Church Of St Andrew (Church Of England) (Redundant Churches Fund)

Church of St Andrew

Parish church at Buckland, of exceptional architectural and historical importance. The chancel, nave, and former south Lady Chapel date from the 14th century, with the tower built around 1400 and the south aisle and south porch added in the late 15th century. The church was restored in 1848 and 1875, with a north organ chamber and vestry added around 1880, the porch restored at that time, and the exteriors of the nave and aisle restored in 1893.

The building is constructed of flint rubble with stone dressings. The tower has coursed stone facing with some external plaster remaining. The nave and aisle feature uncoursed flints mixed with stone, while the porch has knapped flint facing. The steep roofs are of machine-made red tiles, except for metal covering to the south aisle and a spire on the pyramidal tiled tower roof.

The church consists of a small tall narrow nave, a chancel on a different alignment, a broad south aisle incorporating the lower part of the east and south walls of the former Lady Chapel, a large square embattled tower with diagonal buttresses, and a 15th-century south porch. A blocked 15th-century north door and a west door in the tower are present.

The chancel has a 19th-century three-light east window in 15th-century style, two two-light traceried windows from the 14th century in the south wall, a contemporary doorway between them, a lowside window at the west end, and a string course at sill height continued as a hood to the lower openings. The chancel arch has two chamfered orders with a moulded label. The jambs have tall attached shafts and rolls with moulded bell capitals and renewed waterholding bases. A wide arch to the north has angel musicians as stops to the hood mould and features a stencilled organ case below. The vestry, behind the organ, contains a fireplace. The chancel roof is a two-bay 19th-century plastered waggon roof with arch-braced principals springing from stone corbels, similar demi-principals springing from an embattled wallplate, and moulded longitudinal ribs. An encaustic tile carpet marks the raised step at the east end, with similar tiles among the floor slabs.

The nave extends three bays and contains three two-light tall 14th-century traceried windows in the north wall with head stops to the hood moulds inside and outside. A 15th-century blocked north doorway has a moulded three-centred arch beneath a square head externally, with a plain round-headed stoup on the east side. Corbels for a rood loft are contemporary with the 14th-century windows. An upper door from a former rood stair is on the south wall (the lower door is in the south aisle, but its steps have gone). A three-bay south arcade inserted around 1480 features a carved angel as a west impost corbel to the wider west bay. Delicate moulded orders spring at mid-height from deeply chamfered piers, with capitals only to the inner order of each arch. Buried in the east respond is the east jamb of an earlier archway matching the chancel arch mouldings, opening into the former chapel or south transept. A square blocked squint from the aisle is visible in the later work. The nave roof is a three-bay plastered 19th-century waggon roof with moulded and embattled tie beams and arched braced trusses on deeply moulded, possibly original, wallplates.

The south aisle, three bays wide, retains a trefoil piscina and string course below the east window, both from the 14th-century Lady Chapel. Three-light 15th-century cinquefoil windows occupy the east, west, and two windows on the south wall. A 15th-century south door has an external four-centred arch of two moulded orders beneath a square head with traceried spandrels, and retains its medieval wooden door. The aisle features a contemporary fine 15th-century almost flat timber roof with heavy flat joists, moulded members as wallplates, a central purlin, and principal and sub-principal cross-beams. Carved foliate bosses run along the centre at junctions with cross-members. The sub-principals have plain lengths next to the south wall where wooden angels with displayed wings would normally be found in 15th-century work of this area, though these are now missing.

The three-stage battlemented west tower has diagonal buttresses, a moulded plinth, and string courses at each level. A tall tower arch of three orders, moulded to the nave, has renewed caps and bases. The west door has moulded jambs, a pointed arch, and grotesque label stops. The west window has two cinquefoil lights with a traceried head, now renewed. The belfry windows have two traceried lights each. The south porch is parapeted with two-light small trefoil windows in each side, diagonal buttresses, a depressed three-centred arched entrance beneath a square head, and a moulded label with decayed head-stops. A small niche with a cinquefoil arch sits above the entrance.

Fittings include a Barnack stone font roughly recut on a moulded clunch base; an organ of 1881 by Henry Jones of Fulham Road, London; a drum-type 19th-century panelled wooden pulpit with trefoil piercing on a circular moulded fat stone base; and four 19th-century lettered and illuminated boards on the north wall of the nave displaying the Commandments, Creed, and Lord's Prayer. Three groups of brasses are set on the wall behind the altar, commemorating Alice Botelet (died 1451), William Langley, rector (died 1478), and John Gyll (died 1499, with children). Wall monuments in the south aisle include one in white alabaster to Susan Clerke (died 1634) with epitaph, bust, and small Mannerist flanking figures. In the tower is a monument to John Clarke (died 1772) signed by John Richards of Bishopsgate, featuring a large epitaph with bust above an asymmetrical Rococo bellied cartouche. Edward Clerke (died 1740) is commemorated in a monument of varied veined marbles with a bracketed base, Doric aedicule, and cartouche in a broken pediment, erected in 1742. Under the west impost of the arcade is a refined Neo-Classical marble tablet to Mary Hutton Lloyd (1861). At the southwest of the chancel is a monument to William Anthony Michell (1819) by Chantrey in white marble, featuring a tablet with a portrait roundel in low relief and a Greek gable pediment crowned by anthemion. Stained glass remains of 14th-century canopy work survive in two north windows of the nave.

According to an inscription recorded by Salmon in his History of Hertfordshire (1725) in a chancel window, the church and the Chapel of the Blessed Mary were constructed by Nicholas de Buckland in the year of Our Lord 1348.