Church of St Giles, Stoke Poges
| Church of St Giles | |
|
Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire | |
|---|---|
| Status: | parish church |
 St Giles, Stoke Poges | |
| Church of England | |
| Diocese of Oxford | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SU97558272 |
| Location: | 51°32’6"N, -0°35’42"W |
| History | |
| Information | |
| Website: | stokepogeschurch.org |
St Giles' Church is an active Church of England parish church in the village of Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, and in the Diocese of Oxford. It stands in the grounds of Stoke Park, a late-Georgian mansion built by John Penn.
The church is famous as the apparent inspiration for Thomas Gray's poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard; Gray is buried in the churchyard. It is a Grade I listed building.[1]
History and architecture
The origins of the church are Anglo-Saxon and Norman.[2] The tower dates from the 13th century.[3] The adjacent Hastings chapel was constructed in 1558 by Edward Hastings, 1st Baron Hastings of Loughborough, owner of the manor of Stoke Poges, who also undertook a substantial enlargement of the neighbouring manor house.[4][5]
St Giles comprises a "battlemented" tower,[6] a nave, a chancel and the Hastings Chapel.[4] The church is built mainly of flint and chalk stone, with tiled roofs.[7] The exception is the Hastings Chapel which is constructed of red brick.[4] The style of the chapel is later than the Gothic of the church; Simon Jenkins describes it as "Tudor".[6] The church has extensions to either side, a vestry of the early 20th century, and an entrance and vestibule installed in the Victorian period to provide private access to the church for the owners of the adjacent manor house. Elizabeth Williamson, in the 2003 revised Pevsner considered the Victorian porch an "excrescence".
During the Victorian era, a restoration was carried out by George Edmund Street.[8] Jenkins, in his volume England's Thousand Best Churches, thought that the exterior was treated more sympathetically than the interior. Of the latter, he describes the removal of the plasterwork in the nave, together with the replacement of the Norman chancel arch and the opening up of the hammerbeam roof, as giving the church the appearance of "a barn".[6]
On film
The churchyard has been used as a filming location. In the opening sequence of the James Bond movie, For Your Eyes Only, Bond enters the churchyard through the lychgate to pay his respects at the grave of his wife, Teresa.
The churchyard also features in Judy Garland's final film, I Could Go On Singing.[9][10]
Adjacent to the church are the Stoke Poges Memorial Gardens, founded in 1935 by Sir Noel Mobbs to ensure "the maintenance in perpetuity of the peace, quietness and beauty of the ancient church and churchyard".[11][12] The gardens were landscaped by Edward White[13] and contain a number of private plots for the interment of ashes, within a larger, Grade I listed park.[14][15] The ashes of the film director Alexander Korda and the broadcaster Kenneth Horne, among others, are interred in the garden.
Gray's tomb is designated a Grade II listed structure.[16] The Gray Monument (adjacent to St Giles' church and owned by the National Trust) is listed at Grade II*. The lychgate is by John Oldrid Scott and is a Grade II listed structure.[17] The churchyard also contains war graves of six British armed services personnel, four of First World War and two of Second World War.[18]
Thomas Gray and Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
Thomas Gray was a regular visitor to Stoke Poges, which was home to his mother and an aunt, and the churchyard at St Giles is reputed to have been the inspiration for his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.[20]
Some scholars suggest that much, or all, of the poem was written in Cambridge, where Gray lived,[21][22] and others have seen parallels in St Mary's, Everdon (in Northamptonshire or St Laurence's Church in Upton-cum-Chalvey (Buckinghamshire).[23]
The poem certainly had a long gestation,[24] but it was completed at Stoke Poges in 1750. In June of that year, Gray wrote to his friend and supporter, Horace Walpole; "I have been here at Stoke a few days and having put an end to a thing, whose beginning you have seen long ago, I immediately send it to you."[25] It is generally accepted that that there is "no doubt" about the identification of St. Giles as the churchyard of Gray's Elegy,[26] and Robert L. Mack calls it "very close to irrefutable".[19]
In 1771 Gray was buried (in accordance with his instructions) in the churchyard, in the vault erected for his mother and aunt.[27] The tomb above records the names, ages and dates of death of Gray's mother and aunt, and his own tribute to his mother ("the careful tender mother of many children, one of whom alone had the misfortune to survive her")[28] but no reference to Gray himself. Instead, his death and burial are recorded on a plaque set into the adjacent, external wall of the Hastings Chapel.
Gray's Monument, a sarcophagus set on a pedestal inscribed with stanzas from the Elegy,[29] was commissioned by John Penn as a memorial to Gray himself, as a tribute to the Elegy, and as an eye-catcher for Penn’s Stoke Park estate.
Pictures
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Church of St Giles, Stoke Poges) |
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Gray's tomb, to the left -
Plaque set into the wall of the Hastings Chapel opposite Gray's tomb -
Gray's Monument -
Watercolour of St Giles by John Constable, (1834) -
Memorial to Noel Mobbs in the Memorial Gardens
Outside links
References
- ↑ National Heritage List 1164966: Church of St Giles (Grade I listing)
- ↑ "Restoration of St Giles' Church". Stoke Poges Parish Council. https://www.stokepogeschurch.org/Publisher/File.aspx?ID=267955.
- ↑ "Stoke Poges St Giles". National Churches Trust. https://www.nationalchurchestrust.org/church/st-giles-stoke-poges.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Pevsner & Williamson 2003, p. 651.
- ↑ "Edward Hastings (1519-1572)". History of Parliament Online. https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1509-1558/member/hastings-edward-1519-72.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Jenkins 1999, p. 37.
- ↑ A History of the County of Buckingham - Volume 3 pp 302-313: Parishes: Stoke Poges (Victoria County History)
- ↑ Pevsner & Williamson 2003, p. 652.
- ↑ "I Could Go on Singing (1963)". Reelstreets. https://www.reelstreets.com/films/i-could-go-on-singing/.
- ↑ Houston, Penelope. "I Could Go On Singing". BFI (via Sight and Sound). https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/judy%20garland%20-%20a%20star%20is%20reborn/2022/06/21/i-could-go-on-singing/.
- ↑ "Unforgettable Gardens – Stoke Poges Memorial Gardens". Buckinghamshire Gardens Trust. https://bucksgardenstrust.org.uk/unforgettable-gardens/stoke-poges-memorial-gardens/.
- ↑ "Sir Noel Mobbs". Mobbs Memorial Trust. https://www.mobbsmemorialtrust.com/.
- ↑ "Gardens of Remembrance, Stoke Poges - Slough". Parks & Gardens UK. https://www.parksandgardens.org/places/gardens-of-remembrance-stoke-poges.
- ↑ National Heritage List 1001255: Stoke Poges Gardens of Remembrance (Register of Historic Parks and Gardens)
- ↑ "Stoke Poges Memorial Garden". Buckinghamshire Culture. 25 August 2020. https://buckinghamshireculture.wordpress.com/bucks-in-100-objects/stoke-poges-memorial-garden/.
- ↑ National Heritage List 1124345: Tomb of Thomas Gray, his mother Dorothy Gray and his aunt Mary Antrobus in churchyard of St Giles Church, Stoke Poges (Grade II listing)
- ↑ National Heritage List 1475583: Lych gate and attached stone and flint wall, Church of St Giles, Stoke Poges (Grade II listing)
- ↑ "Stoke Poges (St Giles) Churchyard" (in en). https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/find-war-dead/search-results/?CemeteryExact=true&Cemetery=STOKE%20POGES%20(ST.%20GILES)%20CHURCHYARD.
- ↑ 19.0 19.1 Mack 2000, p. 12.
- ↑ Watkins, Jack (23 September 2022). "In Focus: The enduring beauty of Thomas Gray's Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard". Country Life. https://www.countrylife.co.uk/luxury/in-focus-the-enduring-joy-of-thomas-grays-elegy-written-in-a-country-churchyard-247991.
- ↑ Rumens, Carol (17 January 2011). "Poem of the week". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/jan/17/poem-of-the-week-elegy-country-churchyard#:~:text=Thomas%20Gray%20began%20work%20on,bell%20of%20Great%20St%20Mary%27s..
- ↑ Minns, Walker (2 March 2022). "Tombstone views - Picturing Gray's Elegy". Apollo Magazine. https://www.apollo-magazine.com/thomas-gray-elegy-country-churchyard-illustrators-constable-blake/.
- ↑ A History of the County of Buckingham - Volume 3 pp 302-313: @ (Victoria County History)
- ↑ Miller, John J. (17 May 2013). "Meditation on Mortality". Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323716304578482950460324738.
- ↑ Mack 2000, p. 390.
- ↑ Sells & Sells 1980, p. 176.
- ↑ Lambton, Lucinda. "My elegy for a country church memorial". The Oldie. https://www.theoldie.co.uk/article/my-elegy-for-a-country-church-memorial-lucinda-lambton.
- ↑ Mack 2000, p. 7.
- ↑ National Heritage List 1124346: Gray's Monument, Stoke Poges (Grade II* listing)
- Jenkins, Simon (1999). England's Thousand Best Churches. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 978-0-713-99281-6. OCLC 42004142. https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/42004142.
- Mack, Robert (2000). Thomas Gray: A Life. New Haven, US and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-08499-3. https://books.google.com/books?id=pBcHT4RmD9AC&dq=Gray%27s+Elegy+St+Giles+Stoke+Poges&pg=PA12.
- Pevsner, Nikolaus; Williamson, Elizabeth (2003). Buckinghamshire. The Buildings of England. New Haven, US and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-09584-5. https://www.worldcat.org/title/835201226.
- Sells, A. Lytton; Sells, Iris Esther Robertson (1980). Thomas Gray, His Life and Works. London: G. Allen & Unwin. ISBN 978-0-049-28043-4. https://www.worldcat.org/title/475011581.