All Saints Church, Loughton

All Saints' Church at Loughton is a medieval village church that has found itself, by an accident of history, in the heart of one of England's newest cities — Milton Keynes. Standing in what was once a small Buckinghamshire village and is now a district of the great new town built from the 1960s, it is a building of real antiquity, with origins in the early thirteenth century, that has survived the transformation of the countryside around it into a modern city. Today it serves as an ecumenical church, shared by Christians of different traditions, a place of ancient peace amid the new town.

A church at Great Loughton was recorded as early as 1219, and the present building dates from the early years of the thirteenth century. In the Middle Ages there were in fact two separate parishes here — Little and Greater Loughton — each with its own church, a reminder of how the medieval landscape was organised. The chancel and nave of All Saints' probably date from the first years of the thirteenth century, though most of their original detail has been removed in later alterations; the earliest features that now survive — the east window of the chancel, a blocked north doorway, and parts of other windows — are insertions of about 1250, later altered.

The church grew in the great age of late-medieval church-building. During the latter part of the fifteenth century the south chapel and aisle, the porch and the tower were all added, and the nave was reroofed, giving the church much of its present form. The chancel is lit only by its east window, a simple two-light window of the thirteenth century, and opens to the south chapel through a pointed arch on moulded responds; the south doorway, with its drop arch, dates from about 1400, and the late fifteenth-century arcade between the nave and aisle is carried on an octagonal pillar. The fabric was restored around 1700 and again in 1851, and the seating was renewed in 1886. The result is a modest but genuine medieval church, layered with the work of the thirteenth, fifteenth and later centuries.

What makes All Saints' so remarkable is its survival. When Milton Keynes was designated as a new town in 1967, to be built across the farmland and villages of north Buckinghamshire, the ancient village of Loughton was absorbed into the new city, its fields covered by housing and its lanes crossed by the grid of new roads. Yet the medieval church survived at its heart, a precious link to the centuries of rural life that preceded the new town. Today it stands as an ecumenical church — a Local Ecumenical Partnership, shared by the Church of England and other Christian denominations — reflecting the spirit of cooperation that has marked the religious life of Milton Keynes, a city deliberately planned without the old parish boundaries. The ancient building thus serves a thoroughly modern community.

All Saints' stands in Loughton, now a district on the western side of Milton Keynes, the great new city of Buckinghamshire. Milton Keynes, planned from 1967 on its famous grid of roads, is one of the most successful of Britain's new towns, and within and around it lie a surprising wealth of attractions: the wartime codebreaking centre of Bletchley Park, where Alan Turing and his colleagues broke the Enigma code; the lakes and parklands of Willen and Caldecotte; the great shopping centre; the network of "redway" cycle paths; and, scattered among the new housing, the surviving medieval churches and villages, of which All Saints' Loughton is one of the finest. The Buckinghamshire countryside, the Grand Union Canal, and the historic towns of the region are all within easy reach.

From a church recorded in 1219 and built in the early thirteenth century, through its medieval chancel, nave, aisle and tower, the restorations of later centuries, and its remarkable survival amid the building of Milton Keynes, All Saints' Church gathers eight centuries of history into one building at the heart of a new city. A medieval village church now serving an ecumenical congregation, it remains a living place of worship in Loughton — an ancient and peaceful survivor of old Buckinghamshire, kept alive in the midst of modern Milton Keynes.