Patrick Comerford
As I continue my ‘field trips’ in search of buildings in this area designed by the Stony Stratford architect Edward Swinfen Harris (1841-1924), I visited the small village of Maids Moreton earlier this week.
In recent weeks, these ‘field trips’ have taken me to Roade in Northamptonshire, where Swinfen Harris designed Tylecote House (1894) for a local GP, Dr O’Ryan; Addington, outside Winslow, where he designed the Old School House (1876); and Buckingham, where the U3A (University of the Third Age) Architecture Group invited me to speak in Buckingham Library about his life and work (11 September 2025).
In Maids Moreton, the Uthwatt family commissioned Swinfen Harris to rebuild the Old Rectory (1878-1879) beside Saint Edmund’s Church, the oldest building in the village.
Maids Moreton is about a mile (1.6 km) north-east of Buckingham, on top of a plateau overlooking Buckingham, at the north end of the Vale of Aylesbury. The historic core of the village is concentrated along three principal streets: Duck Lake and Towcester Road to the north-west, Church Street to the south-east and Main Street, which runs between these two from north-west to south-east, and around Saint Edmund’s Church on Church Street, a short distance south-west of Main Street.
Modern development has made a significant impact on the setting of the village, with the growth of modern housing estates such as Manor Park, Hall Close, Church Close and Glebe Close along Main Street and Church Street. Yet, despite the expansion of Buckingham reaching the edges of the village, Maids Moreton retains its independence and a strong, separate identity.
As I strolled around Maids Moreton, I found a high concentrations of old historic buildings at the north-west and south-east ends of Main Street, with clusters of old buildings also along Duck Lake, around the junction of Duck Lake, Towcester Road and Main Street and close to Saint Edmund’s Church at the south-east end of the village.
Maids Moreton has many 17th century houses and cottages with timber frames, brick or plaster filling and thatched roofs. The Old Rectory and Maids Moreton Hall close to the church are two large 19th century buildings that are widely spaced set within substantial grounds, dating from an important period of change in the village.
Archaeological evidence suggests the area around Maids Moreton was settled from at least the Iron Age. Maids Moreton itself probably began as an Anglo-Saxon settlement on the south slopes of the valley of the River Great Ouse, where the land was rich and fertile and the river provided good access to water and to transport.
The historic core of the village is found around Saint Edmund’s Church, probably the oldest part of the village and dating from the Anglo-Saxon period. The village may have assumed its current form through the coalescence of farmsteads and manors over the course of time and the gradual development of buildings along the tracks and roads interconnecting them.
At the Domesday survey in 1086, Maids Moreton is listed as ‘Mortone’. The name may mean the ‘farm on the mor or swampy ground.’ The origins of the prefix Maids is said to date back to the 15th century, and local lore says two maiden sisters of the Pever, Poevre, Poever or Peyvre family who are said to have rebuilt Saint Edmund’s Church.
The sisters are said to have been conjoined twins and that when one sister died, the other died also. Whether they are legendary or historical, the sisters are recalled in the name of Maids Morton, in a poem by the Revd J Tarver of Filgrave, and in a wall painted epitaph above the north door and brasses in Saint Edmund’s Church.
There were several early manors within Maids Moreton. After the Norman Conquest, a manor at the south end of the village remained in the possession of an Englishman named Leofwin of Nuneham Courtney.
Maids Moreton became part of a royal hunting forest of Whittlewood, but was it was disafforested sometime before 1286. The earlier manor had fallen into disrepair by the 1290s and a new house was built in the 1300s, possibly on the site now occupied by Maids Moreton Hall. The manor became known as Greenham’s Manor, after the family that held it during the reign of Henry IV. It was held by the Crown for a time before it was granted to All Souls College, Oxford, in 1442. The home farm of this manor is confusingly called the Old Manor, and was once known as the Manor Farmhouse.
A manor along Main Street on the site of the Manor Park estate passed from the Clare family and the Stafford family who were Dukes of Buckingham to Christ Church College, Oxford. The Scott family farmed it for several generations.
The earliest domestic buildings date from the 16th and 17th centuries. However, earlier fabric is often hidden behind later facades as for example at Yew Trees where a cruck-built core probably dating from the 15th or 16th century was recently found within a building that had previously been dated to the 17th century.
Timber was the main material used in the construction of buildings in Maids Moreton up to the18th century. Although there are examples where timber framing is hidden beneath render or later re-fronting of buildings, in the majority of cases the timber frame is visible.
The majority of surviving timber-dframe buildings were built in a simple box frame although there is also an example of a surviving cruck frame at Yewtrees on Duck Lake, although the cruck frame at Yewtrees is disguised beneath render and hidden from external view. The majority of the panels between the timber elements have been infilled with brick. Brick became a relatively common building material in Maids Morerton from the late 18th and 19th centuries. It was used in older timber framed buildings as an infill for the panels between the timber elements and was also used to refront or extend earlier buildings.
Because Maids Moreton was so close to Buckingham, it became an attractive place to live in from the mid-19th century. A number of larger properties were built for more affluent families, including the Elms, now the Red House, on Main Street and Maids Moreton House, now Vitalograph.
Maids Moreton Hall was built by the Burrows family in the 19th century on the site of former manor. It is a large brick building with stone dressing, a complex roof form and prominent decorative chimneys. There are mullion and transom windows and some dormers.
The house became the centre of Buckinghamshire lace industry in the late 19th century under Miss MEB Burrows.
The Uthwatt family became prominent in the village in the 19th century. They commissioned Edward Swinfen Harris, who lived and worked in Stony Stratford, to redesign and rebuild the Old Rectory. At the time the Rector of Maids Moreton was the Revd Bolton Waller Johnstone (1823-1903). His parents, the Revd John Beresford Johnstone and Elizabeth Waller of Castletown Park, Co Limerick, were married in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, and he was born in Kilkenny and educated at Trinity College Dublin.
The 2½-storey Old Rectory is built in brick, with a steeply-pitched tiled roof, a prominent chimney, and irregular fenestration with stone dressings. A stringcourse runs between the ground and first floor and on the gable end between each storey. On the gable, the stringcourse forms an arch above each window opening at the first floor level and a staggered effect below the window between the ground and first floor. This decorative effect enlivens the elevations and creates interest in the form of shadows and texture.
Due to its scale and its location close to the church, the Old Rectory is a visually prominent building that makes a strong architectural statement and a positive contribution to the character and appearance of the village.
Swinfen Harris also designed the Uthwatt’s new house, named Southfields, and he may also have designed Foscote Lodge and Foscote Rectory nearby.
The expansion of Maids Moreton in the 20th century began when the sale of the Uthwatt’s family manor in 1928 released land for development in the village.
Maids Moreton Hall was a private residence until the time of World War II, when it became the Buckinghamshire county branch of the National Heart Hospital. Extensions were added in the 1960s, and it has been in use as an old persons home to the present day.
The village experienced a major period of growth in the 1960s when Manor Park and the new school were built. The old post office, at the junction of Main Street with the A413, closed in the mid-1990s and is now a private house.
Maids Moreton received unwanted attention in 2019 when Ben Field was jailed for the murder of a local resident Peter Farquhar in 2015. The case was the centre of the 2023 BBC drama The Sixth Commandment.
Despite its close proximity to Buckingham, Maids Moreton was once a self-sufficient community with a church, school, public houses, bakery, forge, cobblers, post office and other commercial buildings located along Main Street. Today, there are no shops surviving in the village.
The current resident population is 1,080, according to estimates, compared with 425 in 1901 and 239 in 1801. The majority of working age residents now commute from Maids Moreton to work in Buckingham, Milton Keynes, Aylesbury or even as far away as London. Today, Maids Moreton is facing how to deal with two greenfield planning applications to build 163 and 15 houses that would increasing the size of the village size by 50%.
But more about Saint Edmund’s Church tomorrow, hopefully, and about the Maids of Maids Moreton in the days to come.
