Patrick Comerford
I am continuing to enjoy exploring the neighbouring villages and towns that are close to Stony Stratford, exploring their history and legacy, architecture and churches. One of the great gifts from the early town planners and architects who had a vision for Milton Keynes over half a century ago was that each satellite town or village should retain its own identity and character.
Some days I just hop on a bus at random to see where it brings me and to enjoy seeing the unexpected. Recent morning escapades have included Roade in Northamptonshire and Addington in Buckinghamshire, as I continue to search for houses designed by Stony Stratford’s great architect of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Edward Swinfen Harris.
One recent morning , after breakfast, I took the 33 bus from Wolverton to Northampton and hopped off at Hanslope. The village, with a Village Green and Village Pond, is about 6.4 km (4 miles) north of Stony Stratford, a similar distance from Newport Pagnell and about 13 km (8 miles) north of Central Milton Keynes. The northern parish boundary is part of the county boundary between Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire.
I particularly wanted to see the parish church in Hanslope, Saint James the Great, with its tall church spire which is the most prominent feature of the village. It is the tallest in Buckinghamshire and can be seen for many miles across the surrounding countryside. It was originally built in the early 15th century and was 61 metres (200 ft) high. It was struck by lightning in 1804 and collapsed in 1804 and it was rebuilt to the slightly lesser height of 57 metres (186 ft).
Hanslope probably takes its name from the Old English name for a slippery or muddy place belonging to Haema, or possibly ‘hemmed-in land at the slope’. This name has evolved over the centuries, and even in the 18th and 19th century, the variants in use included Anslapp, Hanslapp and Hanslape.
Hanslope Park, about half a mile south-east of the village, was once the manorial estate of the village. Hanslope was included in the grant of land to by William the Conqueror to Winemar of Flanders. It eventually passed by marriage to Maudit family, whose seat was at Hanslope Castle.
William Maudit built what is now the chancel of Saint James the Great Church. His son Robert Maudit sided with the barons against King John. When King John was in Northampton in 1215, he ordered Faulke de Breaute and his mercenaries to besiege and raze Hanslope Castle, and it was never rebuilt.
King John gave Hanslope Manor to Breaute and then to Hugh de Neville. Later, in 1217, Henry III gave to Henry de Brailof, but after he was attainted as a traitor Hanslope was restored to the Maudit family.
Hanslope was part of Salcey Forest in the Middle Ages and Hanslope Park was originally a mediaeval deer park. Before he died in 1222, Robert Maudit laid out a great park in the parish, and remnants of the park survive in Hanslope.
William Mauduit (1221-1268) eventually became the 8th Earl of Warwick in 1253 through an intricate line of descent, and the titles and estates then passed from his sister, Isabel Mauduit, to her son, William de Beauchamp (1237-1298), 9th Earl of Warwick.
The Earl of Warwick received a charter in 1293 for a weekly market in Hanslope on Thursdays and a three-day annual market on the eve, day and morrow of the feast of Saint James the Great (24, 25 and 26 July). This explains the name of Earl Row, off Market Square, running behind High Street and Gold Street.
The manor and titles continued to be held by successive Earls of Warwick in the Beauchamp family and for another 200 years or so. Richard Neville (1428-1471) became the 16th Earl of Warwick through marriage, and he is remembered ever since as Warwick the Kingmaker. He was the wealthiest and most powerful English lord of his day and one of the leading figures in the Wars of the Roses. He switched his allegiance during the wars, and was instrumental in deposing two kings, Henry VI and Edward IV.
Warwick the Kingmaker was killed in battle at Barnet in 1471, and Hanslope Manor was given to his son-in-law Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, later Richard III. After Richard was killed at Bosworth Field in 1485, Hanslope was restored to the Dowager Countess of Warwick. She surrendered Hanslope to the crown, and in 1550 it was granted to the future Queen Elizabeth I.
Hanslope Manor was one of the properties given in 1604 to the former Princess Anne of Denmark, after her husband became James I of England in 1603. Although she never lived there, it provided her with a private, personal income, and the lodge and barns were repaired in 1608.
Queen Anne died in 1619, and Hanslope Manor passed to her son, the future Charles I. His trustees leased it to Sir Kenelm Digby, John Digby and Isaac Penington, and Charles I later gave the manor to Admiral John Penington (1584-1646) in 1628.
The old manor house of Hanslope was fortified but appears to have been destroyed by fire. After the Caroline restoration, it passed to Sir Thomas Tyrell, a prominent judge, in 1663. The Tyrell family sold the manor in 1707 to Gervase Pierrepont (1649-1715), a grandson of Robert Pierrepont, 1st Earl of Kingston and MP for Appleby (1698-1705). He was given titles in the Irish and British peerages in 1702 and 1714, and when he died in 1715 the estate passed to his nephew Evelyn Pierrepont (1665-1726), Duke of Kingston.
Evelyn Pierrepont (1711-1773), 2nd and last Duke of Kingston, sold the manor in 1764 to William Watts, who had served in India under Clive as Governor of Fort William in Bengal. Watts had amassed a fortune and he was buying Hanslope Manor when he died in August 1764. The sale was completed on behalf of his son Edward Watts, who was born in Calcutta in 1752 and was still a minor.
The Watts family continued to live at Hanslope Manor for almost 200 years, and they commissioned Humphry Repton to landscape the estate grounds in the 1790s.
Edward Hanslope Watts married Sophia Edith Selby Lowndes of Bletchley, one of the ‘Eight Belles of Bletchley’, in 1868. Watts was shot and murdered by his gamekeeper William Farrow as he was on his way home from Saint James Church on Sunday 21 July 1912.
Auspiciously, the second reading that Sunday was from the Acts of the Apostles and included a reference to murderers. Watts was shot in the head and died immediately; Farrow then shot himself.
The widowed Sophia Watts lived on at Hanslope Park until she died in 1930. Her daughter Irene and husband Mark Poore took over until Mark Poore died in 1931. Irene remarried and her son Robert Poore-Watts sold Hanslope Park to the Hesketh Estates.
Hanslope Park was acquired by the War Office in 1941 and became the home of the Government Communications Centre. It provides electronics and software to support government communication needs and is closely linked with British intelligence agencies.
Hanslope has one grade I listed building, 33 grade II listed buildings, including the Methodist Chapel and the Gospel Hall, and one scheduled monument.
Other listed buildings include:
• Green Manor on Market Square: once a pub known as the Green Man Inn, and now a private house.
• Stafford House: built in the 17th century and named after Sir Robert Stafford and Lady Jane Stafford, became a workhouse supported financially by Lady Pierrepont.
• Maltings Farmhouse: one of the oldest houses in the village, with the date 1624 set in stone on the façade.
• Silent Night Cottage and Christmas Cottage: a pair of symmetrical thatched cottages on Gold Street with an interesting pair of names and dating from the late 17th or early 18th century. They were originally approached from High Street along a long path between the gardens that are now part of the Cock Inn. The houses have been turned around so that their main entrance is on Gold Street.
• Horseshoe Cottages, with a thatched roof and gentle curve, once a terrace of four cottages built in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The Watts Arms at the north end of the High Street, was built ca 1820, and was first licensed in 1821. It was owned by the Watts family and probably replaced the Royal Oak at the other end of the High Street, demolished in 1819.
In a prize fight at Salcey Green on 2 June 1830, Alexander McKay (1804-1830), the champion of Scotland, fought Simon Byrne (1806-1833), an Irishman known as ‘The Emerald Gem’, at Salcey Green. The fight went on for 47 rounds, McKay was defeated and he was taken to the Watts Arms, where he died the next day.
His grave in Hanslope churchyard has an epitaph with a telling lesson in rhyme:
Strong and athletic was my frame,
far from my native home I came
and bravely fought with Simon Byrne
alas, but never to return.
Stranger take warning from my fate,
lest you should rue your case too late.
If you have ever fought before,
determine now to tight no more.
Simon Byrne was arrested some days later catching the boat from Liverpool to Dublin and charged with McKay’s murder. At his trial in Buckingham, Byrne was defended by three barristers and five solicitors. The jury took 10 minutes to return a verdict of Not Guilty.
But Byrne’s triumph was short-lived. Three years later, he fought James ‘Deaf’ Burke in a fight that went 99 rounds and lasted three hours and 16 minutes. Byrne died three days later after the longest recorded prize fight. Today, the village sign includes a depiction of McKay, poised for a bareknuckle fight.
Other distinguished residents of Hanslope include the clockmaker Joseph Knibb (1640-1711), who retired from London to Hanslope in 1697. He acquired Green End Farm and continued to make clocks in Hanslope. Green End Farmhouse was a scheduled monument, but was demolished in 1954.
Walter Drawbridge Crick (1857-1903) from Hanslope was an amateur geologist and palaeontologist who published with Charles Darwin. Crick was born at Pinion End Farm in Hanslope on 15 December 1857, and first went into business in Northampton as a shoemaker. He corresponded with Darwin in the 1880s, and their letters are part of the Darwin Correspondence Project.
He was the grandfather of the Cambridge Nobel molecular geneticist Francis Crick (1916-2004). Alongside James Watson, Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins, Crick played a crucial role in deciphering the helical structure of the DNA molecule.
Hanslope has been part of Milton Keynes since 1973 and is in the Milton Keynes North constituency. It won the title of ‘Best Kept Village in Buckinghamshire’ in 2016.
The West Coast Main Line between Euston and Glasgow passes about 1.6 km (1 mile) west of Hanslope. But there are no train stations at Castlethrope, Hanslope or Roade, and the stations nearest to Hanslope are Wolverton and Milton Keynes Central.
There are many other attractive villages that I have been visiting these weeks, including Castlethorpe, Addington and Padbury, and I realise there are so many more to visit and to explore. Meanwhile, more about Saint James the Great Church in Hanslope and its tall spire, and about the chapels in Hanslope in the days to come, hopefully.
