Church Of St Mary Magdalene (Church Of England)

Church of St Mary Magdalene, Flaunden

This parish church was built in 1838, incorporating the bell, font and tiles from the earlier parish church at Chenies Bottom. It was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, who later became one of the most celebrated Victorian architects. Scott himself described it in his memoirs as "the poor barn designed for my uncle King". The foundation stone was laid on 12 August 1837. The Church Building Society made its grant in March 1837 for "enlarging, by rebuilding, the church at Flaunden". A notice on the south wall records that the church was erected by private subscription aided by a grant from the Incorporated Society for the Enlargement, Building and Repairing Churches and Chapels, with Reverend Samuel King as Minister (also Rector of Latimer).

The church is constructed of coursed flints with fine jointed red brick dressings. Limestone is used for offsets to buttresses, sills and corbels to gable kneelers, while sandstone appears in the gable copings of the church, porch and vestry. The roofs are of steep blue slate. The building is a single-volume, large gabled lancet style structure, conventionally orientated with 5 panelled bays. A small gabled south porch is located in the first bay from the west, and a similar gabled north vestry in the first bay from the east. A tall square wooden bell turret rises over the west end, arcaded in Early English style with a single-hand clock in its base and a short leaded spire with weathervane.

The fine quality moulded red brick is used throughout with narrow reddish joints for pilaster quoins and corbel-table to the side walls. Each bay contains a tall lancet window of 2 chamfered orders with extended hoodmould linking the windows. Stepped triple lancets appear at the east and west ends: the west has a pointed super arch, whilst the east has 3 crosses in brick in the flintwork above the windows and a stepped brick band below the gable coping creating the effect of crow steps. The gables have added buttresses and circular tie-plates at eaves level, with original corner buttresses retained. The gabled porch features a chamfered pointed doorway and small side lancets. Its interior is stuccoed and lined as ashlar, with a floor of worn medieval encaustic tiles in single and 4-tile patterns, including one with a crowned bust with raised hands set in an incised circle. The pointed south door is of wide planks with large trefoil-ended hinge plates. The doors and altar rail are said to be of wood from the old church. A narrower pointed north gable door leads into the north vestry up 2 steps.

The interior has 5 bays with open timber roof. The roof structure features curved braces to tie-beams with pendants, and queen-post trusses with king-strut above collar and 2 purlins. All timbers and rafters are chamfered and stopped. A ceiling was inserted at tie-beam level around 1950, but the original structure remains visible in the roof space. A west gallery rests on 2 cast iron columns with moulded caps and bases. A central aisle runs through the church. Pointed commandment boards occupy the positions 2 each side of the east window. The pews are of simple pine with trefoil ends to the aisle. Original heating was provided by a boiler in a stoke hole under the west end, with a gable chimney and floor grating along the central aisle.

Lattice leaded glazing is used generally throughout. Two eastern windows on the south side contain stained glass from 1862, as a memorial to Reverend Bryant Burgess and his wife, and from 1889 to his son, also Reverend Bryant Burgess. A stained glass window at the east end was created in 1955 by John Hayward.

The octagonal medieval font is Perpendicular in style, with a circular sunk quatrefoil roundel on each face and a swept curved profile. The shaft and base are renewed. The turret bell dates from 1578, cast by William Knight of Reading, and is inscribed "Gloria in excelsis deo". A similar bell from the old church was sold for St John's Church Uxbridge around 1837, and a third bell was said to have been stolen.

Besides the medieval bell, font, floor tiles and timber of doors and altar rail, a glass case at the west end displays a stone with a scratch dial and a small fragment of walling with white plaster and red-line wall painting from the old church.

This building is of singular interest both as the first church of a celebrated Victorian architect and for its preservation of medieval encaustic pattern tiles, late medieval font and bell from the earlier parish church.