Flaunden

No entry found in the Domesday survey for Flaunden. The Victoria County History (Hertfordshire, vol. 2, 1908) writes about this church: "plain rectangular building of flint with red-brick dressings, with a south-west porch and west bell turret, built in 1838, its only claim to distinction being that it is said to be the first work of Sir Gilbert Scott. […] It contains nothing of note except the font from the old church, which has an octagonal bowl with quatrefoils on each face, and stands on a modern stem and base—the bowl may be fifteenth-century work." On the former original 13th-century building the VCH (ibid.) notes: "The old church was abandoned in 1838 and left to decay. It stands in a spinney of fir trees in the low meadows near the river, approached only by a field path, and is rapidly succumbing to the combined attacks of ivy and the vandalism of the casual visitor. This is the more to be deplored because it is a building of most unusual type, being in plan an equallimbed cross […] It seems to have been built about 1230, and retains a west doorway of this date, with a plain pointed head, and a moulded label with mask dripstones." Tompkins (1922) reports that "the font, and a few tiles, etc., were brought here [the new Parish Church built by Sir Gilbert Scott] from the old church at Flaunden Bottom near Chenies, some ruins of which still remain. Noted in Pevsner & Cherry (1977): "Font: Octagonal bowl, Perp[endicular], with quatrefoil decoration."