The entrance to the churchyard in Chalfont St. Giles is through a wonderfully picturesque turnstile or lich-gate under an ancient house in the High Street. The gate formerly closed itself mechanically by means of a pulley to which was attached a heavy weight. Unfortunately this weight was not boxed in—as in the somewhat similar example at Hayes, in Middlesex—and an accident which happened to some children resulted in its removal.
Lich-gate, Chalfont St. Giles, Bucks
A good many picturesque old houses remain in the village, among them being one called Stonewall Farm, a structure of the fifteenth century with an original billet-moulded porch and Gothic barge-boards.
There is a certain similarity about the villages that dot the Vale of Aylesbury. The old Market House is usually a feature of the High Street—where it has not been spoilt as at Wendover. Groups of picturesque timber cottages, thickest round the church, and shouldered here and there by their more respectable and severe Georgian brethren, are common to all, and vary but little in their general aspect and colouring. Memories and legends haunt every hamlet, the very names of which have an ancient sound carrying us vaguely back to former days. Prince's Risborough, once a manor of the Black Prince; Wendover, the birthplace of Roger of Wendover, the medieval historian, and author of the Chronicle Flores Historiarum, or History of the World from the Creation to the year 1235, in modern language a somewhat "large order"; Hampden, identified to all time with the patriot of that name; and so on indefinitely. At Monk's Risborough, another hamlet with an ancient-sounding name, but possessing no special history, is a church of the Perpendicular period containing some features of exceptional interest, and internally one of the most charmingly picturesque of its kind. The carved tie-beams of the porch with their masks and tracery and the great stone stoup which appears in one corner have an unrestored appearance which is quite delightful in these days of over-restoration. The massive oak door has some curious iron fittings, and the interior of the church itself displays such treasures as a magnificent early Tudor roof and an elegant fifteenth-century chancel-screen, on the latter of which some remains of ancient painting exist.[15]
Fifteenth-century Handle on Church Door, Monk's Risborough, Bucks
Thame, just across the Oxfordshire border, is another town of the greatest interest. The noble parish church here contains a number of fine brasses and tombs, including the recumbent effigies of Lord John Williams of Thame and his wife, who flourished in the reign of Queen Mary. The chancel-screen is of uncommon character, the base being richly decorated with linen panelling, while above rises an arcade in which Gothic form mingles freely with the grotesqueness of the Renaissance. The choir-stalls are also lavishly ornamented with the linen-fold decoration.