Patrick Comerford
I was in Newport Pagnell at the end of last week, searching for more examples of the architectural legacy of Edward Swinfen (1841-1924), the Stony Stratford-born architect.
His work in Newport Pagnell includes Lovat Bank on Silver Street (1876-1877), designed for FJ Taylor of Taylor’s Prepared Mustard fame; probably Lovat Lodge, beside Lovat Bank; his alterations to Tickford Abbey in the late 19th century; and the former Bassett’s Bank, now the Post Office on High Street.
But this legacy extends further, to Queen Anne’s Almshouses, a Grade II listed set of buildings on Saint John Street, close to Tickford Street and the River Ouzel. The five almshouses were refurbished and rebuilt in 1891 to designs by the architect Ernest Taylor, a former assistant of Edward Swinfen Harris.
The buildings include a low single-storey wing, containing Nos 34, 36 and 38, which are set back behind a wall on the street line, and a two-storey cross-wing at left or south end, containing Nos 40 and 42. They are built in red brick in Flemish bond with close-studded timber-framing and with a plastered infill to the first floor.
The most interesting part of the almshouses is the two-storey cross-wing, which has a battered base and an end buttress. The upper floor is jettied, carried on timber brackets on stone corbels, and has a deep pulvinated fascia and moulded plasterwork in the lower panels of the timber framing, and a four-light paned window.
Above, a shallow jettied bressumer carries the studded gable end. It has a moulded bargeboards. A painted board applied to the lower panels of the upper floor reads, in dubious period English:
Al yov Christians that here dooe pas
by give soome thing to these poore people
that in St John Hospital doeth ly. AD 1615.
To either side of this painted boars are small slate panels set in the moulded plaster that record the foundations and the periods of rebuilding, its dedication to the people of the town from Queen Anne, wife of James I, and signed in 1891 by the vicar and churchwardens, by the master, the Revd Charles McMahon Ottley, and the governors. The buildings also have a continuous open raised cloister walk.
The Hospital of Saint John Baptist was said to have been founded by John de Somery. The ‘New Hospital’ is first mentioned in a will in 1240. An inquisition of 1245 alludes to the Master of the Hospital of Saint John Baptist among the tenants of Roger de Somery.
Until 1275, the hospital had a master, brethren and sisters. Letters of protection were granted in that year to a master and brethren only. By 1287, the dedication was said to be to Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist. There are references again to a master, brethren and sisters by 1329.
Indulgences were granted to people who contributed to the maintenance of the house in 1301 and 1336. In 1332, the brethren received a licence from the king to collect alms once a year. In 1336 it was stated that the master and brethren had become quite dependent on charity.
From 1387 on, the masters were instituted to the ‘free chapel or hospital’ of Saint John Baptist and Saint John Evangelist.
During the Tudor Reformation, at the Suppression of the Chantries and Hospitals, the commissioners stated that the original intent of the foundation was unknown. The house was down, the chapel sore in decay, and no hospitality had been kept for 16 years. The incumbent was ‘of honest understanding,’ but non-resident.
The hospital or almshouses was re-founded in 1615 for elderly and poor persons of the town, by deed of a charter granted by James I. The charter also changed the name to Queen Anne’s Hospital.
The hospital was rebuilt in 1825, and again in 1891 to the designs of Ernest Taylor, who had once worked with Swinfen Harris. His other works in Newport Pagnell include designing the reredos in Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church.
The Revd Charles McMahon Ottley (1841-1914), who is named on the façade of the almshouse, was born in Preston, Lancashire, to Irish parents, to Charles Saxton Ottley (1814-1862) and Kate (McMahon) Ottley. His Dublin-born father was an engineer working with the Irish Board of Works on drainage schemes, and also worked in England. The family soon returned to Dublin, and lived on Lansdowne Road, Ballsbridge.
The younger Charles Ottley was educated at Trinity College Dublin (BA 1865, MA 1875), and Cuddeston Theological College, Oxford. He was ordained priest in 1865 and was the curate in Fenny Stratford, Buckinghamshire (1865-1868), in Aylesbury (1868-1873), where his widowed mother Kate and sister Mary Adelaide came to live with him, and in Upminster (1873-1875), then in Essex. He became the Vicar of Newport Pagnell in 1875.
Ottley’s parishioners called him ‘the Good Shepherd’, and remained there for 29 years until 1904. He never married and his mother and sister continued to live with him. His mother died in 1876. He moved to Stockcross in Berkshire in 1904 when he was 64. Ottley never got over the death of his sister Mary in 1907 and retired in 1912 due to ill health. He died in Newbury in 1914 and was buried with his sister.
To this day, the Vicar of Newport Pagnell is also the Master of Queen Anne’s Hospital.
Further reading:
FW Bull, A History of Newport Pagnell (1900), p 228.
Nikolaus Pevsner and Elizabeth Williamson, Buckinghamshire, Buildings of England Series ( 2nd ed, 1994), p 579.
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