28 August 2024

Eaton Socon and
Eaton Ford, former
Bedford villages now
part of Cambridgeshire

Eaton Socon and Eaton Ford … two villages on the fringes of St Neots … once in Bedfordshire, they are now part of Cambridgeshire (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

As a child and teenager in the 1960s, I thought Eaton Square, near my grandmother’s house in Terenure, and Eaton Square in London, were both misspelled – we even joked about the misspelling being a proper ‘Eaton Mess.’

Eaton was also the name of a shop in Terenure, and recently became the clever name of a restaurant in the heart of the south Dublin suburban village.

Of course, both Eaton Squares take their names from Eaton Hall, the country house of the Duke of Westminster near Chester. But last week, after visiting St Neots in Cambridgeshire, I found myself in the twin villages of Eaton Ford and Eaton Socon, once rural villages in Bedfordshire, but now neighbouring suburban, residential areas of St Neots, close to the banks of the River Great Ouse and Riverside Park.

Both Eaton Socon and Eaton Ford were once part of Bedfordshire. But they were incorporated into St Neots in 1965 and were transferred to Huntingdonshire. Huntingdonshire, in turn, was abolished as a county in 1974, and since then Eaton Socon and Eaton Ford been part of Cambridgeshire.

Saint Mary’s Church in Eaton Socon was built in the 14th century and was rebuilt in 1930-1932 after a devastating fire in 1930 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Eaton Socon has a conservation area and the listed buildings include some thatched cottages.

Small settlements grew up on the west side of the River Great Ouse in Anglo-Saxon times. A small village near the water’s edge was called Ea-tun, meaning waterside-village, while a smaller settlement to the northwas known as Forda, later simply Ford.

In time, Ea-tun became Eaton, and as part of a soke or local administrative unit, it became Eaton Socon, while the village at the important ford to the north became Eaton Ford.

A thatched cottage in the conservation area in Eaton Socon (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The monastic foundation at Eynesbury, with relics of Saint Neot attracted pilgrims and visitors, making the ford at Eaton an important river crossing, and slowly the name Eaton Ford came to be used.

The first bridge across the River Great Ouse at St Neots was probably built in the 11th or 12th century to bring traders and pilgrims into the market place established by the monks of St Neots Priory. The old bridge had 72 arches, was 704 ft long and 7 ft 6 in wide. A new town bridge with masonry piers was built in 1588.

The river formed the boundary between Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire, and both counties contributed to the costs and labour.

The town bridge was replaced again, probably in 1617. The River Ouse (Bedfordshire) Navigation Act in 1670 enabled improvements to the River Ouse so that the river was navigable as far as Bedford.

The bridge was widened in the 19th century and the old stone bridge survived well into the 20th century, until the present bridge was built in 1964.

The east end of Saint Mary’s Church in Eaton Socon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Ulmar was the local landholder at Eaton at the time of the Norman Conquest. The manor of Eaton was allocated at first to Lisois de Moutiers, but by the time of the Domesday Book in 1086 it had been transferred to Eudo Dapifer, a steward in the royal household, who held Eaton Socon ‘with the Manors of Wyboston and Sudbury’.

William of Colmworth and a group of monks not affiliated to any particular order were given a site at Bushmead by Hugh de Beauchamp ca 1195. This became an Augustinian priory after 1215, but it never rivalled the prestige of St Neot’s Priory.

Hugh de Beauchamp built a castle in Eaton Socon ca 1140. The castle may have been demolished when Henry II succeeded in 1154, and the earth mound is known today as the Hillings.

In time, the area became known as Soka de Eton by 1247. It was known as Eton cum Soca in 1645, and it had become Eaton Socon in the 19th century.

Eaton Socon, often known as ‘Eaton Town’ or ‘Eaton’, was the main settlement in the Parish of Eaton Socon. The parish was once the largest in Bedfordshire and included many hamlets such as Wyboston, Duloe, Staploe, Bushmead, Basmead, Honeydon, Bergwary, Tythe, Goodwick, Eaton Ford, Cross Hall, Cross Hall Ford and other vanished hamlets.

The Waggon and Horses in Eaton Socon … Eaton Socon was a major stop for stagecoaches on the journey from London to the North in the 18th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

In the days of stagecoach travel, Eaton Socon became a major stop on the journey from London to the North in the 18th century, with inns providing refreshments and overnight accommodation for travellers, and feed and rest facilities for horses.

The inns included the White Horse pub, dating from the 13th century, the Waggon and Horses and the Cock Inn.

By 1754, coaches were travelling from London as far as Edinburgh. At the height of stagecoach activity, 20 coaches were passing through Eaton Socon daily, collecting mail and passengers and changing horses.

In Charles Dickens’s novel Nicolas Nickleby, Squeers and some boys are making their way from London to Yorkshire by stagecoach, and stop at Eton Slocomb, evidently a pseudonym for Eaton Socon. The reference is noted on a blue plaque on the White Horse Public House in Eaton Socon.

The south side of Saint Mary’s Church in Eaton Socon … rebuilt after a devastating fire in 1930 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The parish church of Saint Mary the Virgin stands on the green in the centre of Eaton Socon. Saint Mary’s was built in the 14th century and enlarged and completed in the 15th century. It was once famed for its poppy headed pew ends.

Saint Mary’s Church was substantially destroyed by a fire on 8 February 1930. Most of the timber and the six bells were destroyed, and the north wall collapsed the following afternoon. The tower was restored, the church was rebuilt, and a new altar was made from a slab of Derbyshire stone, weighing 600 kg.

The reconstruction was designed by the architect Albert Richardson, using local craftsmen. The chancel suffered least and its delicate perpendicular windows were repaired. The rebuilding included a rood screen, choir benches, parclose screens, roofing, and the organ case, all in Suffolk oak.

The stone carving includes many symbolical corbel groups and portraits. Among the faces are those of the Bishop of St Albans, the Archdeacon of Bedford, the Vicar of Eaton Socon, the churchwardens, the architect, the clerk of the works, and the builders’ foreman. After rebuilding, the church was rededicated in 1932.

Manor Cottage is a surviving part of the Manor House … the Cock Inn was renamed the Manor House but was demolished in the 1960s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The railways brought an end to the stagecoach trade. The Cock Inn stood to the north of Eaton Socon Green, between the church and the corner of Peppercorn Lane. It was a large, elegant building of brick with a clay-tiled roof, and double bay windows, and was a large well-known coaching inn on the Great North Road.

A large cookery book was produced by the proprietors in 1830, and it is said Princess Victoria, later Queen Victoria, visited the Cock Inn in the 1830s.

The Cock Inn was later renamed the Manor House. Most of it was demolished in the 1960s and redeveloped in the 1960s as Manor House Close, although Manor Cottage, once part of the house, remains on the corner of Peppercorn Lane, leading to the local cricket club.

The former Eaton Socon Academy on Peppercorn Lane(Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

A large house on Peppercorn Lane was the Eaton Socon Academy in the 19th century. Later it was a private house and then a glove factory, then offices and a music centre. It has since been converted into private housing.

Eaton Socon, on the west side of St Neots, and between the River Great Ouse and the A1, has a population of over 9,000. The Little End Industrial Estate and the Quora Industrial Estate in Eaton Socon have a range of light industrial units.

Ford House is said to be the oldest building in Eaton Ford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Eaton Ford was once a small hamlet and an extension of Eaton Socon. By the 1500s, it had several timber-framed houses, including some built with stone from Saint Neot’s Priory after its dissolution during the Tudor Reformation.

Ford House was one of those timber-framed houses, and today it is said to be the oldest building in Eaton Ford. At the time of the Enclosure Act in 1799, it was described as the Mansion House and it was owned by George James Gorham, who founded St Neots Bank.

Ford House was a boys’ boarding school in the 1850s and the 1860s, and the Addington family lived there from the 1890s to the 1920s. During their time, wooden panelling from Netherstead Priory was installed in the house.

The Barley Mow in Eaton Ford was built in 1830, and was run for generation by the Osborne family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Barley Mow was built in 1830, and the public house was run by the Osborne family from the mid-1830s until 1915. They strongly influenced the development of Eaton Ford.

Eaton Ford expanded quickly under the London overspill programme in the 1960s, and was separated from Eaton Socon in 1963.

Much of the housing in Eaton Ford dates from the period of London overspill from the 1960s on. Today, Eaton Ford stands by the River Great Ouse and its facilities include the Riverside Park, St Neots Golf Club and the marina. It still has the feeling of a village, with its village green, village pub – the Barley Mow – and little or no industry.

The Chequers was a public house in Eaton Ford from the 1820s to 1911, and was run for generation by the Osborne family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2024:
110, Wednesday 28 August 2024

‘For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful’ (Matthew 23: 27) … the Tomb of Amyntas, carved into the rock face in the cliffs above Fethiye in south-west Turkey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began on Sunday with the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XIII). The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Augustine (430), Bishop of Hippo, Teacher of the Faith.

Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful’ (Matthew 23: 27) … the ‘King’s Tomb’ has become a symbol of Kaş in southern Turkey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 23: 27-32 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 27 ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. 28 So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

29 ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, 30 and you say, “If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.” 31 Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of your ancestors.’

‘For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful’ (Matthew 23: 27) … a damaged sarcophagus by the harbour in Kaş, without any sign or marking (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

In the Beatitudes at the beginning of Saint Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says eight groups of people are blessed: ‘the poor in spirit … those who mourn … the meek … those who hunger and thirst for righteousness … the merciful … the pure in heart … the peacemakers … those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness …’ (Matthew 5: 3-10).

Now, as we come close to the end of this Gospel, we have seven groups of people who are condemned as hypocrites and against whom Jesus pronounces seven woes.

In the Gospel reading on Monday (Matthew 23: 13-22), we heard the first three of these seven woes: woe to you who ‘lock people out of the kingdom of heaven’ (13) … who ‘make the new convert twice as much a child of hell’ (15) … and ‘blind guides’ who swear by the ‘gold of the sanctuary’ (16-22).

We then heard two further woes yesterday (Matthew 23: 23-26): for those who tithe mint, dill, and cummin but neglect the weightier matters of justice, mercy and faith; and these who care about the details of domestic purity but neglect the cleanliness of their hearts and inner thoughts.

Now, we hear the final of the seven woes today (Matthew 23: 27-32): a double woe on those who on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

A ‘woe’ is an exclamation of grief, similar to what is expressed by the word alas. In pronouncing woes, Jesus is prophesying judgment on the religious leaders of the day for their hypocrisy. He calls them hypocrites, blind guides, snakes and a ‘brood of vipers’.

Before Jesus condemns the hypocrisy of religious leaders, they have been following him to test him and try to trick him with questions about divorce (Matthew 19: 3), his authority (Matthew 21: 23), paying taxes to Caesar (Matthew 22: 17), the resurrection (Matthew 22: 23), and the greatest commandment of the law (Matthew 22: 36).

Jesus prefaces his seven woes by explaining to the disciples that they should obey the teachings of the religious leaders – as they teach the law of God – but not to emulate their behaviour because they do not practice what they preach (Matthew 23: 3).

In the third grouping of these woes, which we read today, we hear the final of the seven woes: a double woe on those who on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness (Matthew 23: 27-32).

In the sixth woe, Jesus compares the religious leader of the day to ‘whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth’ (verse 27).

The rotting corpse inside a tomb is like the hypocrisy and lawlessness in the hearts of these particular scribes and Pharisees. They appear righteous on the outside, but they are just beautified tombs, for inwardly they are spiritually dead.

The phrase ‘whited sepulchres’ (‘whitewashed tombs’ in the NRSV translations) is one of those phrases that have found their way into everyday English through the King James Version. The tombs in Jesus’ time were very different. The caves used for tombs were regularly painted or washed white with lime to look clean on the outside, but the inside was very plain, undecorated, just holding the body of the dead person. Behind the attractive exteriors were rotting corpses, as unclean as anything a faithful Jew could imagine.

The setting for this reading is Passover week. It was customary in the preceding month of Adar to renew the whitewashing on tombs in order to mark them clearly so that pious people who were on their way to Jerusalem for the Passover would not accidentally defile themselves by touching a place where dead bodies were buried. Someone who unwittingly stepped on a grave became ritually unclean. Whitewashing made the tombs more visible, especially in the dark.

In other words, whitewashing was not a mark of beauty; it was a warning of uncleanness – of being dead to humanity and dead before God.

This mention of tombs leads Jesus in the seventh woe to comment on the pride the religious leader of the day take in the tombs built in memory of the prophets and other holy people.

Jesus accuses them of hypocrisy in erecting these monuments and decorate the tombs of the prophets of old. He says the slain prophets had been killed by the ancestors of the religious leaders, Pharisees, who imagined themselves much better than their fathers. He puts words into their mouths, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets’ (verse 30). But in saying things like that, they acknowledge their own background. Jesus says they have inherited their ancestors’ wickedness and are following in their steps.

Is Jesus implying here is that while these religious leaders pretended to revere the prophets of old, they are persecuting the prophetic people of their own day?

We have whole groups of such people who are active in the Church today, offering ‘alternative’ leadership. They claim to know Anglicanism better than the Archbishop of Canterbury and deplore the ‘heresies’ of Anglicans who engaged with the Living in Love and Faith process, forming their own, self-selecting elitist groups and afraid of being contaminated not only by the world, but even by other Anglicans, demanding their own, parallel church structures and ministries.

The seven woes in Matthew 23 are dire warnings to the religious leaders of the day. But they also serve to warn us against religious hypocrisy today. We are called to true godliness, sincere love, and enduring faith. Pretension, affectation, and hypocrisy only lead to woe.

‘For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful’ (Matthew 23: 27) … a graveyard in Koutouloufári in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 28 August 2024):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is the ‘Theological Education Executive Leadership Programme in Africa.’ The course is expected to start in August 2024 and run until December 2025, and this theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update from Fran Mate, Regional Manager Africa, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 28 August 2024) invites us to pray:

Lord, we pray for the revival of theological education across the seven provinces in Africa. Grant wisdom to all who are involved in the work to make this happen.

The Collect:

Merciful Lord,
who turned Augustine from his sins
to be a faithful bishop and teacher:
grant that we may follow him in penitence and discipline
till our restless hearts find their rest in you;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

God of truth,
whose Wisdom set her table
and invited us to eat the bread and drink the wine
of the kingdom:
help us to lay aside all foolishness
and to live and walk in the way of insight,
that we may come with Augustine to the eternal feast of heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

‘For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful’ (Matthew 23: 27) … the Lycian rock tombs in the cliff faces above Fethiye in Turkey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Saint Augustine depicted in a stained glass window by George W Walsh in Saint Augustine’s Church, Galway … Saint Augustine is commemorated on 28 August (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)