Church Heritage Record 602155

Nave and chancel, north aisle and chapel, west tower, south porch.  Modern link passage from the north aisle to a small modern extension with vestry, toilets and kitchen.

Nave 16m (50ft) x 5.8m (18 ft).

The landscape around the church preserves many historical features (it is a Conservation Area), including the remains of medieval house platforms and ridge-and-furrow in the nearby fields (SMR8587) as well as a manor-house site (SMR10506).  Bickenhill (Bichehelle, or Bica’s hill) is mentioned in Domesday.  Several of the nearby farm buildings preserve 17th- and 18th-century fabric.  The site and area is of considerable archaeological significance.

Though the architectural details visible from the outside are now mostly late Perpendicular or Decorated and date respectively to late 15th-century and 19th-century restorations (1847, 1887), the building has a long and complex history which might well reward a careful study of the fabric. 

The church would seem likely to be post-Conquest as there is no mention of a church in Domesday.  It seems to have been originally part of the endowment of the nunneries at Henwood and later Markyate in Bedfordshire.  The earliest architectural features are to be found in the north aisle arcade and walls which must date to the middle of the 12th century, before which time, Pevsner conjectured, the unusually wide aisle constituted the nave of the church. 

The church was extended to the east (the nave and aisle by one, narrower, bay) with a new chancel in the early 14th century. The tower and north chapel were added in the 15th century. The 18th century saw minor alterations including the insertion of a doorway and gallery at the west end of the nave (removed in 1887), and probably the re-setting of the chancel reredos screen to the chapel. There was also a western extension to the north aisle, perhaps a boiler house and/or vestry.  The evidence for all these developments will be discussed in detail below.

The floor was apparently renewed and the interior repewed in 1807. A major restoration was undertaken in 1887, which involved the taking down of the south walls of the nave and chancel and the destruction of medieval wall-paintings there.  The lancets of the south wall of the chancel were replaced with more “correct” fenestration in a 14th-century style, intended no doubt to match the east window.  The spire was also repaired after a lightning strike, and reportedly heightened.

The church roof was renewed in 1920, a standard king-post construction.  In 1977 an extension block with link corridor to the north aisle through a new doorway was built, to provide toilets and office facilities.  Archaeological observation ascertained that the medieval floor survives intact just below (two feet) the Victorian tiles.  This emphasises the obvious fact that the church and site is of considerable archaeological importance.

The west tower with its elegant long finger of a spire is the dominating feature of this church, demanding the attention of the passing traveller as they round the corner of the narrow Church Lane, which bends itself around the churchyard to the north and west.  It is only the tip of the iceberg, however, in terms of the features of interest and beauty which repay the more determined visitor.

The slim octagonal spire is recessed behind the crenellated parapet, each alternate face pierced by three openings spaced at regular intervals.  It is crowned by a brass cockerel.  The tower itself is square and of one tall stage, with a chamfered plinth.   It has diagonal buttresses of three steep weatherings, with a V-shaped projection rising from the upper weathering and terminating in crocketed pinnacles, now much eroded. 

An exception is the north-east buttress which projects at a right angle from the tower wall.  It has half a round-headed archway cut out of the base, probably the remains of an 18th-century doorway leading to a west gallery in the nave, long since vanished.

A square stair turret reaches to just below the tops of the belfry openings, with three slit openings to light the stair, regularly spaced.  A doorway with a four-centred head gives access at the foot, via an oak plank door under a four-centred head. 

There is some interesting graffiti on the south face.  These appear to refer to the phases of repair of the tower, the earliest under the 17th-century sundial on the stair turret, enclosed within a box and inscribed “1639 AB RA”. The others are on the tower itself; “Will Smith Thomas Brookes Churchwardens 1667”, another “James Dowell Philip Orton Churchwardens 1692” and at least one more unreadable due to erosion.  Putlog holes can also be clearly distinguished in the fabric.

Above the graffiti on the south face is an iron S-brace and above this a rather eccentrically placed Victorian clock face, half blocking an opening to the floor beneath the belfry itself. The belfry openings are two-lights with a transom and louvres under a four-centred head.   The lower part of the mullion of the east window is broken.

The west wall is pierced by a fine, quite heavily restored large four-light window with complex and unusual (but original) Perpendicular tracery under a pointed head, with an embattled transom and a badly eroded hood-mould. The outer pair of mullions continue up from square pilasters rising from a chamfered sill, the lower part of the window being blocked up. 

The west wall of the north aisle is pierced by a single small cusped lancet, to the south of which the wall would appear to have been completely rebuilt after the removal of a lean-to building, perhaps a vestry or boiler house in the angle of aisle and nave.  There is now a chimney rising from the interface of aisle and nave, and the firing chamber at ground level exists.

The quaint little Tudor style porch with its black-and-white close studding and fretted weatherboarding is rather at odds with the otherwise quite stern exterior.  The lower front and roof have clearly been renewed since the construction, which according to the VCH was in the late 16th-century.

The nave is of four bays, with three square-headed windows in the north wall to the east of the porch, all of 3 lights with cusped ogee heads, the middle window also with a transom; they are probably all of 1887.  A drawing of 1820 shows two such windows, the eastern of which is of four lights. 

The drawing also shows buttresses of differing size and irregular distribution which were all removed during the 1887 restoration, during which the south wall was clearly completely rebuilt with large ashlar blocks.  What little can be seen of the north wall adjacent to the tower looks 12th-century, of the same rubble coursing with wide joints as the north wall of the north aisle.

The north aisle now has only one window in each wall, a cusped single light in the west wall and a window of 2 lights with cusped ogee heads and foiled spandrels within a square head, both of the 14th century.  There is a modern doorway (c 1977)  to the west of this, giving access to a link corridor to a small extension block without any architectural pretension containing toilets and office facilities. 

There is a clear break in the masonry with the chapel, with 12th-century fabric to the west of it, and two 14th century buttresses of two weatherings (such buttresses also to the chancel and chapel and the west corners).  There is no clear sign of an extension of the aisle to the east (see below).

The chancel fabric now has a uniform appearance after the restoration, but again the 1820 drawing shows two partly blocked tall pointed lancets in the south wall, now replaced by a small two-light and a small trefoiled light to the west of it, both with Decorated tracery and dating to 1887. 

There is a blocked (in 1887) priest’s doorway between them, with a pointed head and simple, much eroded hoodmould above. The 5-light east window has reticulated tracery and looks identical in the drawing of 1820 to the modern appearance, and thus may have been restored and re-set in the wall after restoration. 

The two buttresses flanking the window also look 14th-century, unlike the two flanking the south chancel wall, which are clearly of 1887. These latter copy the style of the tower buttresses, but without the pinnacles.

The chapel adjoining the chancel to the north was probably added in the 15th century as part of a programme of reconstruction which included the construction of the tower at the west end of the nave and refenestration of the nave.  It has a 5-light window with late Perpendicular tracery under a 4-centred head, under a much eroded hood-mould with the remains of a floriate finial.  At the gable is a chimney-stack to serve the internal fire-place (see below).  The north wall has a moulded cornice up to the junction with the aisle wall (see above).

The north wall is pierced by a single window, a three-light which clearly was a pointed 14th-century window cut down and now fitted with a square head, this probably done in the 15th century.  It may have been moved here from the aisle.

Moving inside the church, the complex development of the building becomes even more evident, and there are furnishings, fittings, architectural details and monuments from almost every period of its existence, including a large dug-out chest, the font, the communion rails in the chancel, wall tablets and some chairs (see below).

 Looking back first to the restored inner doorway, there is a billeted hood-mould above the door with square imposts decorated with heavy zig-zag, restored but late 12th-century in origin. The interior has been partly whitewashed, and this combined with the exposed red sandstone of the arcade and chancel arch gives the church a light and warm atmoshere. The black and red quarry tiles and terracotta carpets in the nave add to this.

At the west end, the tower arch is something of a puzzle, as are so many features in this church. The arch is inset within the wall opening and dies into the walls, which are splayed towards the nave; the reveals are decorated with two tiers of carved panelling; within the foot of the upper panel on the north side is a small carved Jesus figure.  This is partly hidden by a Victorian oak screen set in front of the arch, with spiky cusped tracery. The space within the tower is not much used; the entrance to the stairs from here has been blocked up.

The aisle arcade is original, perhaps c 1140, with simple square responds at the west end from which the round unmoulded arches spring, to round piers carrying scalloped capitals with a little beading and square abaci.  The third pier clearly was originally a respond, and from it springs east a narrow pointed arch of the early 14th century; the chancel arch respond has been restored in 1887 in the style of the Norman west responds.  The chancel arch itself is also restored, worked with a hollow double-chamfer in the style of the early 14th century.

The chapel arch opening from the chancel is quite different, wide and 4-centred with a hood mould terminating in carved monsters; the arch from the chapel to the aisle is similar but looks 1887.  The chapel itself is crammed full of features, the function of which is not always clear.

A coved shelf runs around the east and south wall from a height just above the east window sill, within which are several recesses.  These are all of Perpendicular type and would appear to be 15th-century or later.  The south and north walls have plain recesses facing each other.  To the south of the window in the east wall is a further recess which would appear to represent a low doorway, though it is not visible at all from the outside. 

To the north of the window is a fireplace with a four-centred head, thus the chimney.  One wonders if the use of this is related to the other unusual feature which is clearly not in situ, namely a stone reredos screen, now somewhat mutilated and re-set to create a shallow room in the eastern end of the chapel. 

The screen consists of a doorway at the right with ogee finial, then two niches with two tiers of floriate carving flanking the reredos panel in the middle.  The missing left doorway can now be seen built into the west end of the aisle, now blocked (presumably it gave access to the vestry or boiler house at the west end referred to already above).  If this doorway were re-set, it would give the width of the chancel.

It seems possible therefore that this reredos screen was removed from the chancel, where it might have given ambulatory access through its two doors to a reliquary room (Pevsner suggests as at Blakeney and Great Yarmouth in Norfolk) at the east end.  This might have been done in order to create a separate room in the chapel with its own fireplace after the Reformation, when priestly comfort rather than devotion to reliquaries was vogue.