The Monday Photo

There was a church here at Akeley in 1164, but this isn’t the remains of it. Instead, this is what’s left of its 1854 replacement.

Closest to the camera is the corner of the chancel, and you can see the rough layout of the church beyond, from those white stakes placed along the walls. Some sort of excavation work has been going on, perhaps to determine the exact shape of the foundations.

The 1854 church of St James the Apostle was knocked down in 1981, having been found unsafe a couple of years earlier.

There was a nave and a chancel and a nicely proportioned, fairly tall tower on the South side of the nave. It had been a Gothic Revival church, built in the Decorated style.

Entrance was through the base of the tower. The tower stairs came out onto the North East corner of the tower roof. They were capped with an octagonal roof so steeply pointed it looked like a small offset spire.

The earlier church was also dedicated to St James, and local historian Browne Willis described it in his 1755 book, The History and Antiquities of the Town, Hundred and Deanry of Buckingham:

"The Church here… is a mean small Building, consisting only of a Nave which is leaded, and Chancel which is tyled. At the West End is a wooden Turrit, lately rough cast, in which hang two small modern Bells. Over the Porch is this Date, 1656, being the Year when the said Porch was rebuilt.” (Sic)

I used a Sony A6000 and zoom lens just like this one for the photo in this post.

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