its own entrance door just visible on the right hand end. Below the left hand window of the Chapel is a ventilation shaft from the Vault below the Chapel.
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South Doorway
We have already seen that there are two entrances to the church, one via the West Tower, and the other through the South Porch, a fairly standard sort of addition, made during the restoration work in the 1860s.
However, the South Porch contains something far from standard work, a remarkable but intriguing piece of architecture.
The Romanesque South Doorway is generally considered to be dated the same as the Nave, around 1100. However there was undoubtedly a Saxon church here before then. The narrowness of the doorway, and the heavy roll mouldings around the doorway, have a distinctly Saxon character. It is often said that early Norman builders employed Saxon craftsmen who continued working in the styles they knew. So could that be the case at Bradenham, or is it possible that the Norman builders re-used an existing arch from a previous Saxon church?
Above the doorway is an attractively designed heavy lintel with 2 rows of lozenges above a cable moulding. The cable moulding continues as plain roll mouldings up the ends of the lintel, which then continue as an inner order around the arch. The lintel is supported by corbels each decorated with four horizontal parallel rolls. The tympanum (space between the lintel and the arch) is surprisingly plain. However, very curiously there is a second plain and uneven lintel laid on top of the main one. Could this be an original lintel from an earlier doorway?
