Patrick Comerford
On my way back to Stony Stratford from Towcester earlier this week, I stopped off in the village of Deanshanger to see Holy Trinity Church on Wicken Road. Deanshanger in West Northamptonshire is 8 km (5 miles) north-west of Milton Keynes and a short two-mile walk west of Stony Stratford.
Deanshanger is off the A422 road from Stony Stratford and Old Stratford to Buckingham, which once ran through the village. The original population centre of the parish was in the hamlet of Passenham. However, from the late 18th century the coming of the Grand Union Canal to the east made Deanshanger an agricultural industrial centre and it grew quickly.
This growth increasedwith the arrival of the London and Birmingham Railway in the 19th century, passing through nearby Wolverton, Bletchley and Roade. Today, Deanshanger and the neighbouring village of Puxley have a total population of about 4,000 people.
Deanshanger used to be called Daneshanger, meaning a clearing in the woods where the Danes lived. A manor at Deanshanger is mentioned in 1299. This does not necessarily establish the existence of a manorial building, but a house existed in the 14th century on the site of Dove House, and may have been once called ‘Duffus’ or Food Hall.
It is said locally that house was a monastery and was visited by Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury (1162-1170), during a dispute with Henry II. He also stayed at Dagnall Farm, half a mile outside the village on of the Wicken Road, then called Dragon’s Hold. Legend says an underground tunnel connected both buildings.
Although he was disguised as a peasant during his stay, he was recognised by a farm labourer who pleaded with the fleeing archbishop to perform a miracle producing clean water. It is one of 703 miracles said to have led to his canonisation.
Mediaeval Deanshanger had no parish church of its own, but much of the land there was owned in the Middle Ages by the Knights Hospitaller and the Benedictines of Snelshall Priory, near Tattenhoe.
The Preceptory of the Knights Hospitaller at Dingley had lands in Passenham and Deanshanger from the end of the 12th century. Snelshall Priory, near Tattenhoe, was granted lands and rents in Passenham, Deanshanger and Wicken in the mid-13th century.
Edward II granted the manor of Deanshanger to John de Haustede and his heirs in 1307, along with part of the wood in Whittlewood and all the lands, rents and fees in Wick Dive, Wick Hamon, Passenham, Stony Stratford, Furtho, Puxley and Whitfield.
After Snelshall Priory was dissolved during the Tudor Reformation, the priory estate was granted in 1540 to John Josselyn and Anne his wife.
When Queen Mary tried to re-establish the Hospitallers in 1558, the order’s possessions in Passenham and the rent from the Church House in Deanshanger were held by Roger Palmer. The premises were part of the sale of the Manor of Deanshanger to Henry Best and Robert Holland in 1599.
Much of the land in Deanshanger eventually passed to Robert Lord Spencer, who already owned the former Snelshall lands in Deanshanger and the adjoining Manor of Wicken. Dovehouse Farm is the former capital messuage of the Manor of Deanshanger.
Sir Ralph Winwood, principal secretary to King James I, bought the manor and may have replaced the earlier manor house with the present cruciform building known as Dove House.
The Manor of Deanshanger was bought by William Carpenter in 1617. However, over the years, its ‘Manor’ status was forgotten and in his will Carpenter described it as a ‘farmhouse’. The manor passed to the Palmer family in the 17th century, and through them to the Whalley family. They sold it to the Gurney family, and it was later bought by the Kendall family and then in 1877 by Lord Penrhyn.
The Manor Farm House is a 17th century house, re-fronted and remodelled in the 18th and 19th centuries. By 1878, it was called Deanshanger House and some years later it became known as Manor House.
The main industry in the village from the 1820s was an iron foundry and later an iron oxide works, making pigment for paint. The works closed in 1999 and were demolished. The amenities in Deanshanger today include a village hall and community centre, a post office, a pub (the Bee Hive), a sports and social club and a Conservative club. The parish council has offices in a former school and Baptist chapel that was renovated in 2008.
The first school in Deanshanger opened in 1833 in a former Baptist chapel. A new village school opened in 1858 for children up to the age of 13, and a secondary school opened in 1958. Deanshanger School was later renamed Kingsbrook School. When it merged with former Roade school in 2011, it was renamed the Elizabeth Woodville School. The school grounds include the site of a Roman villa that has not yet been excavated.
The village includes Holy Trinity Church, the Church of England parish church and a Methodist chapel and once had two Baptist chapels.
Holy Trinity Church, Deanshanger, is part of the Benefice of Passenham with Old Stratford and Deanshanger, in the Diocese of Peterborough and Towcester Deanery. The foundation stone was laid on 28 April 1853 and the building was consecrated on 9 November 1854.
Holy Trinity Church was designed by the London architect Benjamin Ferrey (1810-1880), who worked mainly in the Gothic Revival. Ferrey studied architecture in London under Augustus Charles Pugin (1762-1832), alongside Pugin’s son, Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852).
The total cost was nearly £2,500, considerably more than the £1,777 originally estimate. Over half the cost, almost £1,500, was given by the Revd Charles Perceval, the rector of the neighbouring parish of Calverton, Buckinghamshire.
The church was built in the Early English style with seating for 400 people. It was described at the time as ‘an excellent, though inexpensive, example of the small village church.’ It has a chancel, vestry, nave, north aisle and south porch. The three-bay chancel has a triple lancet east window.
Other features in the church include lancet windows, two-light windows with tracery, a double-chamfered door in the north-east with a hood mould, a double-chamfered south door with a hood mould, a gabled timber porch, a circular six-foiled window in the west gable and a bell-cote in the west gable, with three arches for bells.
Holy Trinity Church began with had a High Church tradition: incense was used at services, and the church had a Lady Altar and Stations of the Cross.
The organ was moved from the chancel in 1897 and placed in the vestry, and an arch was let into the wall between the chancel and the vestry. A new pulpit, designed by the Stony Stratford architect Edward Swinfen Harris, and seats were added to fill the gap in the chancel.
The stained glass east window was installed in 1906 to commemorate the golden jubilee of the opening of the church. Holy Trinity Church once had three bells, with a team of ringers.
Initially, Holy Trinity Church was as a ‘Chapel of Ease’. Until 1854, people in Deanshanger had to walk to Saint Guthlac’s Church, Passenham, to go to church. Baptisms, weddings and funerals continued to take places in Saint Guthlac’s Church, Passenham, until the 1940s and as a chapel of ease Holy Trinity was not licensed for baptisms until 1922 or to solemnise weddings until 1949.
The Revd George Marie Capell (1870-1915) is, to date, the longest serving Rector, and George Ostler was the organist for 40 years alongside him.
Holy Trinity Church has been a Grade II listed building since 1988, and there are Commonwealth War Graves and war memorials in the churchyard.
Today, the Revd James Pennington is the Rector of Passenham with Old Stratford and Deanshanger. The church labels itself HTD, perhaps in imitation of Holy Trinity Brompton, which is known as HTB. It says it is ‘a lively and growing village church where you’ll find a warm welcome and a congregation doing its best to follow a biblical pattern of contemporary worship.’
Sunday services at Holy Trinity Church at 11 am are: Holy Communion (first, third and fifth Sundays); Morning Worship (second Sundays); and Family Service (fourth Sunday). Refreshments are served from 10:30.
There is a more traditional service of Holy Communion in Saint Guthlac’s Church, Passenham, on the second and fourth Sundays.
The village of Old Stratford has no church, but an evening service is held at 6:30 pm on the first and third Sundays in the Memorial Hall, Old Stratford, led by the team from Holy Trinity Church, Deanshanger, and Saint Guthlac’s Church, Passenham.
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