page_title: St Mary's Church, Chesham
section_title: Associated buildings and structures
hierarchical_section_title: St Mary's Church, Chesham / Associated buildings and structures
caption_attribution_description: detail of A Picture of Chesham
context_page_description: St. Mary's Church is a Grade I listed Anglican church in Chesham, Buckinghamshire, and is part of the Diocese of Oxford. Built on the site of a Bronze Age stone circle of puddingstones, parts of the church building date to the 12th century. Remodelled in the 15th and 17th centuries, the church is architecturally a mixture of English Gothic styles. Weakened by additions to the church tower and undermined by burials in and around the church, by the 19th century the building was structurally unsound. The church was remodelled and strengthened in the 1860s by George Gilbert Scott and again in the 20th century by Robert Potter.
  Formerly part of the Diocese of Lincoln, it served what was historically the largest parish in Buckinghamshire, and the church traditionally had two vicars. Initially the advowson was held jointly by a pair of prominent local families, but in the wake of the 12th century civil wars of the reign of King Stephen, the advowsons were granted to the monks of Woburn Abbey and to the Abbey of Saint Mary de Pratis in Leicester, each of whom appointed their own vicars to the parish.
context_section_description: In 1712 Secretary to the Treasury William Lowndes rebuilt Chesham's manor house, The Bury, immediately to the south of the church. The building still stands today, and currently serves as an office building.
  Owing to its unusual advowson, Chesham historically had two vicarages. The Upper Parsonage, also known as Bury Hill House, was built in the 16th century and attached to Chesham Leicester, and was used as a residence by the Skottowe family following their acquisition of Chesham Leicester; it was a large mansion house immediately north of St. Mary's Church. In the early 19th century the house was bought and demolished by the Lowndes family.
  The Lower Parsonage, attached to Chesham Woburn, stood immediately east of the church, between the church and the Old Town. It was demolished in around 1769 by John Russell, 4th Duke of Bedford, and replaced by a new vicarage for the vicar of the newly unified parish. This vicarage remains attached to the parish, and since the re-amalgamation of the Chesham parishes in the 1980s and 1990s is known as the Rectory.
caption: The red Bury and white Upper Parsonage flank St. Mary's, behind the Lower Parsonage, c. 1750
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