Patrick Comerford
When I was back in Tamworth last week, speaking at a family commemoration in the Comberford Chapel in Saint Editha’s Church, I had a few hours for a long walk in the countryside in Comberford.
But I also revisited or saw again some of the interesting historical buildings in Tamworth, including Tamworth Castle, the Assembly Rooms in Corporation Street, the Town Hall on Market Street, the Moat House, the former Comberford family Jacobean town house on Lichfield Street, the former Peel School, nearby, the now-closed Castle Hotel, Lady Bridge, and some of the other buildings associated the Peel family.
Putting aside the Peel families and the families who successively owned Tamworth Castle and the Moat House, the town’s most generous benefactor and philanthropist was Thomas Guy (1644-1724), a former MP for Tamworth who is generally remembered as the founder of Guy’s Hospital in London.
Thomas Guy’s generosity is still to be seen throughout Tamworth: he founded Guy’s Almshouse on Lower Gungate, rebuilt the Free Grammar School across the street where he had once been a schoolboy, and funded building the Town Hall on Market Street. I am also interested in his family connections with Comberford through his mother’s uncle.
Guy’s Almshouse on Lower Gungate, is one of the most interesting buildings architecturally in the centre of Tamworth. The almshouses were established in the 17th century by Thomas Guy. Guy’s original buildings dated from 1678 when he drew up plans for a block of almshouses for the maintenance of 14 old women, who received 4s 6d a week, with lodgings, coal, medical attendance and medicine.
Thomas Guy was born in 1644 in Pritchard’s Alley in Fair Street, Southwark. His father, also Thomas Guy, was a lighterman, coalmonger and carpenter with a wharf on the banks of the River Thames. His mother, Ann Vaughton, was originally from Tamworth; she was the daughter of William Vaughton of Tamworth, a member of a very influential family.
For generations, members of the Vaughton family had been bailiffs, burgesses and church wardens in the ancient borough of Tamworth and in Saint Editha’s Church. After Lichfield was captured by the parliamentary forces on Sunday 5 March 1643, two people from Comberford died as they fought on the Parliamentarian side: Richard Vaughton of Comberford was killed as he was building a trench on the west side of Lichfield, outside the Cathedral Close, and he was buried in Saint Editha’s Church, Tamworth, on 21 March 1643; Thomas Riccard of Comberford was slain in the Cathedral Close. This Richard Vaughton appears to have been an uncle of Thomas Guy’s mother, Anne Vaughton of Tamworth.
Guy’s father died when the boy was only eight, and his mother then brought him to Tamworth, her home town, along with his younger brother and sister. Thomas was sent to school at the Free Grammar School, then in Lower Gungate.
Thomas Guy returned to London in 1660 when he was 16 to be apprenticed to John Clark, a bookbinder and bookseller in Cheapside. After the restoration of King Charles II in 1660, London was an exciting place. But Guy soon realised that life was difficult for those who were poor or sick, or living in crowded conditions.
Meanwhile, back in Tamworth on 18 June 1661, his widowed mother married Joseph Seeley of Coventry in Saint Editha’s Church, and the couple probably continued to live in Tamworth.
After finishing his apprenticeship in London, Guy started his own small publishing house. The Bible and Oxford University proved to be the mainstays of his business, and he was soon elected a Freeman of the Stationers’ Company and an Alderman of the City of London.
But, as he prospered, Thomas Guy did not forget Tamworth, where he had grown up, or his extended family there – the Ortons, the Woods, the Vaughtons and the Osbornes.
Guy paid for the refurbishment of Tamworth’s Free Grammar School in 1677, and a year later, in 1678, he bought land across the street from the Grammar School. The site on Lower Gungate had been the site of the guildhall of the Guild of Saint George, and there Guy built his almshouses for poor women, with generous provisions for the residents.
The original almshouses were built in 1678 at a cost of £200 and provided housing for seven poor women. Each resident had her own entrance and living room and the large central garden was used to cultivate vegetables. A large library also housed the books of the Revd John Rawlett. The almshouses were extended in 1692 to house men as well as women.
Thomas Guy first stood for election in Tamworth in 1690, but was beaten into third place behind Sir Henry Gough and Michael Biddulph. At his second attempt in 1695, he was returned as an MP with Sir Henry Gough without opposition, and Guy was elected MP for Tamworth six times.
Guy paid to build a new Town Hall in Market Street in 1701, and it was completed in 1702. The new town hall consisted of one large room supported by three rows of large pillars of stone with semi-circular arches, each row containing six pillars.
The entrance of the room stood at the east end of the hall and the space below was to be used to hold the weekly market. In the centre of the roof was a large wooden glaze lantern with a weather-fane, leading out upon a platform guarded by a wooden balustrade.
But when Guy lost his seat as an MP, he was deeply hurt at being rejected by his own people. He abandoned his plans to build a hospital in Tamworth, either on Albert Road or on Lichfield Street, and he moved his large fortune to London, where he founded what would become Guy’s Hospital.
A dejected Thomas Guy also threatened to pull down the town hall he had built in Tamworth and to abolish the almshouses. The burgesses sent a deputation to meet him in London with the offer of re-election in 1710, but Guy rejected all conciliation, saying Tamworth had been ungrateful to him.
He now abandoned all political ambitions and concentrated on making money to finance his philanthropic deeds in London. He died over 300 years ago, on 27 December 1724 at the age of 80, without ever seeing the completion of Guy’s Hospital in London, which opened in 1725.
Thoas Guy was buried in a vault in Saint Thomas’s Church, Southwark, but his body was moved to the chapel of Guy’s Hospital in September 1780, when the chapel was finally built. He never married and left his fortune to Guy’s Hospital.
Even on his deathbed, the rejection he felt in Tamworth still continued to hurt Guy. He stipulated in his will that inhabitants of Tamworth should not be allowed be accommodated in his almshouses. Only his own relatives, together with poor people from the hamlets of Wilnecote, Glascote, Bolehall, Amington, Wigginton and Hopwas – all areas that voted for him – were to become residents; Comberford is within the parish of Wigginton and Hopwas.
Meanwhile, the exterior steps on the town hall built by Thomas Guy were demolished in 1771 and two rooms were added to the rear on the east side. These were replaced in turn in 1811 by two larger rooms, funded in part by the first Sir Robert Peel.
The turret in the centre of the roof was another later addition to the building. The domed cupola with ornate iron weathervane once housed a lantern and also contained a bell to summon fireman. The louvered side of the turret indicate it may once have been used as a pigeon loft.
The clock on the front of the Town Hall was presented to the town in 1812 by John Robins, a London auctioneer claimed Tamworth Castle and the Moat House in lengthy legal proceedings over debts owed to him by the 2nd Marquis Townshend, who died in 1811. Robins moved into Tamworth Castle in 1821, and almost immediately sold the Moat House to Alice Woody and her son Dr Robert Woody.
In time, Guy’s original almshouse fell into disrepair and the trustees decided it should be replaced. The original buildings were demolished in the early 20th century, and the present buildings were built on the same site.
In 1912, the old residents were moved temporarily to The Paddock – the Jennings family house in nearby Aldergate, later the site of the bus garage. The new almshouses were built at a cost of between £5,000 and £6,000, and opened within a year, in 1913.
The old tablet from Guy’s original building, with an inscription about the foundation, was placed above the main entrance to the new almshouses building. The stone plaque recalls Guy’s pique and original restrictions, declaring: ‘Guy’s Almshouses for relations or Hamleteers.’ This restriction still applies in relation to the boundaries of the borough, as they existed in his day.
