Buckland’s beauty

Leo Schofield has given us another timely reminder of the rich heritage contained in our lovely old churches.

In his latest My Tasmania column in the Mercury Saturday Magazine he reports on the reopening next Saturday (June 29) of the historic St John the Baptist Anglican Church at Buckland, with a full church service, including choirs from Hobart.

Perhaps it should be seen as a rededication. The church has been open to visitors and some months back this writer had the opportunity to visit it, to admire the lines of its beautiful colonial era architecture and inside its striking stained glass window.

Schofield’s report didn’t mention the window, but it is the most intriguing aspect of the church’s past. Postcards at the church showing the window say it “features an authentic 14th century stained glass window from Battle Abbey in Hastings, England”.

Battle Abbey was built at the scene of the famous 1066 Battle of Hastings in which William the Conqueror defeated King Harold. It is said the abbey was built on the spot where Harold died and the Conqueror had the great Benedictine abbey built. Alas, it was virtually destroyed in King Henry the Eighth’s dissolution of the monasteries in 1538.

Dorothea I. Henslowe, in her book Our Heritage of Anglican Churches in Tasmania, wrote that the window (of English white grisaille) was “reputed to have come from the Marquis of Salisbury, to date from 1350-1400 and to have been buried in Cromwell’s time”.

(Thomas Cromwell, as chief minister and adviser to Henry the Eighth, presided over the dissolution of 800 monasteries and their enormous wealth passed to the Crown).

Henslowe considered that the legend of the window “though commonly believed” did not seem to be based on fact. Yet, fact or fiction, the window is certainly very old and an impressive adornment to the 1846 stone church.

She also noted that the church had an altar missal (a liturgical book for celebrating Mass) containing prayers of “Thanksgiving for Delivery from the Gunpowder Plot”, “Restoration of the Royal Family (Charles the Second)” and a “Commemoration of Charles the Martyr”.

Indeed, the ties with early England go a long way back, for the Buckland church is also said to be a copy of the also named St John the Baptist Church at Cookham Dean in Berkshire, England.