Patrick Comerford
Mark Sutton and a small team of dedicated local skilled tradesmen in Tamworth have dedicated the last three years to restoring one of Tamworth’s lost jewels. They are close to completing a beautiful and sympathetic restoration of a long neglected grade II listed property, the former Peel School at No 17 Lichfield Street.
Mark has also been running No18 Coffee House and Wine Bar next door for the past three years too, and they celebrated that third birthday on Friday night at No18 with live music from Matt Sutton. Earlier, on Friday morning, I called into No 18 for a double espresso, but also visited No 17, the former Peel School, to see the work in progress as they put the finishing touches to the building, installing a new floor.
The old wooden doors have been removed, the original front stone window has been recreated, and all the stonework has been restored by Jason Petricca. The front is as close as Mark Sutton and his team can imagine how the building was originally designed when it was commissioned in 1837 by Sir Robert Peel.
But just before the window board was removed, in what can only be described as a work of cultural vandalism on the weekend before last, Staffordshire County Council erected a fresh new green bus shelter right in front of the newly created window, blocking it from view all along Lichfield Street.
‘I could cry if it wasn’t so laughable,’ Mark posted on social media. ‘Why they couldn’t put it 10 feet to the left where the bus stop actually is I'll never know. We have had no consultation in this whatsoever.’
I have long had a personal interest in the former school Mark Sutton is restoring, not least because I have long wondered No 17 Lichfield Street may once have been the private chapel of the Moat House, the Comberford family Tudor-style mansion a little further west along the same side of Lichfield Street.
This building at 17 Lichfield Street looks like a Victorian chapel and it was built as a school for Sir Robert Peel in 1837. It was the second building for the Peel School, which was first founded in 1820 in Church Street, beside Saint Editha’s churchyard.
The school moved to Lichfield Street when this building was erected in 1837. But it was housed there for little more than a decade and moved once again in 1850 when Sir Robert Peel replaced it with a new, third school across the street designed by Sydney Smirke.
In recent years, No 17 was a betting shop and then a furniture shop until it was closed and was sold in 2018. Until it closed, it was a whitewashed building. It has a large Gothic window in the gable, flanked by a lower Tudor-headed window and door.
In a comment on a Tamworth Facebook page some years ago, Andrew Hale suggested that this building was originally a private chapel and was located in the original grounds of the Moat House.
He says the original bill for moving the building was paid not by the owners of the Moat House but by Sir Robert Peel, on the condition that it was converted into a school.
Andrew Hale did his prize-winning history project on the Moat House and its history in 1978-1980 while he was at Wilnecote High School. His mother was the head chef at the Moat House for many years and much his information came from the trust and owners of the Moat House at that time. The history project earned him the school history and research prize for 1980.
When Sir Robert Peel was moving his school from Church Street to Lichfield Street in 1837, Dr John Woody was living at the Moat House, having bought it with his mother in 1821. The Woody family had been tenants of the Moat House, and they bought it when parts of the Tamworth Castle estate were being sold off by a London auctioneer, John Robins, to clear the debts of the Townshend family.
If Sir Robert Peel moved the former chapel at the Moat House lock, stock and barrel to a new location further each along Lichfield Street for use as a school, was this the original chapel at the Moat House? And does this explain some of its pre-Victorian details, including large the Gothic window in the gable and the lower Tudor-headed window and door?
I first visited the Moat House around 1969 and 1970, and have often been shown the panelling that was said to have hidden more than one ‘priests’ hole’ that allowed Catholic priests to escape searches of the house in Elizabethan times when the Comberford family was recalcitrant in its recusancy.
The Act of Uniformity in 1559 had made absence from church a punishable office. Those who failed to come to church were known as ‘recusants’ and were to be fined. The Comberford family remained staunchly Catholic at the time and family members were frequently in trouble and were accused of taking part in some of the many plots against Queen Elizabeth.
On 20 January 1573, the Earl of Shrewsbury informed Lord Burghley that he had apprehended Thomas Comberford of Comberford, near Tamworth, ‘where masses were frequented.’ He also arrested two mass priests who had said a very large number of Masses there. Shrewsbury added that he wished ‘bishops and others in authority … would have more regard unto their charges and not suffer dangerous vagabonds to rest unpunished in their jurisdiction.’
Thomas Comberford was released after a short period. He, his wife Dorothy, and many other members of the family were fined on several occasions in Wednesbury and Leek in the 1580s for non-attendance at church. Thomas appears to have more careful to conform for the rest of his life. Although he and his family were frequently in trouble for non-attendance, he appears to have avoided the punishments inflicted on him.
However, in April 1588, his tenants, including Thomas ‘Heethe’ [Heath], were accused of harbouring seminarians and priests, including one ‘James Harryson.’ Harrison and Heath were arrested at Comberford were imprisoned in London. They were eventually released, but Harrison was arrested again in Yorkshire in 1602 and executed in York.
In the summer of 1606, acting on a tip-off, Sir Humphrey Ferrers of Tamworth Castle sent the bailiffs of Tamworth with a number of his servants to break into the locked Moat House, then the home of Humphrey Comberford. They were ordered to search all the rooms, including under the beds and behind locked doors and panels, for priests and for any evidence that the Mass was being said in the house.
Ferrers gave a dramatic account of the search when he wrote to the Earl of Salisbury on 18 June 1606. Three men were found hiding in the house and, with the search party also finding a number of religious tracts, they were arrested on suspicion of being seminarians. But, despite the weight of circumstantial evidence, there was no convincing proof that Mass was being celebrated in the Moat House.
A ‘priests’ hole,’ said to have been used by the Jesuits harboured in the Moat House by Humphrey Comberford, led to the River Tame. The river may have provided safe routes down to Wednesbury Manor or north to the homes of other Catholics among the Staffordshire gentry.
Although I have often seen the location of the supposed ‘priests’ holes’ in the Moat House, I was not aware until recent years that there may have been a private chapel in the grounds of the Moat House. Until the late 17th century, members of the Comberford family used Saint Catherine’s or the Comberford Chapel in the north aisle of Saint Editha’s Church, Tamworth, as the private family chapel, including for family burials and memorials. There was also a private chapel in Comberford Hall until the late 17th or early 18th century, according to the historian of Catholic Staffordshire, Michael Greenslade. Some more research is needed on a possible chapel in the Moat House.
As for the third Peel school on the other side of Lichfield Street, it had been turned into church rooms by 1907, and after the 1930s it was used as the Civic restaurant. That building later became a small factory for Hart and Levy Tailoring and then part of the Shannon’s Mill housing complex.
After being shown around No 17, I called into No 18 on Friday for my morning double espresso, and sat out in the sunshine in the small open yard at the back shared by both No 17 and No 18.
I had a bus to catch to Hopwas, where I wanted to see some more church buildings and locations, and to walk by the canal banks before continuing on to Lichfield. After coffee in No 18, I waited for the Lichfield bus – in the new, eyesore of a bus shelter outside No 17.
I hope to return soon to see No 17 when Mark Sutton and his team have completed their restoration project. By then, too, I hope the bus shelter has been moved to another location along Lichfield Street.
