Church of St Giles, Stoke Poges

Church of St Giles
St. Giles, Stoke Poges
Church of St Giles Location in Buckinghamshire
51°32′06″N 0°35′42″W
Location	Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire
Country	England
Denomination	Church of England
Website	[1]
History
Dedication	Saint Giles
Associated people	Rev. Natasha Brady
Architecture
Functional status	Church of England parish church
Heritage designation	Grade I
Designated	23 September 1955
Architectural type	Church

St Giles' Church is an active parish church in the village of Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, England. A Grade I listed building, it stands in the grounds of Stoke Park, a late-Georgian mansion built by John Penn. It is famous as the apparent inspiration for Thomas Gray's poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard; Gray is buried in the churchyard.

History and architecture

The origins of the church are Anglo-Saxon and Norman. The tower dates from the 13th century. 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.

St Giles comprises a "battlemented" tower, a nave, a chancel and the Hastings Chapel. The church is built mainly of flint and chalk stone, with tiled roofs. The exception is the Hastings Chapel which is constructed of red brick. The style of the chapel is later than the Gothic of the church; Simon Jenkins, the writer and former chairman of the National Trust, describes it as "Tudor". 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 edition, Buckinghamshire, of the Pevsner Buildings of England series, considered the Victorian porch an "excrescence".

During the Victorian era, a restoration was carried out by George Edmund Street. 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".

St Giles remains an active parish church in the Church of England, administered as part of the Diocese of Oxford. 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.

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". The gardens were landscaped by Edward White and contain a number of private plots for the interment of ashes, within a larger, Grade I listed park. The ashes of the film director Alexander Korda and the broadcaster Kenneth Horne, among others, are interred in the garden.

St Giles is a Grade I listed building. Gray's tomb is designated Grade II. 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. The churchyard also contains war graves of six British armed services personnel, four of World War I and two of World War II.

Funeral Hatchments

There are nineteen funeral hatchments hung on the walls of the chancel, Hastings chapel and tower. This is the most funeral hatchments in one building within the county of Buckinghamshire. The funeral hatchments are for the following people, with their motto where shown:

•Thomas Dawson (d.1813), 1st Viscount Cremorne, of County of Monaghan, Ireland and later Stoke Park. Motto: Toujours propice.

• Elizabeth Gayer (buried 1714), probably, daughter of Robert Gayer of Stoke Poges Manor House. Motto: Mors janua vitae.

• George Godolphin Osborne (d.1872). 8th Duke of Leeds, of Baylis House. Motto: Pax in bello

• Sophia Gomm (d.1827), wife of Field Marshal Sir William Gomm. Daughter of Granville Penn.

• Elizabeth Howard (d.1791), the second wife of Field Marshal Sir George Howard of Stoke Place. daughter of Peter Beckford of Jamaica, and widow of Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Effingham. Motto: Virtus mille scuta.

• Frances Howard-Vyse (d.1841), wife of Major General Richard William Howard Howard-Vyse of Stoke Place. The 2nd daughter of Henry Hesketh of Newtown, Cheshire. Motto: Virtus mille scuta.

• George Howard (d.1796), Field Marshal Sir, of Stoke Place. Motto: Virtus mille scuta.

• Lucy Howard (d.1771), the first wife of Field Marshal Sir George Howard of Stoke Place. sister of William Wentworth, 2nd Earl of Strafford. Motto: Mors janua vitae.

• Richard Henry Howard-Vyse (d.1872) of Stoke Place. Motto: Virtus mille scuta

• Richard William Howard Howard-Vyse (d.1853). Major General. of Stoke Place. Motto: Virtus mille scuta.

• Granville Penn (d.1834). of Stoke Park. Motto: Dum clavum teneam.

• Isabella Penn (d.1847). wife of Granville Penn of Stoke Park. Eldest daughter of General Gordon Forbes . Motto: In coelo quies.

• John Penn (d.1834). of Stoke Park

• Juliana Penn (d.1801), wife of Thomas Penn of Stoke Poges Manor House. Motto: Resurgam.

• Thomas Penn of Stoke Poges Manor House. Motto: Dum clavum teneam.

• Frances Pigot (d.1811), wife of Admiral Hugh Pigot and daughter of the Very Reverend Sir Richard Wrottesley, 7th Baronet, Dean of Worcester.

• Frances Stapleton (d.1746), 1st married to Sir William Stapleton, 3rd Baronet, and 2nd marriage to Colonel Walter Hamilton, Governor of the Leeward Islands and daughter of Sir James Russell. Motto: Mors janua vita

• John Crichloe Turner (d.1813), Sir, of Castle Carleton, Lincolnshire. Motto: Spero

• Mr Woodhouse. The smallest hatchment and oldest in the church, probably of the late 17th century)

Clergy

Clergy have also worked in the Parish of Stoke Poges at the Lord Hastings Hospital; the Mission Room; the Chapel of Ease:St Wilfred's and St Andrew’s Church Centre

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  Memorial for Revd Richard Redding in the Hastings chapel
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  Memorial for Revd Arthur Bold in the choir
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  Grave of Revd David H. Bryant-Bevan in the churchyard
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  Grave of Revd Cyril E. Harris in the churchyard
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  Board listing Vicars to 2000 in the tower

Bells

The three oldest bells date from 1728. Restoration work of a total of six bells took place in 1894, carried out by Mears and Stainbank in Whitechapel, London. In 1912 the bells were rehung in a new iron frame. Twelve years later, following the removal of the spire, a new ringing chamber was created above what had been a gallery: directly above the ‘Manor House – Penn pews’ within the tower. The chamber is accessed from external stairs.

The bells were rehung and augmented in 1934 to give a ring of eight. 20th century rehung and recast on each occasion has been carried out by Gillett & Johnston bell foundry. The bells are rung 'full circle'.

Thomas Gray and Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

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, though this is not universally accepted. Some scholars suggest that much, or all, of the poem was written in Cambridge, where Gray lived. Other commentators have identified as alternative possibilities St Mary's, Everdon, Northamptonshire; and St Laurence's Church, Upton-cum-Chalvey, Berkshire. The poem certainly had a long gestation, 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." A. L. Lytton Sells writes that there is "no doubt" about the identification of St. Giles as the churchyard of Gray's Elegy, and Robert L. Mack calls it "very close to irrefutable".

In 1771 Gray was buried (in accordance with his instructions) in the churchyard, in the vault erected for his mother and aunt. 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") 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, was commissioned by John Penn to a James Wyatt design, as a memorial to Gray himself, as a tribute to the Elegy, and as an eye-catcher for Penn’s Stoke Park estate.

Gallery

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  Gray's tomb, to the left
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  Plaque set into the wall of the Hastings Chapel opposite Gray's tomb
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  Gray's Monument
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  Watercolour of St Giles by John Constable, (1834)
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  Memorial to Noel Mobbs in the Stoke Poges Memorial Gardens
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  Funeral Hatchment for Lucy Howard. Located high on wall in the choir, 2024