Welcome to St Dunstan’s Parish Church

The Oldest Recorded Parish in England!

Our Purpose Statement

At St Dunstan's (part of the Risborough Team Ministry in the Diocese of Oxford), our purpose is to share the good news of the kingdom of God through our worship, to serve the whole community through prayer and support of one another and to reach out to encourage a developing and sustaining relationship with God.

Our History

We do not know from which direction the English colonists came when they arrived in the area of the Chiltern hills to create their settlements but St Dunstan’s is a well-established site by the Icknield Way, and the parish is clearly identifiable with landmarks mentioned in a charter dated 903 A.D, the earliest certified boundary in the Kingdom. By 1346 the village was known as Monks Risborough - not because of the presence of a monastery, as the name would initially suggest, but because even earlier than 903, it had belonged to the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury. The name “Risborough” is derived from the Anglo-Saxon phrase meaning ‘the scrub-covered hills’.

St Dunstan’s

The church was dedicated to St Dunstan, the great 10th Century archbishop. One of the tales concerning his name holds that he once encountered Satan. Giving chase and cornering the devil, he gripped his nose firmly with his blacksmith’s tongs - for Dunstan was a skilled metalworker as well as a statesman. This parable is commemorated by two wood carvings in the 15th century porch and also by the more modern (1971) lead and fibreglass figure shown here which is on the south aisle wall.

	The chantry with memorial window to Bishop Wilberforce. The altar and tabernacle were installed as a memorial to men of the parish who died in the 1914-18 and 1939-45 On the right, the stained glass roundels in a north aisle window were installed in 1988 to mark the Millennium of Archbishop Dunstan’s life and death.