MEMORIALS OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE.* THE second volume of the Inventory of
the Historical Monu- ments in Buckinghamshire is marked by the industrious care and enthusiasm for a great work which we have come to associate with the names of Lord Burghelere and his fellow. Commissioners. North Buckinghamshire is not rich in his- torical monuments of the most striking kind; that is a consequence, no doubt, of geographical conditions and of the course of its development. The conformation of its surface does not provide many positions which would have attracted builders of hill-top camps; Roman remains are rare, no doubt because there was no particular reason why the Romans should do anything more than pass through the district; the churches do not reach a high level of architectural interest; and there are few good examples of domestic building. The northern part of the county, in short, has never been anything much more than a quiet country of good pasture and minor rural industries, and its happy lack of history is reflected in its monuments. Still, for the scholar and the student of English country life there is plenty of material. Of earthworks, the most notable are two contour camps—one, known locally as Danesborough, which overlooks Bedfordshire from a steep hill in Wavendon, and the other on Beacon Hill near Ivinghoe, which, we learn with a rather pleasant chagrin at the omissions of a Government Department, appears to have been overlooked by the Ordnance Survey. Of other earth- works, there are two large bowl barrows near Thornborough, a camp north of Norbury Coppice with a curious avenue formed by an extension of the rampart and ditch, and a number of good specimens of homestead moats in the well- watered lowlands. Of the churches, the most interesting is that of Wing, which is a practically complete church of the tenth century or an even earlier date, with a polygonal chancel and crypt. Wing is one of the few churches in North Buckinghamshire in which clunch or chalk is used for dressings and detail ; but it is the large size of the original building, and the fact that, although added to and restored, the walls stand as they stood in the days of Canute and the Confessor, which make it a building of which even a county rich in ecclesiastical architecture might be proud. Of the old country houses, there is none which combines excellence of architecture with historic interest more noticeably than Gayhurst, which is the finest example of late sixteenth-century work in the county, and is also a house which will always be connected with the Gunpowder Plot as the residence of Sir Everard Digby; it was from Gayhurst that he went to Dunclmrch to make up the supposed hunting party which was to await the news of Fawkes's success and afterwards to raise the country. But Gayhurst in some respects is not as interesting as Creslow Manor House. This is now a farmhouse, but it has kept many of its original features. It was built about 1330, and then contained a great hall, which, like so many others, was cut in two in late Tudor days and converted into a building of two stories. In the attic are still to be seen three of the trusses of the original open timber-roof, covered with soot. Besides the hall, there are a tower and stair turret, traceried windows, a crypt and a chapel with remains of twelfth-century date; but the chapel, unhappily, is used for no better purposes than a coachhouse and storehouse, with its windows blocked and part of its wall covered by an outbuilding. Altogether, the house is note- worthy as a survival of fourteenth-century architecture; but it is difficult to read of the later fortunes of buildings such as this Without the next thought being of the possibility of a future owner or tenant who may decide to restore and revive the past. It is one of the happiest twee of books such as this Inventory that they make known the existence of houses like Creslow to wider circles of acquaintance.
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