perhaps it really doesn’t matter. If it is Norman then it appears to me to have followed Anglo-Saxon practice so perhaps it was immediately post-Conquest. Hey, let’s muddy the waters some more! The most immediate impact is made by the large mediaeval painting of St Christopher in its traditional place on the north wall of the nave, facing the south door where it could be immediately seen by any passer-by an dating from the thirteenth century. Travellers would feel protected by the saint and it was even believed that anyone looking on such an image would not die that day! Other fragments of painting appear throughout the church, some, including fragments from the martyrdom of St Catherine and fragments of a Doom painting. .
Having torn your eyes away from the paintings, you might then be struck by the austerity of the structure. The arches are unmoulded and round in profile and of somewhat irregular dimensions. Remarkably, despite the peculiarly variegated exterior, this is still substantially the church built by the Anglo-Saxons or the Normans. The aisles were unceremoniously cut straight through the nave walls with no attempt at adornment or decoration. That there were two phases is in no doubt because on both nave walls there are windows that were marooned by the addition of the aisles. The north aisle is thought to be of about 1120 and the south aisle a decade or two later. The Normans also left the legacy of a fine example of an “Aylesbury” font, its distinctive and for its time very avant-garde, style thought to have originated in Aylesbury and found in a number of churches within or close to he borders of the county. See Great Kimble for another nice example.
A chapel was added probably early in the thirteenth century with a triple lancet east window, the epitome of the Early English style. The south aisle was widened in the fourteenth century but the windows we see now are clearly not of that period and were probably put there during a much-needed restoration in 1711. Also in the fourteenth century the timber roof of the nave and the chancel was installed,
There is, I think, no purpose in tracking at this point all of the other minor modifications and alterations that occurred and which contributed to the variegated exterior. The interior of the church is beguilingly ancient, with little adornment except for the numerous fragments of wall painting. But for the damage and deterioration to those paintings this is a building in which the mediaeval serf or peasant would feel at home - once he had got past that startling exterior
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