Patrick Comerford
Today in the Church Calendar has been the Feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Apostles (29 June 2026). Although there are many churches dedicated to these two apostles individually, they are often paired in the naming of churches and cathedrals, and in the past I have blogged about a number of cathedrals and churches dedicated to Saint Peter and Saint Paul.
In recent years, I have blogged or written about a number of churches and cathedrals dedicated to Saint Peter and Saint Paul, including the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Sheffield, the cathedral in Ennis, Co Clare, Selskar Abbey in Wexford, and Peterborough cathedral, which has an unusual triple dedication to Saint Peter, Saint Paul and Saint Andrew.
In addition, there are churches dedicated to Saint Peter and Saint Paul that I have visited recently in Aston, Buckingham, Newport Pagnell, Olney and Watford, and in Ireland churches in Athlone, Co Westmeath, Balbriggan, Co Dublin, Monasterevan, Co Kildare, three church in Kilmallock, Co Limerick, and the Russian Orthodox Church in Harold’s Cross, Dublin.
In Greece, Saint Peter and Saint Paul is the dedication of a former monastery I have visited in Iraklion in Crete and a chapel in Vlatádon Monastery in Thessaloniki. I have also visited churches with this name in Krakow and in Singapore.
The Feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul on this day (29 June) recalls the martyrdom of the two apostles in Rome. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, this feast is one of five additional feasts ranked as a great feast. Many countries mark this feast day as a public holiday, and today is also a public holiday in some Swiss cantons.
In London, there were two, paired minster churches dedicated to these saints, so that the formal name of Westminster Abbey is the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, while the east minster is Saint Paul’s Cathedral in the City.
So, it is interesting that in Stony Stratford, Saint Peter and Saint Paul almost faced each other, diagonally across the street from one another, at the north end of the High Street.
The former Cross Keys at 97 High Street is one of the oldest surviving buildings in Stony Stratford. The Cross Keys was often a popular name for pubs and inns in mediaeval England. They took their name from the crossed keys of Saint Peter, the symbol representing Saint Peter as holding the gates of the kingdom heaven or guardian of Christian truth. Christ says to Saint Peter in this morning’s Gospel reading: ‘I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven’ (Matthew 16: 19).
Historically, pubs with this name were often near a church dedicated to Saint Peter. Some pubs named after Saint Peter or saints and popes also subtly renamed ‘Cross Keys’ at the Reformation. These pubs often stood on to land previously owned by abbeys or monasteries, or had served as church-linked hospitals and guesthouses.
The former Cross Keys Inn at 97 High Street still displays its old signs, and retains much of its mediaeval timber structure, dating from ca 1480, with a moulded archway. It was also known as Saint Peter’s Keys, and may originally have been a church-related lodging house or hostel, known in the Middle Ages as hospitals. The building retains the earliest external visible feature in the town, dating from the late 15th or early 16th century.
The building was once the town’s Guild Hall, and it later became the town’s first courtroom. The murderers of Grace Bennet, Lady of the Manor of Calverton, were tried there in 1697. Later it was tea house and curiosity shop, and today it is a hairdresser’s shop, Hair Master.
When the inn closed, and then the tea house, the early name continued in use in Stony Stratford in the Cross Keys Continental Café in Cofferidge Close in the 1970s and 1980s.
Across the street from the former Cross Keys on the High Street, Saint Paul’s Court is one of the most imposing buildings in Stony Stratford, and was designed by the architectural partnership of Goldie and Childe, run by George Goldie (1828-1887) and Charles Edwin Child (1843-1911). It first opened opened in January 1864 as a grammar school ‘to be conducted on the Public School system, by graduate clergy.’
This Victorian complex of buildings was built in a lavish style by the Revd William Thomas Sankey, Vicar of Saint Giles Church (now Saint Mary and Saint Giles) from 1859 to 1875. Saint Paul’s College opened in 1864, with Sankey as the first Warden, and later became Fegan’s Home for Orphaned Boys.
For ten years, from 1962 to 1972, it was a preparatory school run by Franciscan monks. The school chapel became a restaurant in recent years and the other buildings in the complex are now offices, craft workshops and apartments. The restaurant is undergoing a transformation and is expected to reopen soon as the Chapel Chophouse and Bar.
But it is interesting on this day that Saint Peter and Saint Paul at one time almost faced each other on the High Street in Stony Stratford.
