Patrick Comerford
During my afternoon visit to Shenley Church End last week, I visited both Saint Mary’s Church and the houses that once formed the early 17th century Stafford Hospital almshouse.
The village is about 3 km south-west of Central Milton Keynes and about 3 km north-west of Bletchley, and is now part and parcel of Milton Keynes. But it still retains many of the characteristics of a pretty village, with its churchyard, village pond, reading garden and thatched, timber-framed cottages and former farmhouses.
Shenley Church End village is attractively dispersed in irregular collections of houses built mainly in a warm, orange‐brown brick but of different ages, appearance and uses along Shenley Road, which runs from north to south. Many of these houses stand on the historic line of Shenley Road with its shallow hollow and trees.
The dense stands of trees in places along Shenley Road provide an important green backdrop, maintaining a sense of the village’s historic rural setting and at the same time shielding views of the surrounding late 20th century housing that might otherwise dispel this impression.
Almost opposite Dudley Hill, leading to Saint Mary’s Church, The Homestead at No 3 Shenley Road is an eye-catching, black-and-white painted timber-framed and thatched smallholder’s cottage that dates back to the 17th century.
The Grade II listed house and the site it stands on are partly shielded from view by trees and shrubbery. But they remain an unaffected corner of rural character in Shenley Church End, despite the great changes that have taken place around it.
The architectural features of this interesting house include a colour-washed brick infill, a brick chimney and a projecting stack. A lower wing dating from the early 19th century has a with false timber framed effect and a slate roof with a brick chimney at the gable end.
From there, a row of mid or late 19th century cottages and the former church school lead on to Manor Farmhouse, an 18th century grade II listed house that has quirky proportions.
The two-storey house has a taller south end gable and a distinctive run of buildings that follow the line and fall of Shenley Road. Although the present farmhouse and outbuildings date from the mid-18th century, architectural historians suggest the site may be much older, and that it was possibly the main manor farm of the Maunsell Family who held land in the area in the 12th and 13th centuries.
A closer look at the brickwork of Manor Farmhouse shows how headers or the square end of bricks that were burnt black in the kiln are placed among stretchers creating a ‘Flemish Bond’ arrangement. This comes close to making a chequer board or diaper pattern across the frontage of the building.
The brown brick gable end of Manor Farmhouse is punctuated by a first floor casement window and a weather vane topping the apex of the barn roof. Other architectural and historic features of interest include an old tile roof with brick gable parapets at the steeper porch over the right-hand bay, a brick chimney at the left-hand end, toothed brick eaves, and a semi-circular arched window on the first floor on the right-hand side of the central bay.
Within the grounds of Manor Farm stands a grade II listed weatherboard and timber-frame barn with brick panel infills. It indicates the historic appearance of a traditional vernacular timber-frame barn or granary.
Walking further south along Shenley Road, the road is edged by houses and garden greenery bounded by hedges, fences and walls. This gives a pleasing sense of enclosed linearity with limited views out from the midst of attractive 18th and 19th century cottages and the former farm barns.
At a T junction with Oakhill Road, the timber-framed Dower House is a 17th century L-plan house, originally built as two cottages. It is distinguished by a stone built ground floor topped by a timber frame upper part that has colour‐washed brick infills and a clay tile roof.
The black and white squares of the timber frame of Dower House can be picked out along Shenley Road and create an attractive perspective.
One of the lost buildings of Shenley Church End is a building once known as the Reading Room and that stood on the site of the pretty and quaint Reading Gardens. the Reading Room was used by the village from the early 1900s, and it was given to trustees by Ada Selby-Lowndes in 1944.
The site was transferred to the parish council in 2003, and the orchard garden was created by the parish council in 2011 for all to enjoy, to sit and read. The mosaic at the garden was commissioned as part of a project for Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee.
Before I left Shenley End, I went in search of the Glastonbury Thorn hidden away off the wonderfully-named Holy Thorn Lane. It was said to have been planted as a cutting from the Glastonbury Thorn, that legend says was grown from a thorn from Christ’s crown of thorns brought to Glastonbury by Joseph of Arimathea.
I walked the length of Holy Thorn Lane, but failed to find the thorn bush itself or the site of the former Glastonbury Cottages. I shall have to return to Shenley Church End before Holy Week and Good Friday to search for this link with the story of Christ’s Passion and Death and, supposedly, with the Pilgrim Fathers.
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