52 million civilian war dead, 52 million missing £50 notes, 52 million light years away, 52 million readers of this blog

The National Monument of Scotland on Calton Hill, Edinburgh … the first £52 million from the Scottish Local Growth Fund for Edinburgh and other parts of Scotland was released last week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

These are exceptionally busy days on this blog, with an overwhelming rise in figures for viewing and reader hits. These figures climbed to a total of 52 million hits by late last night (7 September 2026), passing the million mark for the fourth time since the end of last month and only two days after reaching 51 million late on Saturday night (5 September 2026). These figures come soon after reaching 50 million four days ago (4 September 2026) and 49 million four days previously (31 August 2026).

I continue to find these viewing and readership figures overpowering at times, and this blog continues to reach volumes of readers I never expected when I first started blogging 16 years ago. At the end of last year, this blog had 21 million hits (31 December 2025). So far this year, there have been more than 31 million hits or visitors in 2026 alone.

Half of all hits or reader figures have been in little more than six months, with 26 million hits since 1 March 2026. I first began blogging in 2010, and it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers. Throughout this year and last, the daily figures are overwhelming on many occasions. Of the 10 days of busiest traffic on this blog, four were this month (1, 4, 5 and 7 September 2026), two were in May (1 and 14 May 2026), three were the previous month (26, 29 and 30 April 2026), and one was in March.

• 1,124,925 (1 May 2026)
• 647,187 (5 September 2026)
• 525,719 (14 May 2026)
• 513,725 (7 September 2026)
• 509,644 (29 April 2026)

• 407,835 (4 September 2026)
• 356,335 (1 September 2026)
• 344,003 (30 April 2026)
• 323,156 (27 March 2026)
• 322,038 (26 April 2026)

The daily average was about 118,700 hits a day throughout August, but it has been about 430,000 a day so far this month. Yet, I recall how 10 years ago, back in 2016, the daily average was around 1,000, or 30,000 a month.

Estimates suggest 52 million old paper £50 banknotes are still unreturned across the UK

Some curious though random statistics help to put this new figure of 52 million into context:

Colombia has an area of 1.15 million sq km and a population of around 52 million, and South Korea has a population of almost 52 million.

Westminster City Council recently approved a £52 million package of investment focused on improving neighbourhoods, supporting local businesses and tackling inequalities as part of its 2026/2027 budget.

The UK Government last week released the first £52 million from the £140 million Scottish Local Growth Fund to Edinburgh and South East Scotland, Glasgow, Tay Cities, Ayrshire and Forth Valley. Local leaders across Scotland will decide how this £52 million is spent, backing jobs and growth where they are needed most.

Civilian deaths significantly exceeded military deaths in World War II. Aggregated national estimates indicate approximately 24.8 million military deaths, compared with about 52 million civilian deaths, including roughly 32.1 million from military activity and war crimes and 20 million from war-related famine and disease.

ARP 214 is a peculiar barred spiral galaxy around 52 million light years away in the constellation of Ursa Major. Ursa Major, also known as the Great Bear, is a constellation in the Northern Sky, whose associated mythology likely dates back into prehistory. Its Latin name, meaning greater or larger bear, refers to and contrasts it with nearby Ursa Minor, the lesser bear. In antiquity, it was one of the original 48 constellations listed by Ptolemy in the 2nd century CE, drawing on earlier works by Greek, Egyptian, Babylonian and Assyrian astronomers. It is the third largest of the 88 modern constellations.

NGC 3079 is a starburst spiral galaxy located 52 million light-years from Earth. It has a horseshoe-shaped structure at its centre that indicates the presence of a supermassive black hole. The structure itself is formed by superwinds from the black hole.

The timing of the collision of continents of the Asian and Indian plates, marking the start of the formation of the Himalayan mountain range, has been subject to much discussion in geology. PhD research by Wentao Huang at Utrecht University has found that this began 52 million years ago.

The Indian and Asian plates started moving towards each other, and met about 52 million years ago. A block from the Indian plate collided with the continental block of the Asian plate, and formed the Himalayas.

It is estimated that 52 million old paper £50 banknotes are still unreturned, sitting in homes or circulating across the UK. The older paper £50 note features Matthew Boulton and James Watt. Paper £20 and £50 notes stopped being accepted as legal tender in October 2022 when they were replaced by polymer plastic versions.

52 million minutes is equal to approximately 98 years, 10 months and 13 days. This means that if this blog was receiving just one hit a minute, I would need to have started blogging back in mid-1927.

I retired from active parish ministry about 4½ years ago, on 31 March 2022. These days, though, about 150 people on average are reading my daily prayer diary posted on this blog each morning, or more than 1,000 people each week.

This evening, as this blog moves beyond 52 million hits, I am truly grateful to the real readers among that 52 million. In particular, I am thankful for the faithful core group of people who join me in prayer, scripture reading and reflections each day.


The Indian and Asian plates started moving towards each other, and met about 52 million years ago. A block from the Indian plate collided with the continental block of the Asian plate, and formed the Himalayas

The former Fosters’ Bank on Sidney Street remains one of the most engaging buildings in Cambridge

The former Fosters’ Bank in Cambridge was designed by the Victorian architect Alfred Waterhouse and built in 1890-1894 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

Sidney Street in the centre of Cambridge takes its name from Sidney Sussex College, and runs from Bridge Street at its junction with Jesus Lane at the north-west end to Saint Andrew’s Street at the junction with Hobson Street at the south-east end, close to Christ’s College.

Apart from Sidney Sussex College, the notable buildings on this street include Holy Trinity Church, but the most engaging may be Lloyds Bank, built as Fosters’ Bank in 1890-1894. The bank was designed by the Victorian architect Alfred Waterhouse (1830-1905) in the Jacobethan style, with complex decoration.

The building is now the Cambridge University Branch of Lloyds TSB. It was built on an irregular site, at the corner of Sidney Street and Hobson Street, and close to the gatehouse of Christ’s College. The original name of Fosters’ Bank still survives over the doorway, a reminder of the Foster family I referred to yesterday, including George Edward Foster (1840-1906) who laid the foundation stone of nearby Saint Andrew’s Street Baptist Church in 1903.

Fosters’ Bank, a striking building in a mixture of the Jacobethan and Dutch Renaissance-style styles, was designed by Alfred Waterhousem who, financially speaking, was probably the most successful of all the Victorian architects. He is associated with Gothic Revival architecture, although he worked in other styles too. He often used eclecticism in his buildings, and the styles he used occasionally included Tudor revival, Jacobethan and Italianate.

Waterhouse was born into a Quaker family, and his brothers were co-founders of the Price Waterhouse partnership that is now part of PriceWaterhouseCoopers. At an early stage in his career he was strongly influenced by John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice (1849) and AWN Pugin’s Contrasts (1836) and The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841).

His best-known works include Manchester Town Hall and the Natural History Museum in London, the Manchester Assize buildings, and Strangeways Prison. He designed many town halls, several hospitals, churches and chapels, such as the Lyndhurst Road Congregational Church, Hampstead, banks, and university buildings in Cambridge, such as Girton College and the chapel in Gonville and Caius College, in Oxford, such as the Broad Street frontage and college dining hall in Balliol College, and in Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds.

The Congregational King’s Weigh House Chapel in Mayfair, which he designed in 1888, is now the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral in London. His hospitals include being the Royal Infirmary Liverpool and University College Hospital London.

The clock tower on the right of the façade above the main entrance of the former Fosters’ Bank in Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Waterhouse was commissioned to build a new bank in Cambridge by the Foster family who wanted a new location for their bank which had outgrown its original location in Trinity Street.

The builder was William Sindall; the structural steel work is by A Hanyside & Co; the stone carving, mainly around the doorway, on the clock tower and in the gables, is by Farmer & Brindley; the ceramic tiles were made by Craven Dunnill & Co; the faience is by Burmantofts; the mosaic flooring is by JF Ebner and J Rust; the decorative ironwork and light fittings are by Hart Son Peard & Co; the lighting was by Belshaw & Co; and the clock in the tower was made by John Moore & Sons of Clerkenwell.

The building exudes the grandeur and confidence of banking in the late Victorian era. It was probably designed to make patrons of the bank feel wealthy and portant there – or to attract the wealthy and important to entrust their money with the bank. Today, many tourists photograph it believing it must be part of the university

Both the exterior and interior of the bank are impressive. The exterior has a stone ground floor with decorative banded stone and red brick covering the two upper floors and the gables. There is a clock tower on the right of the façade above the main entrance, and the lettering above the door still says ‘Fosters’ Bank’.

The clock tower with an ornate clock face gives some idea of the elaborate decoration inside. The main banking hall is octagonal in shape, high and light with a magnificent domed roof. The walls and ornate columns have faience decorations, the floor is of mosaic and there are colourful, glazed, ceramic tiles. A neo-Tudor extension was added in 1935.

The lettering above the main entrance still says ‘Fosters’ Bank’ above the door (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The site of Fosters’ Bank at Nos 1 to 5 Sidney Street had once been the site of the Crown and Woolpack Inn, and until 1846 it had been the premises for the Philo-Union or Cambridge Literary Society, founded in 1826 for ‘the diffusion of general knowledge and the discussion of all subjects not of a theological nature’.

Fosters’ Bank was founded in 1804 by the Foster family, Cambridge corn millers, mainly to support their local milling workers. It was also known as the Cambridge & Cambridgeshire Bank.

The bank first opened in attractive premises in Trinity Street, Cambridge, in a building that was once the Turk’s Head coffee bar. Many of the bank’s customers were drawn from the local agricultural industry, and there were branches in St Ives (1830), St Neots (1830), Royston (1834), Ely (1835), Newmarket (1844), Bishop’s Stortford (1874), Littleport (1889), Saffron Walden (1901) and Wisbech.

By the end of the 19th century, Foster’s Bank had outgrown its Trinity Street premises and commissioned Waterhouse to design a magnificent new building. Fosters’ Bank was absorbed into the Capital and Counties Bank in 1904, which later became part of Lloyds Bank.

Both Ebenezer and Richard Foster were Mayors of Cambridge, as were their descendants Charles Finch Foster and Henry S Foster. The Foster family’s milling business continued until 1915. The Foster mill near Cambridge railway station has since been converted into luxury flats. Anstey Hall in Trumpington, once the home of the Foster family, is now a wedding venue.

Richard Foster was also the major backer of the Roman Baths, which were built in Jesus Lane. However, the baths were not a success and closed after less than a year. For many years it was the premises of the Pitt Club, the Cambridge equivalent of the Bullingdon Club in Oxford. I could see the building from my rooms in Cloister Court in Sidney Sussex College when it had become Pizza Express, and it is now Kibou Japanese restaurant.

Fosters’ Bank on Sidney Street is close to both Sidney Sussex College (above) and Christ’s College (below) (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

28 million flights at risk, 28 million Venezuelans, 28 million sq m in Albania, and 28 million blog readers

Waiting for take-off in Muscat … 28 million outbound trips from the Middle East are at risk this year because of the war launched by the ‌US and Israel ⁠on Iran (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

The viewing and reading figures for this blog continue to surprise me, and these figures passed the 28 million mark shortly after 7 am this morning (20 March 2026). This is the fifth time this month alone that the half-million figure in readership numbers has been passed, reaching 27.5 million last Monday (16 March 2026), 27 million last week (12 March 2026), 26.5 million the week before (3 March 2026) and 26 million at the beginning of the month (Sunday 1 March 2026), when the hits that day were also the highest daily figure I have ever recorded (318,307).

This year so far has seen a phenomenal amount of traffic on this blog, reaching a volume of readers that I never have expected when I first started blogging 16 years ago. Half the total hits (14 million) have been within the past eight or nine months, and the total of hits last month (February 2026) was the highest monthly total ever (3,386,504), with this blog passing the half-million mark seven times in all in February.

At the end of last year, this blog had 21 million hits (31 December 2025). So far this year, there have been more than 6.5 million hits or visitors for 2026.

I first began blogging in 2010, and it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers – a number reached five times this month alone. Half of the 28 million hits (14 million) have been within the last nine or ten months, since 1 July 2025.

Throughout last year and this year, the daily figures have been overwhelming on many occasions. Seven of the 12 days of busiest traffic on this blog were in February alone, three were this month (March) and two were in January 2025:

• 318,307 (1 March 2026)
• 314,018 (28 February 2026)
• 301,449 (2 March 2026)
• 289,076 (11 January 2025)
• 285,366 (12 January 2025)
• 280,802 (26 February 2026)

• 273,022 (27 February 2026)
• 261,422 (13 January 2026)
• 228,931 (18 March 2026)
• 195,391 (20 February 2026)
• 190,630 (23 February 2026)
• 190,467 (21 February 2026)

The number of readers has been overpowering this year and last, with the daily averages currently running at over 110,000 hits a day so far this month. Ten years ago, the daily average was around 1,000.

The Lloyds horse in Milton Keynes … a Lloyds report shows more than 28 million adults in the UK are turning to artificial intelligence to help manage their money (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

To put this figure of 28 million in context:

Venezuela has a population of about 28 million people, including Delcy Rodriguez, once a Maduro henchwoman, who has been installed by Trump as Venezuela’s acting president.

More than 28 million adults in the UK are now turning to artificial intelligence to help manage their money – making personal finance the nation’s number one use of AI, according to a report commissioned by Lloyds Banking Group. Lloyds Banking Group’s Consumer Digital Index is the UK’s largest study of digital and financial capability.

Air has been linked to a higher risk of Alzheimer’s in 28 million older Americans. Breathing polluted air may do more than harm your lungs – it could also increase your risk of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study of almost 28 million older Americans published last month.

Google has agreed this week to pay $28 million to settle a class action lawsuit claiming that it favoured white and Asian employees by paying them more and putting them on higher career tracks than other workers.

Nearly 28 million outbound trips from the Middle East are at risk this year as a result of the disruption caused by the war launched by the ‌US and Israel ⁠on Iran, according to research on behalf of Oxford Economics.

Australia is projected to reach a population of 28 million by next year (2027), having passed 27 million in early 2024. The figure represents a significant milestone in Australia’s rapid post-pandemic growth, which has seen an average increase of one million people every two or three years.

Albania, Burundi, Equatorial Guinea (formerly Spanish Guinea), Guinea Bissau and Haiti each has a land area of about 28,000 sq km or 28 million sq metres.

Norway is often described as having a mainland coastline of roughly 2,500 km, but that figure stretches to over 28,000 km (28 million sq metres) when fjords, bays, and 50,000 islands are included. The 28,000 km figure is an example of the coastline paradox, which explains that as the unit of measurement becomes smaller, the measured length of a convoluted coast increases.

And 28 million minutes is equal to 53 years, 2 months, and 25 days, or 466,666.6 hours. In other words, if this blog was getting only one hit a minute, it would take more than 53 years, from the end of 1972, to reach this latest figure of 28 million .

It is four years since I retired from active parish ministry in March 2022. These days, though, about 100 people on average are reading my daily prayer diary posted on this blog each morning. I imagine many of my priest-colleagues would be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches totalled 700 or more people each week.

Today, I am very grateful to the real readers among those 28 million hits on this blog to date, and in particular I remain grateful to the faithful core group of about 100 people who join me in prayer, reading and reflections each day.

By the shores of Lake Butrint in south Albania … Albania has a land area of about 28,000 sq km or 28 million sq metres (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Daily prayer in the Kingdom Season: 7, Friday 7 November 2025

The Unjust Steward … part of the East Window in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick, made in 1878 by Mayer & Co and illustrating 10 parables (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in the Kingdom Season, the time between All Saints and Advent. The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Willibrord of York (739), Bishop, Apostle of Frisia (7 November).

Before today begins, before having breakfast, I am taking some quiet time early this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading 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.

‘The Unjust Steward,’ by the Kazakhstan Artist, Nelly Bube (Bubay)

Luke 16: 1-8 (NRSVA):

1 Then Jesus said to the disciples, ‘There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. 2 So he summoned him and said to him, “What is this that I hear about you? Give me an account of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.” 3 Then the manager said to himself, “What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. 4 I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.” 5 So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, “How much do you owe my master?” 6 He answered, “A hundred jugs of olive oil.” He said to him, “Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.” 7 Then he asked another, “And how much do you owe?” He replied, “A hundred containers of wheat.” He said to him, “Take your bill and make it eighty.” 8 And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.’

A ‘Shop To Let’ sign within view of Sidney Sussex College chapel, Cambridge … can we reconcile the values of the Kingdom and the demands of commercial life? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s reflection:

In the Gospel reading for the Eucharist today, we read the parable of ‘the Unjust Steward’ or the ‘Parable of the Dishonest Manager’.

Whatever name you give it, this morning’s reading is about ignoring and exploiting the plight of the oppressed and the poor and tells us that this amounts to turning away from God and turning towards idolatry. We are called to turn around, and in turning to the needs of the poor we find that we are turning to God.

So, let me tell this morning’s Gospel story (Luke 16: 1-13) in another way. When I left school, I started training as a chartered surveyor and in estate manager. I never finished that training, but I can visualise some of the characters in this story.

A very, very rich man lives in a big city, let’s say it is Dublin. He has a luxurious lifestyle made possible by the income from the apartments, hotels and office blocks he owns in the city centre. He has been a major property developer, and a key shareholder in one of the business banks lending to developers.

He has hired an estate manager to run his property holding company, his building society, and his insurance agency while he spends most of his time in his large country house in Co Kildare or Co Meath, in the Algarve playing golf or in Marbella on his yacht.

All the work of painting, maintaining the lifts and the plumbing in his apartment blocks, working the bar and servicing the rooms in his hotels, and working at the call centres in the office blocks, is done by people who travel in and out from the rims of the city, people whose grandparents probably once lived in the small terraced houses that once stood along the docks or the canal banks but were levelled to build those apartments, office blocks and hotels.

They pay their mortgages to the bank that financed the apartment blocks and similar developments. Their overdrafts are from the same bank. Their mortgage, insurance and life assurance policies are from an agency he owns. They find themselves increasingly in debt, paying school fees and health insurance, running a car or two cars, meeting term loan payments for fridges, freezers, TVs and laptops … What they earn is never enough to pay off their mortgages, their overdrafts, their term loans.

These families are slipping further and further into debt, working harder and harder to pay what cannot be paid.

But they never meet the rich developer. The immediate face of this system, of his companies and his investments, is the face of the estate agent who manages the blocks – a man whose grandparents came from the same families as the people who now suffer under his management.

However, his parents had escaped the system, he got a good education, and then got sucked into the system.

The developer hears rumours that the estate manager, who is also his insurance agent, has been squandering the developer’s resource, and gives him his dismissal notice. Now, remember that ‘squandering’ is not necessarily a bad word here – the sower in another parable squanders seed by tossing it on roads and in bird-feeding zones, and the shepherd in one of this week’s parables potentially squanders 99 sheep by running after the lost one; the widow searching for her lost coin risks losing her other nine as she sweeps everything out.

Meanwhile, the estate agent has to work out his notice, but is no longer authorised to let, to rent, to buy, to sell, to do anything at all in the developer’s name.

He probably shares the same background only a generation or two ago with the maintenance workers, the tenants, the workers in the office blocks. But when he is out on his ear, they are not going to help him to find a place to live, or find a new job, given that up to now he has allied himself with the developer’s interests, collecting high rents, refusing to bring down rents when the reviews are due, managing the work rotas for the maintenance workers, forcing them to work longer hours rather than taking on the staff needed for the job, dealing unjustly with both tenants and workers.

He has been demanding higher rents and premiums, and longer working hours, yet providing fewer and fewer services – doing what certain economists have advised him to do: increasing profit margins and productivity and cutting costs and outlays at one and the same time.

He may be shrewd, but that is why he is called ‘the dishonest manager’ (verse 8).

The agent then does something that is extraordinarily clever.

He gathers all the tenants and workers who owe him money, and he declares that their debts have been written down, more than the courts could ever write them down, to something that might be repaid, freeing families from heartbreaking choices. He has been upping their rents and their premiums; now he brings them all back to a payable rate. And in doing this, he manages to wipe out the arrears that have been mounting up.

The smart agent manages not to tell the tenants or the workers that he has been sacked. Nor does he tell them that the developer has not authorised any of his largesse. But the tenants and the workers now think the developer, their landlord, is more generous than anyone else in his position could be. The developer is now a hero in their eyes – and, by extension, the agent is too.

The developer comes back for his quarterly or annual visit to pick up the income the agent has collected for him, and he gets a surprise that is exhilarating and challenging. The people are delighted to see him. Workers shake his hands, tenants lean out of the balconies to wave at him, children want to have ‘selfies’ taken with him.

Then, as he inspects the books in the small office the agent has worked from in the complex, he finds out what the agent has done in telling the tenants and the workers that the developer has forgiven their debts.

He has a choice to make.

He can go and tell them that it was all a terrible mistake, that the agent’s ‘stroke’ amounted not to generosity but to theft, or at least to dishonesty, and has no legal basis – he can tell them they are still responsible for the unpaid rent, for the overdrawn loans.

The warm welcome could quickly turn to nasty protests.

Or, the developer can go outside, bask in the unexpected welcome he has received, and take credit for the agent’s actions. At least he has cash in his hand where once he might have had nothing because of defaulting tenants and clients. That would save him going to court, but has he to take the agent back to work for him?

What would you do?

Picture yourself in this dilemma, both as the agent and as the developer.

From the agent’s point of view, does it matter any more what the developer decides to do? Whatever decision the developer makes, his future is safe – either he gets his job back, or his own people are going to look after him.

But here is the big problem: what the agent did is clearly dishonest. He has taken the landlord’s property and squandered it – even after he was sacked and had no right to do anything in the developer’s name.

What is it that the agent has done, without permission? Who has he deceived?

The agent forgives. He forgives things that he had no right to forgive. He forgives for all the wrong reasons, for personal gain and to compensate for his past misconduct. But that decisive action that he undertakes redeems him from a position to which it seems he could not be reconciled, to the developer any more than to the tenants and workers.

So what is the moral of the story?

This story is unique to Saint Luke’s Gospel, and for him there is a significance that is important throughout the third gospel: Forgive. Forgive it all. Forgive it now. Forgive it for any reason you want. Forgive for the right reason. Forgive for the wrong reason. Forgive for no reason at all. Just forgive.

Remember, Saint Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer includes the helpful confusion: καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν, καὶ γὰρ αὐτοὶ ἀφίομεν παντὶ ὀφείλοντι ἡμῖν: καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν (‘and forgive us our sins for indeed we ourselves are forgiving everyone who is [monetarily] indebted to us’) (Luke 11: 4) – the monetary indebtedness is obvious in the original Greek.

We pray it, but do we put it into practice?

The arrival of the Kingdom of God is no occasion for score-keeping of any kind, whether monetary or moral.

Why should I forgive someone who has sinned against me, or against my sense of what is obviously right? I don’t have to do it out of love for the other person.

I could forgive the other person because of what I pray in the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday if not every morning.

I could forgive because I know I would like to be forgiven myself.

I could forgive because I know what it is like to be me when I am unforgiving.

I could forgive because I am, or I want to be, deeply in touch with a sense of Christ’s power to forgive and free someone just like me.

Or I could forgive because I think it will improve my life and sense of well-being.

It boils down to the same thing: deluded or sane, selfish or unselfish, there is no bad reason to forgive.

Extending the kind of grace God shows me in every possible arena – financial and moral – can only put me more deeply in touch with God’s grace.

If a crafty agent, a dishonest manager, an unjust steward, the sort of person we meet in this Gospel reading, can forgive to save his job or give himself a safety net when he is sacked, then those of us who have the experience of real grace, we who have been invited to the Heavenly Banquet, have a better reason than most people to forgive.

Where is the place for Christian values in today’s world of finance and debt? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Friday 7 November 2025):

The theme this week (2 to 8 November) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘From Solitude to Connection’ (pp 52-53). This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update from Ljudmila, a Ukrainian Refugee living in Budapest, Hungary.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 7 November 2025) invites us to pray:

Father, we pray for the ministry of Saint Margaret’s Church as they seek to be a light for you in Budapest. Thank you for the way your love is modelled through the church’s open doors.

The Collect:

God, the Saviour of all,
you sent your bishop Willibrord from this land
to proclaim the good news to many peoples
and confirm them in their faith:
help us also to witness to your steadfast love
by word and deed
so that your Church may increase
and grow strong in holiness;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion Prayer:

Holy Father,
who gathered us here around the table of your Son
to share this meal with the whole household of God:
in that new world where you reveal
the fullness of your peace,
gather people of every race and language
to share with Willibrord and all your saints
in the eternal banquet of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

Property developments and financial growth on the banks of the River Liffey in Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

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

With its Market Cross, canal and listed buildings, there is more to Leighton Buzzard than selling sand to the Sahara

The Market Cross in the centre of Leighton Buzzard stands in front of the former Cross Keys and the old Town Hall (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

We have all heard of bringing coal to Newcastle, an English idiom dating back to at least the 1660s. Similar sayings include selling snow to the Eskimos, or, in Greek, ‘taking owls to Athens’ (γλαῦκ’ εἰς Ἀθήνας). If you’ve heard of these, you have also pondered the futility of selling sand to the Sahara. But Leighton Buzzard has a sizeable sand quarrying industry, and the good enough quality building sand is exported to Egypt.

In recent days, I have been discussing some churches in Leighton Buzzard and Linslade, two neighbouring towns in south-west Bedfordshire, including All Saints’ Church, Leighton Buzzard, and Saint Barnabas Church, Linslade, and in the days to come I hope to look at Friends’ Meeting House on North Street, one of the oldest Quaker meeting houses in England.

Leighton Buzzard, between Aylesbury, Tring, Luton and Milton Keynes, is a market town on the banks of the River Ouzel and the Grand Union Canal and close to the Chiltern Hills. It is only 58 km (36 miles) from Central London and I pass through it regularly on the train between Milton Keynes and Euston. Indeed, many of my generation still recall that the Great Train Robbery in 1963 took place near Leighton Buzzard.

But this was my first time to walk around the streets of Leighton Buzzard and Linslade, to visit some of its churches and to explore the High Street, the alleyways and the mews and with an eclectic mix of historic buildings and monuments.

The Grand Junction Canal opened in 1800 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Grand Junction Canal opened in 1800. It skirted the west edge of the town, but lay just over the parish and county boundary marked by the River Ouzel, and was in the neighbouring parish of Linslade in Buckinghamshire.

The London and Birmingham Railway was built in the 1830s and passed just over half a mile west of the centre of Leighton Buzzard. Leighton railway station opened in 1838. Although the station was named after Leighton Buzzard, it was actually a mile south of the village of Linslade, in open countryside. New streets were laid out and houses built between the station and the canal in an area known initially as Chelsea.

Linslade has long been effectively a part of Leighton Buzzard but it was not until 1965 that it was transferred from Buckinghamshire to Bedfordshire, and the two urban districts were merged. Leighton-Linslade Town Council is based at the White House on Hockliffe Street and the town, which has a population of 43,203, is expanding to the south and to the east.

The River Ouzel once marked the boundaries between Leighton Buzzard and Linslade, between Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

It is not clear when Leighton Buzzard first grew up and developed, but some historians suggest there was a settlement in the area from as early as the year 571, and there are many theories about the origins of the town’s name.

The Leighton part of the name come from Old English Lēah-tūn, meaning a ‘farm in a clearing in the woods’. One version of the addition of ‘Buzzard’ says it was added by the Dean of Lincoln in the 12th century from Beau-desert. Another suggestion is that because there were two places called ‘Leighton’ in the Diocese of Lincoln, the dean added the name of the local Prebendary of Leighton, Theobald de Busar, and so over the years the town became Leighton Buzzard.

Leighton Buzzard developed and expanded in the 19th century with the arrival of road, canal and rail links. But the town had been a market town for centuries and its first market charter was granted in 1086.

The Market Cross is said to have been donated by Alice Chaucer in the 15th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Market Cross is a prominent landmark at the heart of the town and for centuries it has been a focus for public events. It is said to date from the 15th century and to have been donated by Alice Chaucer (1404-1475), Duchess of Suffolk and a granddaughter of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer.

A crowd gathered at the Market Cross in 1750 to denounce Jane Massey and Catherine Hawkes as witches, even though witchcraft laws had been repealed 16 years earlier. The crowd planned to drag the women to Luton to ‘float’ them in the river – the river at Leighton Buzzard was not deep enough. But several local men intervened and the mob was dispersed.

The Market Cross stands on a five-sided base and rises to a height of 27 ft. The lower storey rests on five buttresses, and the cornice has gargoyles and grotesques.

Above are five statues: facing down the High Street is the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child; to her right is a bishop and Saint John the Baptist with the Lamb of God; to her left is a crowned king and the Risen Christ.

Old figures from the Market Cross were placed around the Town Hall during restoration work in the 19th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

By 1650, the cross was ‘in a ruinous state that it greatly endangered the lives of those persons who were passing near it.’ A tax was levied on the residents to pay for its repair, but 200 years later the Market Cross was once again in need of repair in 1852.

The restoration included the addition of a stone parapet, new steps and an iron palisade. The statues were replaced with new ones, and the old figures were placed around the Town Hall.

The Market Cross needed further restoration in 1900. The old figures were placed back on the cross replacing the newer figures that had decayed badly. A new parapet with pinnacles and new steps were added.

The old Town Hall on the Market Square was built in 1851 and is now a Pizza Express restaurant (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The old Town Hall on the Market Square stands on the site of the Market Toll House, a timbered building with open arcades at ground floor level, a bell tower and a clock.

A new town hall was built in 1851. The market traders used the open ground floor while the upper storey was the town gall and was also used by the county court. The open arches on the ground floor were bricked up in the early 20th century to form a ground floor room.

The town council bought the market rights and the town hall from the lord of the manor, J Trueman Mills, for £1,200 in 1918, with the condition that it would be retained by the town council for ever for the use of the town. The building was used as a fire station from 1919 to 1963 and is now a Pizza Express restaurant.

The former Cross Keys Inn stands on the site of the chapter house of the Guild of Corpus Christi (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The former Cross Keys Inn on Middle Row stands on an island site at 35 Market Square, facing the High Street and the Market Cross. This is the site of the chapter house of the Fraternity or Guild of Corpus Christi, founded by Alice Chaucer as lady of the manor in 1473. The guild had two guardians and brothers and sisters from the parish and they supported a chaplain who said daily Mass in All Saints’ Church.

The guild was abolished in 1547 with the dissolution of monastic houses during the Tudor Reformation and the Brotherhood House was leased to Christopher Hoddesdon.

When the Cross Keys burned down in 1899, it was rebuilt on a much larger scale, twice the size of the old inn. It has been described as modified Carolean in style and is a Grade II listed building. The Cross Keys closed in 1988, later became Lloyds TSB Bank. Lloyds closed in Leighton Buzzard last November, and the building is vacant once again.

The former Barclays Bank was designed by Alfred Waterhouse but dates back to the foundation of Bassett’s Bank in 1812 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

In all, more than 70 buildings on the High Street are listed, including some of the town’s prominent bank buildings.

The former Barclays Bank on High Street dates back to 1812 when the Leighton Buzzard Bank was founded by five of the town’s Quakers: Peter Bassett, John Grant, William Exton, Joseph Sharples and John Dollin Bassett. The bank later traded as Bassett, Grant & Co, then as Bassett & Grant, Bassett Grant & Bassett and then Bassett Grant Bassett & Co. By 1854, it was Bassett Son & Harris.

The bank was rebuilt in 1866, and was designed by the Gothic revival architect Alfred Waterhouse (1830-1905), whose parents were also Quakers. He is best known for his designs for Manchester Town Hall and the Natural History Museum in London. His other works include Eaton Hall in Cheshire, designed for the Duke of Westminster, the Hall in Balliol College, Oxford, and other college buildings in Cambridge and Oxford, the former Foster’s Bank on Sidney Street, Cambridge, and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors on Great George Street, Westminster.

Bassett’s Bank amalgamated with Barclays and other banks owned by Quaker families in 1896 forming Barclays & Company. The Bassett family interests in the bank continued well into the 20th century. The Leighton Buzzard branch closed in October 18, 2023

The NatWest bank was designed in the style of an Italian palazzo and is an example of Neo-Renaissance architecture (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The NatWest bank on High Street was built later in the 19th century in the style of an Italian palazzo and is an example of Neo-Renaissance architecture. It is a three-storey stucco building with ground floor round arches, five sash windows, segmental arches on the upper floors and sash windows.

The bank is expected to close its doors in October 2025.

The Swan Hotel dominates the north half of the High Street and the building dates from the early 19th century. But there has been a Swan in Leighton Buzzard since 1600 or earlier, when it was owned by the Carvell and Osmond families. Today, it is owned by Wetherspoons.

The former Peacock Inn was once the oldest inn in Leighton Buzzard (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Peacock Inn was reputedly the oldest inn in Leighton Buzzard. It was listed as Grade II in 1954, when the architect thought it was a 16th or early 17th century building. It is a timber-framed building with a steeply pitched old tile roof with a gable, plaster infilling and some early 19th century brickwork to the front. A more detailed inspection in 1979 found the building is much older and probably dates to the early 15th century, making it the earliest secular building in the town.

The name of the Peacock Inn first appears in documents in the late 17th century, when it was owned in 1690 by the Peacock family. It closed in 1979 and was converted to a shop in the newly named Peacock Mews.

The now-closed Post Office on Church Square … once Pulford’s School (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

At the other end of High Street, the Golden Bell on Church Square opened as an inn in 1603. But it claims to stand on the site of a 13th-century thatched lodging house used by stonemasons who were building All Saints’ Church.

Beside it, the Post Office was Leighton Buzzard’s first purpose built-school, and was the gift of Lady Mary Leigh in 1790, when two endowed schools, the Joshua Pulford School and the Leigh Charity School, were amalgamated came to be known as Pulford’s.

The school moved to Parson’s Close in 1884, and the building became the Post Office. But the Post Office too has closed in recent months.

Wilkes Almshouses on North Street date back to 1630 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

At the other end of the town, Wilkes Almshouses on North Street date back to 1630. The original almshouses were built for ten poor widows by Edward Wilkes in memory of his father John Wilkes. The almshouses were rebuilt in 1857 and then extended in 1873.

Edward’s son, Matthew Wilkes, bequeathed funds in his will for an annual commemoration to take place on Rogation Monday at the almshouses, and this ceremony continues every year. All Saints’ Church is the starting point for the annual Wilkes Walk, described as ‘a curious procession of the church choir, clergy, and churchwardens across town to the almshouses in North Street.’

When the choir and the trustees of the Wilkes Charity reach the almshouses, an extract of Wilkes will is read out as a member of the choir stands on their head … a spectacle I must return to see.

The Swan Hotel dominates the north half of the High Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The former Belfast Bank in Rathmines has moved from a ‘Quid’ in the Psalms to making the best dough

The former Belfast Bank, now Reggie’s Pizzeria on Rathmines Road Lower, was designed by Vincent Craig (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

The former Belfast Bank at 221-223 Rathmines Road Lower is now Reggie’s Pizzeria and is one of the interesting buildings in Rathmines that I looked at last week, along with the former YMCA building on Lower Rathmines Road, close to Portobello Road, nearby Kensington Lodge on Grove Park, and the former Kodak building.

The former Belfast Bank in Rathmines is a small building in a Scottish Baronial style, with a sharp corner and a corner turret. Despite its size, it is very noticeable for the narrow façade that creates an optical illusion, for its individual features, and because of its prominent location on a busy corner where Rathmines Road Lower meets Rathgar Road and Rathmines Road Upper.

The side street is Wynnefield Road, and many people also know the building because of its location beside Slattery’s public house.

The narrow façade at the junction of Rathmines Road, Wynnefield Road and Rathgar Road creates an optical illusion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Belfast Bank was formed in 1827 by a merger of two private banks, Batt’s, also known as the Belfast Bank, and Tennant’s, also known as the Commercial Bank. The bank moved in 1846 to the former Assembly Buildings at the corner of North Street, Bridge Street, Waring Street and Donegall Street. Within decades, the bank was trading in branches throughout the northern half of Ireland.

The Belfast Bank had a New York branch by the 1860s, but it did not establish a branch in Dublin until 1892, when temporary premises were acquired in Dame Street. A purpose-built branch at 21-22 College Green was designed by William Henry Lynn and was built in 1893-1894.

The Belfast Bank in Rathmines was the second branch in Dublin, and a third branch in Dublin at 86 Talbot Street was designed by Frederick George Hicks and built in 1900. The branch building in Rathmines was designed by the Belfast architect Vincent Craig (1869-1925), whose work included clubhouses for yacht and golf clubs, Presbyterian churches, hospitals, banks for the Belfast Bank and the Ulster Bank, and masonic halls.

Craig was born at Craigavon, Strandtown, Belfast, in 1869, one of seven sons of James Craig, a wealthy whiskey distiller, and a younger brother of James Craig (1871-1940), later Lord Craigavon and first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.

Vincent Criag was educated at Bath College and received his architectural training in the office of William Henry Lynn from 1885 to 1889. He then spent a year travelling in Europe before setting up in practice in Belfast in 1891.

He was a member of the Royal Institute of the Architects in Ireland, and was elected a fellow (FRIAI) in 29 May 1906. He was also a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA, 1900). His pupils and assistants included John Charles Lepper, Arthur Norman McClinton and Jackson Graham Smyth. He exhibited drawings of three of his designs in the Irish International Exhibition in Dublin in 1907.

Craig was a keen yachtsman and motorist, and also a generous benefactor of hospitals. He represented Court Ward on Belfast City Council in 1903-1906, and he was president of the Belfast Art Society in 1903.

He worked from 5 Lombard Street, Belfast, and 22 Donegall Place, and lived at Eldon Green, Helen’s Bay, Co Down, which he designed for himself. He moved to England in 1910, retired from his architectural practice soon after, and lived in retirement at High Close, Wokingham, Berkshire.

The former bank is in a Scottish baronial style, with a sharp corner and a corner turret (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Craig’s bank in Rathmines was built between 1899 and 1900 for the Belfast Bank. Tenders were invited in September 1899 and the building was ‘nearly complete’ by mid-July 1900.

The site was once part of the Chains. A fading photograph in Slattery’s beside the former bank tells how the Chains were one of the worst slums in late Victorian Rathmines. According to Weston St John Joyce in The Neighbourhood of Dublin (1912), the Chains were a number of dilapidated shanties enclosed by chains hung from stone pillars. They had become ‘an unsightly and insanitary slum’ until they were cleared to make the site for a new bank.

The corner is marked by a tower, topped by a finial and cut into at the base to make the entrance. The curve to the castellation is picked up on the apex of the gable, and the little peaks on the slope look even more like cake decoration when you follow the line down into the fussy scrolled base.

The terracotta plaque with the coat of arms of Belfast and the motto ‘Pro tanto quid retribuamus’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

On the Wynnefield Road elevation, a terracotta plaque set into the wall displays the coat of arms of Belfast with the motto Pro tanto quid retribuamus (‘What return shall we make for so much?’). It is a paraphrase of Psalm 116: 12 in the Vulgate translation, which reads ‘Quid retribuam Domino pro omnibus quae retribuit mihi?’

My childish sense of humour could not resist being amused by a Latin motto on a bank building that includes the word Quid.

On this façade, the chimney’s descent stops nearly in line with the top of the door, and it is an additional tension, a feat of brinksmanship with the visual weight as well as a clear marker of the asymmetry of the two façades. The break happens within the entrance, too, with the columns holding nothing and the pointed brackets above hanging like stalactites.

Sitting on the string course are two stone figures that look like lions bearing shields with the initials BB for Belfast Bank. The doors have panels and panes of stained glass.

Two stone figures that look like lions bear holdshields with the initials BB for Belfast Bank (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

In the aftermath of the 1916 Rising, the Belfast Bank merged with the London City & Midland Bank in 1917, the first entry into the Irish market by an English bank. After partition, the Belfast Bank decided to operate only in what became Northern Ireland. Following secret negotiations, the business in what had become the Irish Free State was transferred to the Royal Bank of Ireland in 1923, along with 20 branches and their staff.

The bank in Rathmines was more recently the premises of the Trustee Savings Bank/TSB Bank, and then the offices of a recruitment agency. It is now Reggie’s Pizzeria, which was opened in December 2024 by Reggie White, his wife Amy and their daughter Florence, who live nearby.

He has been described by the The Irish Times as ‘Ireland’s pizzaiolo-in-chief.’ He has trained Ballymaloe, and had stints at Del Popolo and Flour+Water in San Francisco. He returned to Dublin, co-founded Pi on George’s Street, and then made his name consulting for some of Ireland’s best-known pizza spots, including Little Forest, Bambino and Otto. With ten of his friends, including James Lowe, quietly backing 20 per cent, he opened Reggie’s in Rathmines shortly before last Christmas.

Once again, my childish sense of humour could not resist being amused by the thought that a former bank that exalted the word Quid is now making some of the best dough in Dublin.

As for the Belfast Bank, its businesses in Northern Ireland eventually merged with the Northern Bank, which began trading in 1824. Both were acquired by the Midland Bank, the integration was completed in 1970, and Northern Bank continued to trade throughout the whole of Ireland. The Midland Bank eventually sold the Northern Bank to the National Australia Bank, which later transferred ownership to Danske Bank.

Many of the former Belfast Bank buildings in Northern Ireland have been sold on to other businesses. But the name of ‘Belfast Bank’ continues to adorn a few of the old buildings, including those in Portrush, Rathfriland and Warrenpoint, as well as the former bank building on that narrow corner on Lower Rathmines Road.

For the former National Bank and Bank of Ireland branch at Lower Rathmines Road, see here

Inside Reggie's Pizzeria in the former Belfast Bank on Rathmines Road Lower (Photograph © Bryan O’Brien, The Irish Times, 2025)

A visit to Newport Pagnell to find more buildings associated with the work of Edward Swinfen Harris

The legacy of Edward Swinfen Harris in Newport Pagnell includes the former Bassett’s Bank, now the Post Office (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Edward Swinfen Harris (1841-1924), the Stony Stratford-born architect who died 100 years ago last year, on 28 May 2024, remains a towering figure striding across the landscape of the neighbouring counties of Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire.

I spoke about his life work earlier this year in Stony Stratford library (24 February), and there are invitations later this year to speak about his work in the Swinfen Harris Hall in Stony Stratford (19 September) as part of the programme for Heritage Open Days, England’s largest festival of history and culture, and in the library in Buckingham with the University of the Third Age Architecture Group (11 September).

Edward Swinfen Harris worked mainly in the Arts and Crafts style, and his works include vicarages, houses, schools, church alterations and additions, church halls, almshouses, lynch gates and memorial crosses in the London Road cemetery. He seems to have been particularly adept at receiving commissions from local GPs, and his work can be seen in Stony Stratford, Bletchley, Buckingham, Calverton, Great Linford, Maids Morton, Newport Pagnell, Roade and Wolverton.

His legacy in Newport Pagnell includes: Lovat Bank on Silver Street (1876-1877), designed for FJ Taylor of Taylor’s Prepared Mustard fame; probably Lovat Lodge, beside Lovat Bank; his alterations to Tickford Abbey in the late 19th century; and the former Bassett’s Bank, now the Post Office on High Street.

I went to see both Tickford Abbey and the former bank when I was in Newport Pagnell at the end of last week.

Edward Swinfen Harris designed the Post Office in 1870-1872 for Bassett’s Bank (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Swinfen Harris designed the Post Office, built in 1870-1872 for Bassett Son & Harris, or Bassett’s Bank, the oldest banking institution in Buckinghamshire. The Bassett family were Quakers originally from Leighton Buzzard. Barclay’s, another bank founded by a Quaker family, had been Bassett’s London agents from the beginning.

The two-storey former bank has a symmetrical design in the Gothic Revival Style, and it is built of brick with polychrome brick and stone dressings, a stone plinth and quatrefoil openings. The pitched slated roof has lateral and axial chimney stacks with dentil bands. The entrances in end bays each has a stone doorcase of paired colonettes, with deeply carved capitals, supporting a gable with fleur-de-lis finial and an inset pointed arch with trefoil a motif.

The other features include wooden doors with herringbone panelling, round-arched ground floor sashes, with carved capitals supporting gauged polychrome brick heads, shallow brick pointed arch arcading with stone impost bands and gauged brick arches with stone hoodmoulds and ballflower springers and rectangular stone plaques with quatrefoil ventilation openings set in spandrels.

A continuous stone sill band has strips of white brick between windows. The central window has a two-stage head and a shaped stone hood, dated 1870, with a fleur-de-lis finial and ballflower corbels. There is a stepped brick cornice with stone gabled stops and a moulded parapet.

Barclay’s Bank took over Bassett’s Bank in 1896, and later new modern Barclays was built further down the High Street during the 1990s at the Market Hill. Meanwhile, the interior of the buikding designed by Swinfen Harris had been altered to suit modern banking and post office needs.

The Queen Anne frontage of No 60 is deceiving as the interior details indicate a much older property (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Further west along the High Street, Nos 60, 66 and 68 High Street form an architecturally interesting group of buildings.

No 60 High Street is an excellent example of an early 18th century town house. The Queen Anne frontage is deceiving, however, as the interior details indicate a much older property.

For most of the 20th century, this was the home of the Newport Pagnell Urban District Council.

This red-brick three-storey house with a hipped tile roof has a beautiful wooden doorcase with a fanlight above and two reeded Ionic pilasters, a stone plinth, bands and quoins, and a plaster coved cornice. There is an entablature with a pulvinated frieze and dentilled pediment.

No 68 High Street was once a 16th century dwelling house (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

A few doors down, on the same side of the street, No 68 is the offices of the Nationwide Building Society. It was once a 16th century dwelling house, although the timbers are about the only original building material remaining.

Brewery House is a Queen Anne red-brick house with a shell porch and doorcase (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Brewery House at 84 High Street is a Queen Anne red-brick period house with a shell porch and doorcase, and was carefully restored and renovated recently. It is a three-storey early 18th century house. The central panelled door has a fanlight, with a rusticated surround and a shell hood on consoles. The interior retains some attractive period features, including 18th century panelling and early 19th chimneypieces.

The house was home to the owners of the brewery that once stood beside it. The brewery buildings were used by Cooper’s the agricultural engineers, for more than half a century. They were demolished in 1990 and replaced by the present Boots Pharmacy and medical centre.

No 38 High Street is an early 17th century half-timbered house built of timber frame and plaster (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Walking along the High Street in Newport Pagnell, I had to look again at some of the many other interesting buildings along the street. No 38 High Street is an early 17th century half-timbered house built of timber frame and plaster.

Now a shop, this building is a three-storey house with an attic on a prominent site. The old timber framing was covered for many years by heavy rendering, but this is exposed once again, and the interior also has a fine early l7th century staircase .

I also peeped through the archway that leads to the United Reformed Church. The church dates back to 1659 and was built by independents or nonconformists on the site of an ancient meeting barn after the Revd John Gibbs, who had been the Vicar of Newport Pagnell until 1659, had been ejected for not administering the Sacrament to a notorious local drunk.

In time, the Independents grew in numbers and eventually built their own new chapel. The former Congregational church is now part of the United Reformed Church.

An archway leads to the United Reformed Church in Newport Pagnell (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Newport Pagnell Town Clock on the High Street commemorates the bicentenary in 2010 of the rebuilding of the town’s bridges in 1810.

The ornamental centre pillar and railings reflect the design of the Tickford Iron Bridge, the oldest cast iron bridge in the world remaining in everyday vehicular use.

Close to Tickford Bridge, Queen Annes Almshouses on Saint John’s Street were originally founded in 1287 as Saint John’s Hospital. It was rebuilt in 1891 to designs by Ernest Taylor a former assistant of Edward Swinfen Harris. Taylor also designed the reredos in Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church.

But more about these almshouses and this link with Swinfen Harris on another evening, hopefully.

The Newport Pagnell Town Clock on the High Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)