Dinton Church
The earliest reference to Dinton Church belongs to the year 1070. It is a grant by William the Conqueror of 'the Manor and Church of Daniton' to Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. No trace of the original Saxon church survives. It was probably a narrow, thatched building with very few windows. But it was replaced after a few years, when the church passed from Bishop Odo's control, and became the property of the convent at Godstow.
It was about the year 1140 that the rebuilding of Dinton Church began. The nave was laid out on its present site, and there was a solid wall at the west end, where the nave now joins the tower. The main entrance to the 1140 building was through the same beautiful south doorway which we use today, although this doorway was later moved a few yards from its original position. For the old south wall of the church was where the present line of pillars and arches stands. The font also belongs to the Norman period, and has probably been moved very little in its 800 years of constant use. The chancel was built at this time, but it has since been enlarged and restored. The lancet windows in the north and south walls of the chancel are of the same pattern as those which were used throughout the 1140 building.
If you stand at the west end of the nave, and look towards the altar (ignoring the south aisle), you can get a good idea of the shape of the old Norman church. The interior, if we could see it now, would seem rather dark—partly because of the narrow windows, and partly because of the low Norman arch which used to separate the nave from the chancel. There were no pews, and the stone bench, which is still to be seen against the north wall, provided the only form of seating. The floor sloped gradually upwards in the direction of the chancel, instead of having steps at intervals, as at present.
Just by the present pulpit is a narrow window, cut deeply into the wall, which belongs to this period. It is a `lowside window', originally set in the south wall of the church, and the clerk used to ring a handbell through it at the time of the elevation of the Host during Mass. In the fourteenth century this practice was stopped through-out the country, and church bells were rung instead. But the lowside window at Dinton can only have been used before the building of the south aisle.
This addition of a south aisle was part of a series of alterations begun about the year 1230, with the object of making the building lighter and more graceful. The low archway between the chancel and the nave was taken down, and the present one put in its place.
A door was built in the west wall-, and, most important of all, the south aisle was added to the nave. The old south wall was replaced by the present series of arches. And the beautiful south doorway was taken down and moved to its present place, where it remains one of the finest treasures of the church. Its loveliness is at once apparent. But, as we stand before it and reflect that worshippers since Norman times have entered Dinton Church through this same doorway, we are moved by something more than its outward beauty. The figures above it are said to represent St. Michael and the Dragon, and the inscription has been translated:
If anyone despairs of reward according with his merits
Let him listen to precepts, and let them be observed by him.
The other thing which the builders of 1234 did was to remake and buttress the north wall, inserting the four large windows in their present form. When this work had been completed, the nave and chancel must have looked much the same, from the inside, as they do today. From the outside, however, the church would have looked strange to us, because there was no tower yet, and no porch.
The tower was built about the year 1340, and on this occasion, too, a doorway was carefully taken down and moved from its original position. This time it was the doorway in the centre of the old west wall, which was moved and re-erected in the west wall of the tower, where it is still in use. The final alteration came with the building of the south porch in the early sixteenth century. Thus. the newest part of the building shelters the oldest part.
A small group of memorials on the north wall, near the chancel, is worth studying. A grey slate tablet is dedicated to Simon Mayne, who died in 1617, leaving Dinton Hall to his son of the same name. The latter was a prominent member of the Parliamentary Party during the Civil War, and Cromwell came to stay with him at Dinton. A member of the Long Parliament, Mayne later sat as a Judge of the High Commission Court which tried Charles the First, and was one of those who signed the king's death warrant. He was tried at the Old Bailey in 1660, and died in the Tower the following year. His body was brought back to Dinton for burial.
Simon Mayne's clerk, a man called John Bigg, became a recluse in the years following the Restoration. He lived in a cave to the west of Dinton Hall, and was known as the Dinton Hermit. Two of his boots (made of patches of leather) are still preserved today—one of them in Dinton Hall, and the other in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. It was in these home-made boots that Bigg used to walk over to Hampden every day to get food from the Hampden family. He must have been a strange sight in his queer clothes, reminiscent of the nursery rhyme, "The old man decked in leather', of which he may possibly have been the original. But the hidden retreats and secret passages, which are sometimes discovered in the district, remind us of the terror in which Mayne, Bigg and their friends lived after the Restoration. At the beginning of the last century, builders found a secret room lined with blankets in Dinton Hall. The late Mr. Skilbeck of Bledlow tells how he excavated part of an under-ground passage near Longdown Farm, in the Hampden woods, which Bigg may have built for his own protection.
Next to the Mayne tablet are the memorials of the Vanhattem family, who originally came over to England with William of Orange. They bought Dinton Hall from the Maynes in 1727, and carried out a number of improvements to the estate. It was Sir John Vanhattem who, in 1769, built 'Dinton Castle' on the main Oxford Road, as a place to house his collection of fossils. The building was never completed, and is now so completely ruined that it is often mistaken for a genuine Gothic relic.
The brasses, in the sanctuary, form a picture-gallery of fashion from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. The earliest figure, John Compton, 1424, has full plate armour. Thomas and Richard Greenaway, 1534 and 1551, illustrated the return to chain-mail, Simon Mayne, 1617, whose son signed the death warrant of Charles 1, is shown in armour with top-boots and spurs. William and Francis Lee and their wives, 1486-1558, are in civilian costume.
When the plates were taken up in 1944, they were discovered to be 'palirnpsest'—i.e. twice-used. Older brasses, plundered from monastic churches at home and abroad during the Reformation period, had evidently been cut up, turned over, and new figures engraved on the back. One was found to have commemorated a Treasurer of York Minster, another a priest in vestments, while a third was a fragment from an exquisite Flemish brass of the four-teenth century.
Between the two world-wars, the work of improvement and restoration went on. In 1927, the row of old almshouses south-east of the church porch was taken down, and the present wall and gate-way were built. Mr. Webb, of Haddenham, carried out the work-, and he used the stone which was left over to help build Bernard Hall in Cuddington.
The almshouses were in bad repair, and had long been disused. But their disappearance made a big change in one of the oldest parts of the village. Just to the south of where they stood, there are the remains of the old village stocks. And, across the road, is the original 'dower-house' of Dinton Hall—now divided into two separate houses. A little further down the hill is the forge, where horses were shod until a few years ago.
Reproduced from Church Leaflet
Dinton Church
The earliest reference to Dinton Church belongs to the year 1070. It is a grant by William the Conqueror of 'the Manor and Church of Daniton' to Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. No trace of the original Saxon church survives. It was probably a narrow, thatched building with very few windows. But it was replaced after a few years, when the church passed from Bishop Odo's control, and became the property of the convent at Godstow.
It was about the year 1140 that the rebuilding of Dinton Church began. The nave was laid out on its present site, and there was a solid wall at the west end, where the nave now joins the tower. The main entrance to the 1140 building was through the same beautiful south doorway which we use today, although this doorway was later moved a few yards from its original position. For the old south wall of the church was where the present line of pillars and arches stands. The font also belongs to the Norman period, and has probably been moved very little in its 800 years of constant use. The chancel was built at this time, but it has since been enlarged and restored. The lancet windows in the north and south walls of the chancel are of the same pattern as those which were used throughout the 1140 building.
If you stand at the west end of the nave, and look towards the altar (ignoring the south aisle), you can get a good idea of the shape of the old Norman church. The interior, if we could see it now, would seem rather dark—partly because of the narrow windows, and partly because of the low Norman arch which used to separate the nave from the chancel. There were no pews, and the stone bench, which is still to be seen against the north wall, provided the only form of seating. The floor sloped gradually upwards in the direction of the chancel, instead of having steps at intervals, as at present.
Just by the present pulpit is a narrow window, cut deeply into the wall, which belongs to this period. It is a `lowside window', originally set in the south wall of the church, and the clerk used to ring a handbell through it at the time of the elevation of the Host during Mass. In the fourteenth century this practice was stopped through-out the country, and church bells were rung instead. But the lowside window at Dinton can only have been used before the building of the south aisle.
This addition of a south aisle was part of a series of alterations begun about the year 1230, with the object of making the building lighter and more graceful. The low archway between the chancel and the nave was taken down, and the present one put in its place.
A door was built in the west wall-, and, most important of all, the south aisle was added to the nave. The old south wall was replaced by the present series of arches. And the beautiful south doorway was taken down and moved to its present place, where it remains one of the finest treasures of the church. Its loveliness is at once apparent. But, as we stand before it and reflect that worshippers since Norman times have entered Dinton Church through this same doorway, we are moved by something more than its outward beauty. The figures above it are said to represent St. Michael and the Dragon, and the inscription has been translated:
If anyone despairs of reward according with his merits
Let him listen to precepts, and let them be observed by him.
The other thing which the builders of 1234 did was to remake and buttress the north wall, inserting the four large windows in their present form. When this work had been completed, the nave and chancel must have looked much the same, from the inside, as they do today. From the outside, however, the church would have looked strange to us, because there was no tower yet, and no porch.
The tower was built about the year 1340, and on this occasion, too, a doorway was carefully taken down and moved from its original position. This time it was the doorway in the centre of the old west wall, which was moved and re-erected in the west wall of the tower, where it is still in use. The final alteration came with the building of the south porch in the early sixteenth century. Thus. the newest part of the building shelters the oldest part.
A small group of memorials on the north wall, near the chancel, is worth studying. A grey slate tablet is dedicated to Simon Mayne, who died in 1617, leaving Dinton Hall to his son of the same name. The latter was a prominent member of the Parliamentary Party during the Civil War, and Cromwell came to stay with him at Dinton. A member of the Long Parliament, Mayne later sat as a Judge of the High Commission Court which tried Charles the First, and was one of those who signed the king's death warrant. He was tried at the Old Bailey in 1660, and died in the Tower the following year. His body was brought back to Dinton for burial.
Simon Mayne's clerk, a man called John Bigg, became a recluse in the years following the Restoration. He lived in a cave to the west of Dinton Hall, and was known as the Dinton Hermit. Two of his boots (made of patches of leather) are still preserved today—one of them in Dinton Hall, and the other in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. It was in these home-made boots that Bigg used to walk over to Hampden every day to get food from the Hampden family. He must have been a strange sight in his queer clothes, reminiscent of the nursery rhyme, "The old man decked in leather', of which he may possibly have been the original. But the hidden retreats and secret passages, which are sometimes discovered in the district, remind us of the terror in which Mayne, Bigg and their friends lived after the Restoration. At the beginning of the last century, builders found a secret room lined with blankets in Dinton Hall. The late Mr. Skilbeck of Bledlow tells how he excavated part of an under-ground passage near Longdown Farm, in the Hampden woods, which Bigg may have built for his own protection.
Next to the Mayne tablet are the memorials of the Vanhattem family, who originally came over to England with William of Orange. They bought Dinton Hall from the Maynes in 1727, and carried out a number of improvements to the estate. It was Sir John Vanhattem who, in 1769, built 'Dinton Castle' on the main Oxford Road, as a place to house his collection of fossils. The building was never completed, and is now so completely ruined that it is often mistaken for a genuine Gothic relic.
The brasses, in the sanctuary, form a picture-gallery of fashion from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. The earliest figure, John Compton, 1424, has full plate armour. Thomas and Richard Greenaway, 1534 and 1551, illustrated the return to chain-mail, Simon Mayne, 1617, whose son signed the death warrant of Charles 1, is shown in armour with top-boots and spurs. William and Francis Lee and their wives, 1486-1558, are in civilian costume.
When the plates were taken up in 1944, they were discovered to be 'palirnpsest'—i.e. twice-used. Older brasses, plundered from monastic churches at home and abroad during the Reformation period, had evidently been cut up, turned over, and new figures engraved on the back. One was found to have commemorated a Treasurer of York Minster, another a priest in vestments, while a third was a fragment from an exquisite Flemish brass of the four-teenth century.
Between the two world-wars, the work of improvement and restoration went on. In 1927, the row of old almshouses south-east of the church porch was taken down, and the present wall and gate-way were built. Mr. Webb, of Haddenham, carried out the work-, and he used the stone which was left over to help build Bernard Hall in Cuddington.
The almshouses were in bad repair, and had long been disused. But their disappearance made a big change in one of the oldest parts of the village. Just to the south of where they stood, there are the remains of the old village stocks. And, across the road, is the original 'dower-house' of Dinton Hall—now divided into two separate houses. A little further down the hill is the forge, where horses were shod until a few years ago.
Reproduced from Church Leaflet