England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Fingest St Bartholomew

The Parish

The parish of Fingest lies in the extreme southwest of Buckinghamshire, indeed it forms a substantial part of the border with neighbouring Oxfordshire. Fingest is located about 6 miles southwest of the industrial town of High Wycombe. Fingest is a small village which sits, in lanes, about 2 miles south of the B482 road which connects Stokenchurch with Marlow. The area is at the heart of the Chilterns range and Fingest sits in attractive rolling countryside dominated by the classic beech "hangers" which served as wood sources for the local furniture making industry. Fingest would otherwise have largely earned its living from pastoral agriculture albeit today, with heavy machinery, arable now predominates. The Chiltern Hills are chalk countryside and being porous there is little surface drainage, what there is heads southwards to join the Thames to the east of Henley, thence to the North Sea through the capital and the Thames Estuary. Fingest is sited within a dry valley at around 80 metres above the sea but the land is deeply incised and rises within a half mile to over 180 metres, making for classic hiking countryside. By Buckinghamshire standards Fingest parish was rather small, it covered just under 1,300 acres and would have supported a population of almost 400 parishioners. Despite the age of St Bartholomew's church there is no mention of Fingest within Domesday Book, it is suspected that its assets were recorded under neighbouring Turville.

The Church

St Bartholomew's church lies at the heart of the small village alongside the junction of Chequers Lane with Fingest Lane. There is no doubting St Bartholomew's principal item of interest - its remarkable tower which Pevsner describes as "rightly famous". The date of this feature is a little hazy but it is certainly Norman Romanesque in style and Pevsner gives it a 13th century date, albeit the twin saddleback roof is later and probably 17th century. The tower stands adjacent to a peculiarly small church, the two seemingly a mismatch, but both date from the same 13th century period. It has been speculated that the tower functioned as a nave and the present nave as the chancel. The churchyard is surrounded by a low flint & brick wall with entrances at both eastern and southwestern ends, there are a few trees to the northwest but they do not unduly restrict photography.