Two winter visits to Padbury, a Buckinghamshire village with a layout that has changed little since the 16th century

Padbury in north Buckinghamshire is about halfway between Buckingham and Winslow and about 14 km south-west of central Milton Keynes (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Despite the fact that winter has truly taken its grip on this part of Buckinghamshire, I wrap myself up well on days when I find opportunities to catch local buses and explore the villages and small towns within reach of Stony Stratford.

Quite often they have mediaeval churches, thatched and timber-framed cottages from the 16th or 17th century, and traditional English pubs. Occasionally, I find real surprises when I come across a church, rectory or schoolhouse that has been designed by a prominent architect who has worked locally, including Sir George Gilbert Scott, John Oldrid Scott, George Edmund Street or Edward Swinfen Harris.

Some of these villages small in recent weeks in this area include Addington, Castlethorpe, Deanshanger, Gawcott, Hanslope, Maids Moreton and Roade. I was back in Padbury this afternoon, having strolled through this north Buckinghamshire village only a few weeks ago. It is almost halfway between Buckingham (4 km, 2.5 miles) and Winslow (6 km, 3.5 miles), and about 14 km (9 miles) south-west of central Milton Keynes.

The Padbury estate was once owned by All Souls’ College, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Padbury stands partly on elevated ground that once provided a degree of defence, but most of the village is down in a shallow valley that provided shelter, close to a good water source and at the junction of significant communications routes.

The layout of the village, with its areas of open space, particularly at the north-east end of Main Street, suggests a market place or village green, but there is no surviving evidence that Padbury had once been a market town. A map of the Padbury estate owned by All Souls’ College, Oxford, in 1590 clearly shows that the form of the village has changed little since the late 16th century.

Apart from the development of the A413 which sliced through the north-east end of the village in the 19th century, the general layout of the roads and position of the buildings have changed little.

Archaeological finds in the Padbury area include a Neolithic or Bronze Age flint side scraper and a Neolithic stone axe, and an Iron Age hillfort or enclosure at Norbury Camp. Earthworks recorded on a 16th century map and crop-marks have been identified on aerial photographs. A Roman road once passed through Padbury, and some Roman pottery has been found near Grange Farm.

A map of the Padbury estate owned by All Souls’ College, Oxford, shows the form of the village has changed little since the 16th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The village name has Old English origins, and means ‘Padda’s fortress’. A hoard of over 5,000 silver coins from the late Anglo Saxon period was found in a field at Lenborough near Padbury by an eight-year-old boy and others in 2014.

Around the time of the Norman Conquest, the Manor of Padbury was exchanged for the Manor of Iver between Robert Doyley and Robert Clarenbold of the Marsh. The village was recorded in the Domesday Survey (1086) as Pateberie, and at the time had the distinction of being one of the few villages in England still owned by a native rather than a Norman family. The family later took the name de Wolverton, after the town of Wolverton, and they continued to hold Padbury until 1442, when it was bought by All Souls’ College, Oxford.

Padbury, or Overbury as it was sometimes known, had a watermill from the time of Domesday. Mediaeval finds include a possible mediaeval or post-mediaeval moat or enclosure in a field survey on Main Street.

However, the only surviving mediaeval building in Padbury is the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, a Grade I listed building from the 12th century with a Norman doorway, a 13th century nave, chancel and font, 14th century aisles and wall paintings, and a 15th century tower. Some alterations were made in the 16th century and the church was restored in the 19th century. Later Victorian work on the church uncovered some 14th century wall-paintings in the north aisle.

College Farm may take its name from All Souls’ College, Oxford, which acquired Padbury in 1442 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The village cross at Downe Cross was still standing in the 16th century, but it has since disappeared. During the English Civil War, Padbury was the site of a skirmish between the Royalist and Parliamentarian forces. The Royalists won and of eight Parliamentarian soldiers were buried in Padbury on 2 July 1643.

The relatively straight and wide Main Street runs from the Forde at the south-west end of the village, north-east to end at Saint Mary’s Church. This was the primary route through Padbury until the A413 toll road was developed in the 19th century, reducing the importance of Main Street and also dislocating Saint Mary’s church from the rest of the settlement.

The listed buildings in Padbury include timber-framed buildings, some dating back to the 16th or 17th centuries, such as Stratfords Cottage, Trefoil Cottage or the old vicarage. There are some later, brick built, 18th and 19th century houses, like the White House. The 19th century buildings include the Village Hall, which was once a school, and several railway bridges.

The A413 cut through the north-east end of Padbury in the 19th century, but the layout of the village has changed little (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

With the development of the railway in the 19th century, the London and North Western Railway opened a station at Padbury in 1878. The station remained in use until 1964, when it was closed to goods and passengers. Today all trace of the station has been lost following the development of the modern Station Road housing estate.

Padbury has a population of around 1,000 people and is surrounded by farmland. Until recently, the village has two pubs, the New Inn and the Blackbird, and there are active community efforts to reopen and manage the Blackbird. Padbury also has a cricket club, a football club, a bowls club, a two tennis courts, and a multi-use games area. Padbury Church of England school is a primary school for children from four to 11, with about 110 pupils.

Saint Mary’s Church remains the most prominent building in Padbury, and the village once had a Methodist chapel too. But more about these in the days to come, hopefully.

The Old Tithe Barn in Padbury, now a private family home (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

An Advent Calendar with Patrick Comerford: 14, 13 December 2025

Samuel Johnson amid the Christmas lights in the Market Square, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are more than half-way through Advent this year and tomorrow is the Third Sunday of Advent (Advent III, 14 December 2025).

At noon each day this Advent, I am offering one image as part of my ‘Advent Calendar’ for 2025, and one Advent or Christmas carol, hymn or song.

The church calendar of the Church of England today remembers Saint Lucy of Syracuse and Samuel Johnson of Lichfield, both of whom are associated with eyesight problems: Saint Lucy, according to legend, had her eyes plucked out as she was being martyred, and became the patron saint of the blind, eye illnesses, and opticians, often depicted holding her eyes on a platter; Samuel Johnson had poor eyesight, and was almost blind in his left eye from childhood, yet wrote legibly and prolifically.

My image for my Advent Calendar today is of Samuel Johnson’s statue in Lichfield among the Christmas lights in the Market Square, facing the house where he was born. My choice of hymn today is ‘See, amid the winter’s snow’ by the priest and hymnwriter Edward Caswall (1814-1878) who also wrote ‘Hark! a herald voice is calling’, the Advent carol I chose last Saturday (6 December 2025).

See, amid the winter’s snow,
born for us on earth below,
see the tender Lamb appears,
promised from eternal years.

Refrain:
Hail, thou ever blessed morn!
Hail, redemption’s happy dawn!
Sing through all Jerusalem,
‘Christ is born in Bethlehem.’

Lo, within a manger lies
He who built the starry skies;
He who, throned in height sublime,
sits amid the cherubim! [Refrain]

Say, ye holy shepherds, say,
what’s your joyful news today?
Wherefore have ye left your sheep
on the lonely mountain steep? [Refrain]

‘As we watched at dead of night,
Lo! we saw a wondrous light;
angels singing ‘Peace on earth’
told us of the Saviour’s birth.’ [Refrain]

Sacred Infant, all divine,
what a tender love was thine,
thus to come from highest bliss
down to such a world as this! [Refrain]

Teach, O teach us, Holy Child,
by thy face so meek and mild,
teach us to resemble thee,
in thy sweet humility! [Refrain]

Daily prayer in Advent 2025: 14, Saturday 13 December 2025

‘It is like children sitting in the market-places’ (Matthew 11: 16) … Samuel Johnson's statue in winter sunshine in the Market Square, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

We have passed the half-way into the Season of Advent, and the countdown to Christmas seems to be gathering pace. This week began with the Second Sunday of Advent (Advent II, 7 December 2025), and the Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today provides for a Commemoration and Lesser Festival that remembers Saint Lucy (304), Martyr at Syracuse, and Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), writer of dictionaries, literary editor and the ‘Great Moralist’.

Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

Samuel Johnson’s monument in a corner of the south transept in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 11: 33-36 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 33 ‘No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar, but on the lampstand so that those who enter may see the light. 34 Your eye is the lamp of your body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light; but if it is not healthy, your body is full of darkness. 35 Therefore consider whether the light in you is not darkness. 36 If then your whole body is full of light, with no part of it in darkness, it will be as full of light as when a lamp gives you light with its rays.’

The Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum in Lichfield where Samuel Johnson was born in 1709 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today’s reflection:

Those two themes continue to be linked in this morning’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist (Matthew 11: 11-15), when Christ contrasts the reasons John was rejected with the reasons he is criticised.

The theme in the lectionary readings last Sunday for Advent II (7 December 2025) was the Prophets, while tomorrow’s theme is Saint John the Baptist (Advent III or Gaudete Sunday, 14 December 2025). Those two themes continue to be linked in this morning’s Gospel weekday reading at the Eucharist (Matthew 17: 10-13), when Christ once again compares the Prophet Elijah and Saint John the Baptist.

The Gospel reading for the commemorations of Saint Lucy and Samuel Johnson (Luke 11: 33-36) is a reference too to the fact that both Saint Lucy and Samuel Johnson suffered greatly with their eye problems yet were figures of light.

Saint Lucy was martyred at Syracuse in Sicily ca 283-304. Her relics are kept in a shrine in the beautiful Church of San Geremia, facing onto the Grand Canal in Venice, between the Palazzo Labia and the Palazzo Flangini. In mediaeval accounts, her eyes were gouged out before her execution. Saint Lucy’s name, from the Latin lux, ‘light’, also played a large part in her being named as a patron saint of the blind and people with eye-trouble.

Samuel Johnson was known as ‘The Great Moralist’, although in the 18th century that was a term of affection and honour. He was a pious Anglican throughout his life, but is best remembered as a writer of dictionaries and a literary editor. He was a High Church Anglican and deeply committed to the Church of England since his younger days when he read William Law’s A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life.

It is almost 250 years since Samuel Johnson took his friend James Boswell to Lichfield in 1776 to show him ‘genuine civilised life in an English provincial town’. Later Johnson would recall: ‘I lately took my friend Boswell and showed him genuine civilised life in an English provincial town. I turned him loose at Lichfield.’

They stayed at the Three Crowns in Breadmarket Street, beside the house on the corner of Market Square where Johnson was born and spent his childhood.

When Boswell asked Johson why the people of Lichfield seemed to lack industry, Johnson famously replied that the people of Lichfield were philosophers: ‘Sir, (said Johnson,) we are a city of philosophers: we work with our heads, and make the boobies of Birmingham work for us with their hands.’

Lichfield has grown considerably in the 2½ centuries since that visit, from 4,000 people in Samuel Johnson’s days, to about 35,000 people today. It is one of England’s smallest cities, but it retains its civilised charm, and I return to Lichfield regularly for my own personal retreats and time of prayer and reflection.

Samuel Johnson was a key figure in shaping the English language as we use it today. Indeed, he has been described as ‘arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history’ and his biography by Boswell has been described as ‘the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature.’

Although Johnson began his literary career as a ‘Grub Street’ journalist, he made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, novelist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer.

The 18th century was a period of great intellectual activity, and Lichfield was home to many figures of intellect and culture, including Samuel Johnson, David Garrick, Erasmus Darwin and Anna Seward, prompting Johnson’s observation that Lichfield was ‘a city of philosophers’.

Samuel Johnson was born on 18 September 1709 in what is now the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum, a five-storey house at the west end of the Market Square.

He married the widowed Elizabeth Porter in 1735, when he was 25 and she was 46 and the mother of three children. Two years later, Johnson and 20-year-old David Garrick set off for London in 1737 in search of fame and fortune. They survived many difficulties, and eventually Johnson became the leading literary figure of his generation and Garrick the leading actor.

Johnson’s fortunes took a dramatic turn in 1746 when a publisher commissioned him to compile a dictionary of the English language – a contract that was worth 1,500 guineas. Johnson claimed he could finish the project in three years. In comparison, the Académie Française had 40 scholars who would spend 40 years completing its French dictionary. Eventually, it took Johnson nine years to complete his Dictionary of the English Language.

Johnson’s Dictionary was not the first, nor was it unique. But it remained the standard, definitive and pre-eminent English dictionary for 150 years, until the Oxford English Dictionary was published in 1928. His Dictionary offers insights into the 18th century, providing ‘a faithful record of the language people used.’ It has been described as ‘one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship.’ As a work of literature, it has had a far-reaching impact on modern English.

Johnson’s legacies in Lichfield include: the Johnson statue in Market Square; his monument in a corner of the south transept of Lichfield Cathedral; John Myatt’s fading mosaic mural on a wall on a corner of Bird Street; and ‘Johnson’s Willow’ on the north shore of Stowe Pool.

I have been familiar with the willow trees at this location for over 50 years, and the present willow tree is the fifth there since Johnson’s days.

When Johnson was young, the willow was close to his father’s parchment factory. When he returned to Lichfield in later years, he never failed to visit the tree, passing it on his way to visit his friends the Aston sisters who lived at the two large houses on Stowe Hill. He is said to have described the willow as ‘the delight of his early and waning life’. The original willow eventually became decayed, and in 1829 it was blown down. But it has been replaced by many of its descendants ever since. A fifth willow was planted on the same site by Stowe Pool on 2 November 2021. The ceremony included a reading of a poem about Johnson’s Willow by Sarah Dale, the winning entry in the Johnson Society’s Willow poetry competition.

On his last visit to church, the walk strained Samuel Johnson. However, while there he wrote a prayer for his friends, the Thrale family: ‘To thy fatherly protection, O Lord, I commend this family. Bless, guide, and defend them, that they may pass through this world, as finally to enjoy in thy presence everlasting happiness, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.’

In his last prayer, on 5 December 1784, before receiving Holy Communion and eight days before he died, Samuel Johnson prayed:

Almighty and most merciful Father, I am now, as to human eyes it seems, about to commemorate, for the last time, the death of thy Son Jesus Christ our Saviour and Redeemer. Grant, O Lord, that my whole hope and confidence may be in his merits, and his mercy; enforce and accept my imperfect repentance; make this commemoration available to the confirmation of my faith, the establishment of my hope, and the enlargement of my charity; and make the death of thy Son Jesus Christ effectual to my redemption. Have mercy on me, and pardon the multitude of my offences. Bless my friends; have mercy upon all men. Support me, by the grace of thy Holy Spirit, in the days of weakness, and at the hour of death; and receive me, at my death, to everlasting happiness, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.

As he lay dying, Samuel Johnson’s final words were: ‘Iam Moriturus’ (‘I who am about to die’). He fell into a coma and died at 7 pm on 13 December 1784 at the age of 75. He was buried at Westminster Abbey a week later.

Johnson’s life and work are celebrated in a stained glass window in Southwark Cathedral, he has monuments in Westminster Abbey, Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London, and Lichfield Cathedral, and he is named in the calendar of the Church of England on this day as a modern Anglican saint.

John Myatt’s fading mosaic mural of Samuel Johnson on a wall on a corner of Bird Street, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today’s Prayers (Saturday 13 December 2025):

The theme this week (7 to 13 December 2025) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel),has been ‘Divine Sufficiency’ (pp 8-9). This theme was introduced last Sunday with Reflections from the Revd Neli Miranda, Vicar at Saint James the Apostle in Guatemala City and Professor of Theology at the University Mariano Gálvez of Guatemala.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 13 December 2025) invites us to pray:

We pray for the Spirit of Solidarity to grow among Christian communities, and that this spirit may not only alleviate immediate needs but also become a force for social change.

The Collect:

Eternal Father,
whose servant Samuel Johnson knew the omnipotence and omniscience of the divine presence in his life,
giving him the grace of great learning and piety:
help us to use wisely the gifts you have entrusted to us,
not swelling with pride,
but humbly acknowledging the glorious wonder
of the blessing we have received.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

God of truth,
whose Wisdom set her table
and invited us to eat the bread and drink the wine
of the kingdom:
help us to lay aside all foolishness
and to live and walk in the way of insight,
that we may come with your servant Samuel Johnson
to the eternal feast of heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Collect on the Eve of Advent III:

O Lord Jesus Christ,
who at your first coming sent your messenger
to prepare your way before you:
grant that the ministers and stewards of your mysteries
may likewise so prepare and make ready your way
by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just,
that at your second coming to judge the world
we may be found an acceptable people in your sight;
for you are alive and reign with the Father
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

The shrine of Santa Lucia di Siracusa or Saint Lucy of Syracuse in the Church of San Geremia in Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Saint Lucy depicted in a monument to Lucy Marian Hubbard in Saint Mary’s Church, Addington, near Buckingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)