Patrick Comerford
Stony Stratford enjoyed its ‘golden age’ during the coaching era that arrived in the 18th century, and the first turnpike in England was on Watling Street, between Stony Stratford and Hockcliffe.
Stony Stratford was a convenient stop on the road north from London, and this town in north Buckinghamshire soon became a coaching town, with many travellers changing horses or staying the night at one of the town’s many inns and taverns.
I was writing yesterday about the Cock and the Bull, two neighbouring coaching inns or hotels on the High Street that gave rise to the phrase ‘a Cock and Bull story.’
The ready supply of horses and the facilities to change them at Stony Stratford means that the old children’s nursery rhyme, ‘Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross,’ may refer to the Cock Inn.
Many of the old inns and hostelries in Stony Stratford, however, did not survive when the coaches gave way in the 19th century first to the canals and then to the railways.
Grikes Inn or Grilkes Inn once stood near the bridge that crosses the Great River Ouse, separating Stony Stratford from Old Stratford and Buckinghamshire from Northamptonshire. It was first mentioned in 1317, making it the oldest recorded inn in Stony Stratford.
Early accounts refer to a chapel dedicated to Saint John the Baptist and a leprosy isolation hospital behind this building. Inns continued on this site for centuries, and by 1677 it was known as The Angel. The last pub on the site was known as the Barley Mow when it closed in 1970.
Today, this is a private family home, but the name Barley Mow survives over the entrance door at the side of the house.
The former Cross Keys at 97 High Street is one of the oldest surviving buildings in Stony Stratford. It still bears its old signs, and its mediaeval timber structure, dating from ca 1480, with its moulded archway.
It was also known as Saint Peter’s Keys, and may originally have been a church-related lodging house.
This was once the town’s Guild Hall, and it later became the town’s first courtroom. The murderers of Grace Bennet, Lady of the Manor of Calverton, were tried there in 1697. Later it was tea house and curiosity shop, and today it is a hairdresser’s shop, Hair Master.
A little further south on High Street, the Fox and Hounds is another surviving inn on the west side of High Street that dates from the late 17th or early 18th century. Its features include a steep early tiled roof, a hipped dormer and a brick chimney.
The Cross Keys and the Fox and Hounds stand opposite Nos 92 and 94 High Street, which still shows the signs of an impressive and prosperous coaching inn, with a high central archway.
The Swan, which stood on this site, also had dormitories at the rear to accommodate people travelling by coach.
This was also known, over time, as the Swan Inn, the Swan with Two Necks, and the Three Swans. The building is closed these days, although there are signs that offer the promise of reopening in the near future.
At the other end of High Street, Nos 26 and 28 stand on the site of the Rose and Crown Inn. This is where the uncrowned 12-year-old ‘Boy King’, Edward V, was met Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, and Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester and later King Richard III, on 29 April 1483.
The young King Edward was taken by the two dukes from Stony Stratford to the Tower of London, and it is there, it is believed, he and his younger brother, ten-year-old Prince Richard, Duke of York, were murdered.
Their disappearance has given rise to many of the stories and legends about the ‘Princes in the Tower.’
Market Square also had a number of inns and hostelries, although the Crown, close to the corner of Silver Street, is the only one that remains to this day.
No 11 Market Square was formerly the King’s Head Inn. This low, two-storey house dates from the early 17th century, with later additions. It is now a private residence, but still retains its steep early tiled roof, with brick verges and kneelers on the south gable, two brick chimney stacks, and two hipped dormers.
All the walls are cement rendered, but the windows are wooden casements in stucco reveals, with three two-light, three-light and four-light window. The wooden doorcase has two plain pilasters and a hood on two shallow cut brackets. Good door with 4 fielded and 2 incised panels.
Inside, the house retains many of its original features, including a large inglenook fireplace and a fine four-centred arch lintel with mouldings, dating from ca 1600.
Nos 12 and 13 Market Square forms an interesting, later 17th century two-storey stone house.
The stones forming the heads of windows on the ground floor have sloping sides and curved tops which, with a raised keystone, give the forms of a crown. The doorway has a good moulded eared architrave, with a carving of long leaves spreading out and down from a boss with a head of a putti above a carved keystone.
Above the front door and resting on the band is a rectangular plaque with the letters ‘IAM’ above an heraldic shield and the date 1790. The letters IAM may refer to Joseph and Amelia Malpas.
Perhaps the Malpas family gave their name to the Malpas Hotel, later the Commercial Hotel, at Nos 14 and 15 Market Square. Today, No 14 houses the Alliance Française de Milton Keynes.
I sometimes wonder what these old inns, hostelries and taverns looked like in their heyday. I catch a glimpse of this, I imagine, when I visit the Crown on Market Square and the Old George on High Street, one of the oldest surviving inns in Stony Stratford.
A former posting house, the Old George dates back to 1609 and has 18th century, two-storey bay windows.
The sunken floor level indicates the original level of Watling Street and how the road through Stony Stratford has been built up and raised over the centuries.
1 comment:
No 14 Market Square was also a pub at one time - recorded in 1770 as 'The Fighting Cocks'. Here is a brief history of the house:
The house stands on a site which has probably been occupied since Roman times: a previous owner found evidence of the foundations of a Roman villa and coins, whilst digging in the garden. In the thirteenth century, the end of the garden was part of the site of the local leper colony, and is believed to be the site of a leper chapel mentioned in a will of 1202.
The main structure of the house, originally timber-framed, probably dates from the 1600’s, or even earlier. Some major re-building occurred in the mid-1700’s after the fires in Stony which destroyed or damaged many of the then thatch-roofed houses. A new brick frontage with sash windows was almost certainly added at that time, as well as a new roof, fireplaces, and chimneys.
The house was purchased by Henry Potter in 1725: he ran a grocery shop at the front, a brew house in what is now the kitchen, and set up a pin factory for lace-making pins in a barn at the back. Henry died in 1745, but his ghostly presence still lingers in this and neighbouring houses.
In 1770 the house appears in the records as The Fighting Cocks, and many broken clay pipes and fragments of beer flagons have been found whilst digging the garden. Meanwhile, Henry Potter’s daughter Amy married a rich Chelsea merchant, Joseph Malpas, who in 1790 purchased the house next door (no 12) and bought back The Fighting Cocks. The combined properties were then known as Malpas House. A coat of arms with the initials of Henry Potter’s three daughters can still be seen on the facade of No 12. Later on, No 14 became a chandler’s shop, and candles and soap were made in a building at the back.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the the house came into the hands of of the Plumb family. Henry Plumb was a ...plumber (and glazier), and used one of the two front rooms as a shop. It was probably around this time that the ground floor sash windows at the front were replaced by bow windows (although why two different styles is anyone’s guess!). A building at the end of the garden (demolished in 1949) seems to have been used for window making and leading - a buried rubbish tip full of pieces of broken hand-blown glass was found there. On May 3rd, 1912, the house was auctioned at the Cock Hotel, by order of the mortgagees, and purchased by a builder from Wolverton, Thomas Robinson, who sold it in 1919 to Mr J.W. King.
During WWII the premises were used to house children evacuated from London, and several of the bedrooms seem to have been partitioned then. After the war, it became a private hotel or boarding house, and, during the 1960’s, a doctor’s surgery. When Stony became part of Milton Keynes, the house, like many others in the town, was Grade II listed. From 1970 to 1985 the house was owned by Richard Holmes, a zoologist from the Open University, and his family. They used part of the ground floor living room and the space under the stairs to house four bush babies (the only ones to have bred in captivity in the UK). Other household pets at the time included a dog, an iguana, and a boa constrictor
In 1986 Danielle Maunier-Kaye, who, several years earlier had co-founded AFMK with Hélène Roberts, established the front ground floor part of the house as the new headquarters of AFMK, with a dedicated office, classroom, and library (until this time, all the AFMK classes hadbeen run in borrowed school classrooms or OU meeting rooms). Since then, the Alliance Française de Milton Keynes has gone from strength to strength.
Tony Kaye, December 2024
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