Patrick Comerford
I have been invited to speak in Stony Stratford Library later this month (25 February 2025) to speak about the Stony Stratford architect Edward Swinfen Harris (1841-1924), a significant figure in the Aesthetic Movement and the Arts and Crafts Movement.
Swinfen Harris was a long-standing friend of the architect Edward William Godwin (1833-1886), and his wider circle included William Butterfield, George Edmund Street and other leading Gothic Revival architects of the day. His works, mainly in the Arts and Crafts style, can be seen throughout Stony Stratford and many neighbouring towns in Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire.
Earlier this afternoon, I visited Lovat Bank on Silver Street in Newport Pagnell, an impressive house in the Domestic Revival style that is regarded as the chef d’oeuvre of Swinfen Harris. The house was built in 1877 for Frederick James Taylor, a chemist and member of the family of mustard and mineral water manufacturers in Newport Pagnell.
The site originally had workshops, barns and stables with light industries, including wool stapling or sorting wool into different grades or types. Frederick Taylor demolished the workshops and three cottages adjacent to the property in 1877 to build a lodging house, now Lovat Lodge.
Lovat Bank, which was designed by Swinfen Harris and built in 1877, is a two-storey house designed in the Domestic Revival style, with tall chimneys and pinnacles, mock Tudor beams, a metal weather, gabled dormers and attics. It is built in red brick, English bond, with some limestone dressings and some timber-framed upper floors with brick noggings and gables with plaster infill impressed with sunflower designs, and tiled roofs.
The front elevation has a brick and stone gothic porch with stone strings and hood, and an inner order on carved stone capitals. There is a recessed glazed timber door.
The entrance on the north side leads into the reception area and stair hall, with reception rooms on the south side, a service wing on the left beyond and a service stair in tower.
The stair tower rises from multiple chamfered brick offset courses. It is octagonal with decorative brick panels, returning to a circular shape before multiple out-setting courses below the eaves. The conical slate tower has decorative ironwork.
The first floor has a timber-framed bay, and there are simple sash windows under the near-flush pointed brick arches in the manner of William Butterfield (1814-1900), the Gothic Revival architect of the Oxford Movement whose work includes Keble College, Oxford, and All Saints’ Church, Margaret Street, in London.
The rear elevation of Lovat Bank has stone mullioned and dressed windows, and two gables, one framed, the other tile hung. Sunflowers, the symbol of the Aesthetic Movement, can be seen in one of rear glables
Inside, the house has a staircase with carved newels and turned balusters and there is similar turned baluster gallery overlooking the hall from the first floor. The house still has some of its original fireplaces.
Other interior features include Minton tiles, window box-seats, panelled doors, a gilded timber cornice in the dining room and a panelled ceiling on carved wall posts and corbels.
There are fine stained and painted glass windows, especially in the dining room, where four panels representing the Seasons are possibly by Nathaniel (NHJ) Westlake (1833-1921) of Lavers & Westlake. Westlake was a close associate of Swinfen Harris. They worked together on the memorial windows in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church in Stony Stratford and Westlake’s East Window (1888) dominates the chancel and Holy Trinity Church in Old Wolverton.
The original weather vane on the tower had the initials FJT. Other unusual features of the property include the bottles cemented into the wall motifs.
FJ Taylor was a member of the family known for Taylor’s Prepared Mustard. The family was at the heart of business life in Newport Pagnell for almost 200 years, beginning with William Taylor, a Berkshire-born businessman and chemist who moved to Newport Pagnell 200 years ago in 1825 and began running a business selling soda water.
William Taylor’s original premises were next to the old Fire Station at the top end of the High Street. He then moved to a new base and founded a factory in Union Street. Taylor’s mustard, the first ready prepared English mustard, went on sale in 1830.
William Taylor passed the business on to his sons, Thomas and Frederick James Taylor, in 1863 and the partnership thrived as T & FJ Taylor.
Thomas Taylor and his family lived at the Limes, an attractive red-brick house. Frederick Taylor bought workshops and premises in Silver Street, and Lovat Bank, designed by Edward Swinfen Harris, was built there in 1877. Lovat Bank became the family home of Frederick Taylor, his mother, and his three sisters, and the garden was said to be full of exotic plants and flowers.
Frederick Taylor was also the chief officer with the town’s fire brigade before retiring in 1891. The steamer fire engine, named Lovat after his family home, is now in the Transport Hall in the Milton Keynes Museum. He sponsored many annual social occasions in Newport Pagnell, financed many improvements to Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church, gave cash prizes for swimming competitions and handed out oranges to schoolchildren before their Christmas holidays.
He suffered from poor health for some time and died in March 1917. As a mark of respect, all businesses in the town suspended trading during his funeral. On the evening of his funeral a full muffled peal rang out from Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church.
The Taylor businesses, which included properties and a chemist shop, were inherited by Francis William Taylor, and then by Frederick Thomas Taylor and his wife Florence who lived in the Limes.
The Taylor family left Lovat Bank in 1957, and the family business was split in two: Frederick’s son Stephen took on the drinks and mustard operation; his sister Ann inherited several flats in the High Street, as well as the family pharmacy.
The drink side of the operation was merged with Aylesbury firm, North and Randle in the 1960s. Liquid production ceased in Newport Pagnell in 1981, and Stephen Taylor retired five years later, although mustard continued to be manufactured in Newport Pagnell until 1990. A fire destroyed the old Taylor’s Yard and its building on New Year’s Eve 2002, taking with it 170 years of history in the town.
As for Lovat Bank, it was used by the Territorial Army in the 1960s. Lovat Hall, which was built on the site of a Territorial Army depot, is now a Baptist Church. Lovat Bank was used by the local council for some years and is now private offices and consulting rooms.
Taylor’s Mustard is now made in Glasgow and the Taylor family no longer has a connection with Newport Pagnell. But several generations of the family are buried at the Taylor monument in the cemetery and the Old Mustard Mews in the town is a reminder of the business that began 200 years ago with the arrival of William Taylor in Newport Pagnell in 1825.
