Patrick Comerford
I was discussing Peter Walker’s sculpture of Izaak Walton by the River Sow in Stafford in a blog posting last night (11 April 2026). Walton’s The Compleat Angler makes him the most celebrated literary figure born in Stafford, but the town has many other interesting literary associations.
The Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, who was born in Glasgow to Irish parents, grew up in Stafford and many of her poems describe her experiences and memories there. JRR Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings, lived near Stafford in 1916, and the area around Little Haywood inspired some of his works. The Dublin-born playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) was once MP for Stafford (1780-1806). He was said to have paid the voters of Stafford five guineas each at the election in 1780, so his first speech in the House of Commons was a defence against the charge of bribery.
Stafford stands in the marshy valley of the River Sow, a tributary of the Trent. Saint Bertelin, a Mercian prince, is said to have built a hermitage there ca 700, close to the site of the present Collegiate Church of Saint Mary. But the town’s civic history dates from 913, when Alfred the Great’s daughter Æthelflæd founded a new town as she and her brother, King Edward the Elder of Wessex, continued their father’s push to unify England in a single kingdom.
After the Norman Conquest, Stafford and the surrounding countryside were acquired by Robert de Tonei, ancestor of the Stafford family, who built the castle and took their new family name from the town. But Stafford Castle is now in ruins, and the most impressive civic building in the heart of Stafford today is the Tudor-style Ancient High House in Greengate Street, the main street. The house, now a local museum, was built in 1594 and is the largest timber-framed townhouse in England.
Immediately after the outbreak of the Civil War, Charles I visited Stafford in 1643 and he made the High House the temporary headquarters of his royalists. As the civil war unfolded, Colonel William Comberford was appointed High Sheriff of Staffordshire. On 2 February 1643, he wrote from a besieged Stafford to his kinsman Ralph Weston of Rugeley, asking him to send ‘with all speed to Lichfield’ for muskets and fowling pieces to help in the defence of Stafford.
King Charles and his nephew, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, were guests of Captain Richard Sneyd in the Ancient High House, and the king attended nearby Saint Mary’s Church. Local lore recalls that when the king and Prince Rupert were walking in the garden of the High House, Prince Rupert fired two shots through the weather vane of Saint Mary’s to prove the accuracy of his pistol, hitting the tail of the cockerel twice.
Although Saint Mary’s is in the centre of Stafford, it stands in its own large close, reached through a narrow passage from Greengate Street, the main shopping thoroughfare with the Ancient High House and Saint Chad’s Church.
Saint Mary’s was once linked with Saint Bertelin’s Chapel, and the foundations of the early chapel can be seen at the west end of the church. Saint Mary’s was rebuilt in the 13th and 14th centuries in a cruciform layout with an aisled nave, transepts, chancel and clerestory.
The church became a Royal Peculiar in the 13th century, exempt from the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Lichfield. Early Deans of Stafford included Henry de Loundres (1207-1213), later Archbishop of Dublin (1213-1228).
This ‘peculiar’ status caused conflict that culminated in December 1258 when the new Bishop of Lichfield, Roger de Meyland, came to Stafford with armed men who broke open the doors of Saint Mary’s and the bishop entered with an armed troop to assert his authority. A pitched battle was fought inside the church, blood was shed and some of the canons were wounded.
By 1281, Saint Mary’s, Stafford, was one of the seven royal free chapels within the Diocese of Lichfield that the bishop recognised were exempt from his ordinary jurisdiction and subject directly to the king.
The other royal peculiars in the Diocese of Lichfield, identified by Anne Elizabeth Jenkins in her MPhil thesis for the University of Birmingham (1988), are: Saint Michael and All Angels, Penkridge, Saint Michael’s, Tettenhall, Saint Peter’s, Wolverhampton, Saint Laurence’s, Gnosall, and Saint Editha’s, Tamworth, all in Staffordshire, and Quatford in Shropshire. Others add the Royal Free Chapel of Saint Mary, Shrewsbury, and the Royal Free Chapel, Bridgnorth.
Symon Semeonis, a Franciscan friar from Clonmel, Co Tipperary and one of the early Irish travel writers, records a visit to Stafford in 1321 as he made his pilgrimage to Rome and Jerusalem.
Until the Reformation, Saint Mary’s was two churches in one, divided by a screen. The nave served as the parish church of Stafford, while the chancel was used by the dean and the 13 canons of the College of Saint Mary whose duty was to say Mass daily for living and dead members of the royal family.
The church survived as a collegiate institution until the dissolution of colleges and chantries in 1548 during the reign of Edward VI. The dividing screens survived the dissolution of the college in 1548 and remained until 1841.
Until 1593, the octagonal tower was topped by a spire said to be one of the tallest in England. A storm that year blew it down, causing major damage to the south transept and the spire was never rebuilt. That year too, Izaak Walton was baptised in the church on 21 September 1593.
For several generations the Aston family were the patrons, although the entire family became Roman Catholics in the 1620s. When Stafford fell to the Parliamentarians in 1642, Saint Mary’s became a barracks and stables.
By 1777, the church was in such a poor state that it was closed. Some repairs were carried out on the tower, roof, parapets and windows, but by 1837 the church was in a dilapidated condition once again.
Archdeacon George Hodson demanded a full report from the churchwardens and George Gilbert Scott (1811-1878) was commissioned to restore the church in 1840. Scott was deeply influenced by AWN Pugin’s articles on church architecture in the Dublin Review. Pugin was working on Alton Towers and at Saint Giles in Cheadle at the time. When Scott’s restoration was completed in 1844, Pugin described it as ‘the best restoration which has been effected in modern times.’
The Revd Lionel Lambert (1869-1948) challenged the authority of the Bishop of Lichfield in 1929, claiming the church was still the Royal Free Chapel of Saint Mary. The legal battle was not as bruising as the pitched battle in 1254, but the Bishop of Lichfield was victorious this time, although Lambert remained rector of Stafford until he retired in 1944.
Today, Saint Mary’s serves as the civic church of Stafford and is a Grade I listed parish church. It is a large cruciform church with transepts and an octagonal crossing tower that once had a spire until 1594. The chancel has five-bay aisles. The north is largely given over to the organ and the vestry, and the Lady Chapel is in the south aisle.
According to the architectural historian Sir Niklaus Pevsner, the nave and its arcades are early 13th century work, although the crocket capitals are Scott’s. The west doorway and a plain north doorway are also early 13th century, while the west window belongs to the later 13th century. The south aisle windows are 14th century and the north aisle windows and clerestorey are Perpendicular. The south doorway and porch are Scott’s.
Scott’s work is more apparent in the south transept and chancel. The north transept was not restored, and retains an early 14thc century north doorway and window, and a perpendicular clerestory. Scott removed the clerestories in the chancel and the south transept. Some 13th century windows survive in these parts of the church, but most of the windows are Scott’s.
Saint Mary’s Church has a superbly carved 12th century Italianate font at the west end. The design is unusual for an English church, with four semi-circular bowls joined together like a huge four-leaf clover.
The underside of the font bowl is carved with unusual, grotesque figures. Strange beasts like monkeys climb the sides of the bowl, while lions curve around the base of the bowl, whose base is carved with peculiar creatures with one head for two bodies.
The style of the font is almost unknown in England, and has more in common with Byzantine art than British tradition. Pevsner describes it as ‘Norman and under Italian influence’. Others say it is ‘undoubtedly foreign’ but possibly carved by foreign workers in Stafford. There is nothing to relate the font to the present church, and it has been suggested that it may have come from Saint Chad’s Church, where the present font is a neo-Romanesque piece made in 1856.
A wall memorial dating from 1878 commemorates Izaak Walton (1593-1683), who was baptised in the church on 21 September 1593. Other memorials in the church commemorate William Palmer (d 1683), Humphrey Hodgetts (d 1730), Thomas Clifford (d 1787) and his wife Barbara (d 1786).
The chest tomb of Sir Edward Aston (d 1568) and his wife Joan is in the north transept. Their effigies have been badly damaged, and he is without his head, but the carvings of weepers and heraldic shields remain around the. Local lore says that the tomb was damaged when it was used to support a wooden jury box when Saint Mary’s was used as an assize court in the 18th century.
The carved pew ends date from Scott’s restoration in 1841. The figures include a crowned head, a mitred bishop, winged angels, eagles, a woodpecker, and at least three green men with foliage emerging from their mouths.
The church has large four manual organ built by Harrison and Harrison in 1909. The second organ dates from 1790 when it was installed by John Geib. It was rebuilt in 1844 by John Banfield, and then Hill, Norman & Beard in 1974.
I never got inside Saint Mary’s Church when I was in Stafford last week. But mor eduring the days to come, hopefully, about Saint Bertelin’s Chapel and some of the other places I saw and visited in Stafford.
• The Collegiate Church of Saint Mary is a town centre church in Stafford and part of Stafford Churches. The associate priest and town centre chaplain is the Revd John Davis. The other associate priests include Canon Michael Newman and the Revd Pam Merriott. The Sunday services are: 8:30 am, Eucharist, Saint Chad’s, Greengate Street; 10 am, Sung Eucharist, Saint Mary’s; 10 am, Eucharist, Saint Leonard’s, Marston (first Sunday of the month only).
