Patrick Comerford
My 10-mile ramble through the countryside in south-east Staffordshire the other day began by setting out from Tamworth for the small village of Wigginton, three miles north of Tamworth, before hiking on to Comberford, Coton and Hopwas, and then returning to Tamworth.
Wigginton takes its name comes from the Old English meaning ‘Wicga’s Farm’. The village has a school, a pub, a war memorial and a Grade II listed church, Saint Leonard’s Church.
The Parish of Wigginton includes Saint Leonard’s Church in Wigginton and Saint James’s Spital Chapel on Wigginton Road in Tamworth. The Spital Chapel is tucked away behind houses between Ashby Road and Wigginton Road, Tamworth. The chapel was not open when I arrived at its gates on Thursday morning, but normally there are services there on the first and third Sundays at 9 am.
I had been interested for many years in visiting Wigginton because of its many associations with the Comberford family over the centuries. But for some inexplicable reasons I had never visited either Wigginton or Saint Leonard’s Church until now.
As a parish in the Diocese of Lichfield, Wigginton Parish includes Spital Chapel and in the past also included Saint Mary and Saint George Church, Comberford, which closed in recent years. In local government divisions in Staffordshire, the civil parish of Wigginton and Hopwas is part of the area of Lichfield District Council and includes the villages of Wigginton, Comberford and Hopwas – all of which I visited in that one day during that 10-mile hike.
Saint Leonard, who died in 559, was one of the most venerated saints in the late Middle Ages, and his cult spread rapidly in the 12th century. His intercession was credited with miracles for the release of prisoners, women in labour and the diseases of cattle. His feast day is 6 November.
In Church life, mediaeval Wigginton had its own chapel, but the parish church was Saint Editha’s Collegiate Church in Tamworth, where the college of canons included the Prebendaries of Wigginton and Comberford. Tamworth was one of a handful of royal free churches or peculiars that were ecclesiastical islands within yet outside the Diocese of Lichfield.
The Prebendaries of Wigginton and Comberford can be traced for a period of more than 250 years, from 1290 until the chapter was dissolved in 1548 with the dissolution of the chantries and monastic foundations at the Tudor Reformation. Throughout most of those 2½ centuries, the dean and canons were usually crown nominees. But, for a brief time, the appointment of the Dean and many of the prebendaries, including the Prebendary of Wigginton and Comberford, was claimed by the Marmion family of Tamworth and, as their heirs, by the Butler family.
A priest in the Butler family, Thomas le Botiller, became Prebendary of Wigginton and Comberford on 5 May 1341, but his appointment had royal ratification seven months later on 10 December 1341. From 1290 until 1548, we can identify the Prebendaries of Wigginton and Comberford, and they include a professor of theology, a Proctor of the University of Oxford, two Deans of York, a Dean of Salisbury, a Dean of Hereford, a Bishop of Salisbury, a Bishop of Exeter, a Bishop of Limerick, two Lords Privy Seal, a Lord Chancellor, and a number of royal chaplains.
After 1350, this Prebend is usually named simply as Wigginton rather than Wigginton and Comberford. Humfrey Horton, who was presented on 1 August 1538, was the last Prebendary of Wigginton and Comberford. and Simon Symonds was the last dean of the Collegiate Church of Saint Editha, Tamworth (1538-1548).
Wigginton, with Comberford and Syerscote were formed into an ecclesiastical parish in the Diocese of Lichfield on 14 March 1856. Saint Leonard’s Church had been built on the ruins of a previous chapel and incorporating parts of the earlier chapel and was completed in 1777. The north aisle was added in 1830, and the chancel and vestry were added in 1861-1862 and were designed by the architect and surveyor Nicholas Joyce of Greengate Street, Stafford.
Joyce also designed the Assembly Rooms in Tamworth in an ‘Italianate’ style. They were commissioned by Tamworth Borough Council to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887.
Joyce’s other works in Staffordshire include an extension at the east end of Saint Luke's Church, Cannock, where he added two additional bays in 1878-1882 to the nave and aisles on dates in the 12th century church; Saint James the Great Church, Salt, built in 1840-1842 by Bertram Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury, and designed by the local architect Thomas Trubshaw, where Joyce added new pews, pulpit and floors; and a butchers’ market in Stafford.
There were further additions to Saint Leonard’s Church in 1901, so that the church today consists of a nave, a west porch, a north aisle, a chancel, a north-east vestry and a bell tower. The chancel is in stone and random rubble, the three-bay nave and the north aisle are in red brick on a sandstone plinth, and the roof is slated with coped verges.
The oldest part of the church is the chancel which was rebuilt in 1777 on the ruins of the previous chapel and probably incorporates parts of that earlier chapel. The two-bay chancel has clasping buttresses and a sill string that continues as a hood mould over a central pointed door on the south side. The pointed three-light east window has a Geometric tracery and hood mould with foliated stops. The east window (1893) shows the Crucifixion in the centre, with the Nativity and Baptism to the left and right.
There are two windows by the Victorian glass designer Charles Eamer Kempe (1837-1907) on the south side of the chancel. The window to the west (1897) depicting Saint Luke and Saint John, is in memory of the Revd Dr Usher Williamson Purcell, has two lights with plate tracery; the smaller window to the east is a single light depicts the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child. Williamson, who was Irish-born and had qualified as a meidcal doctor at Glasgow Universitym was the Vicar of Wigginton for 32 years from 1865.
CE Kempe is best known in the late Victorian period for his stained-glass windows, and some of his work in this corner of Staffordshire can also be seen in Lichfield Cathedral, the chapel of Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield, Christ Church, Leomansley, and Saint John’s Church, Wall.
The Cambridge Church Historian Owen Chadwick (1916-2015), has said Kempe’s work represents ‘the Victorian zenith’ of church decoration and stained glass windows. His studios produced over 4,000 windows and designs for altars and altar frontals, furniture and furnishings, lychgates and memorials that helped to define a later 19th century Anglican style.
The chancel of Saint Leonard’s has an arch braced collar roof. The pointed and chamfered chancel arch has an inner chamfered order springing from short corbelled half-columns with stiff leaf decoration.
To the north-east of the chancel, the L-shaped vestry has pointed two-light windows with plate tracery on the north and east sides.
The nave and aisle have tall small-pane windows with semi-circular arches springing from imposts. The north aisle has a circular west window with a moulded stone surround. The west door at the west end of the north aisle has a moulded stone surround and cyma recta moulded cornice hood.
The nave has a plain plaster ceiling. At the west end of the nave is a 19th century gabled west porch with a pointed doorway, flanked by two circular oculus windows with moulded stone frames, and there is a Diocletian window above the porch. The square bell turret has a pyramidal hipped roof.
Two massive Tuscan columns inside support the west turret and there are two cast iron columns between the nave and the north aisle. The north gallery is also supported on cast iron columns.
The fittings in the church include two pairs of boards on the south wall with the words of the Lord’s Prayer on one pair and the Ten Commandments on the other; a wooden Gothic style pulpit, a brass altar rail with decorative brackets, and wainscotting in the sanctuary from ca 1935.
The font dates from the mid to late 19th century, and is a stone font with an octagonal base, ribbed and banded decoration, and a wooden font cover from ca 1938. There is a full set of 20th century pews.
The church was completely redecorated in 2016 and can seat up to 100 people comfortably. The parish centre beside the church is available for hire.
The Revd Debra Dyson is the Vicar of Wigginton. The old vicarage is beside the church and the present vicarage is on Comberford Lane.
Outside the church, the lychgate was erected by family and friends in memory of Charles Edward Mercer, organist and choirmaster of Saint Leonard’s for 50 years (1926-1976).
But more about Wigginton village and its links with the Comberford family tomorrow, hopefully.
• There is a Sung Eucharist in Saint Leonard’s Church, Wigginton, on the second, third, fourth and fifth Sunday at 10:30, and a ‘Sacred Space’ service at 5 pm. The Morning Service at 10:30 on the first Sunday is Common Worship Morning Prayer, and an informal Communion is celebrated every first Sunday at 5 pm.
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