The Church of St Mary the Virgin, Hartwell House

Image: © D Gore Taken: Unknown

This is the west door of this roofless 18th century church, set in trees on a slight rise facing the great mansion of Hartwell House, now a hotel http://www.hartwell-house.com/. Hartwell was a Domesday manor and, according to the list of Rectors, there has been a church here since at least the 13th century. This was the final resting place of the regicide “honest Dick” Ingoldsby of Image who died in 1685. His conspirators all lived nearby – Mayne of Image and the Serjeants of Aston Mullins Image The story of these conspirators is at: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2_ZstVBZSfIC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA33#v=onepage&q=&f=true . See also the Gallery at: http://www.geograph.org.uk/gallery/the_roundhead_conspirators_of_aylesbury_8777 There are/were also tablets to the memory of some of the Hampden family Image who were related to the Lees who owned Hartwell. The current church was expensively constructed in Gothic style in an octagonal shape with two towers. It had a roof “richly ornamented with tracery”, but after the Second World War the lead from it was stolen, the roof fell in and the building is now a ruin. Some inscriptions can be seen above the north and south doors.

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