‘They have hanged my saintly Billy’ – how Wiiliam Palmer, the ‘Rugeley Poisoner’, went on a murder spree

William Palmer, the ‘Rugeley Poisoner’ or the ‘Prince of Poisoners’, depicted in the Illustrated Times

Patrick Comerford

In recent days, I have been recalling two tales of murder involving residents of Rugeley, although when I looked deeper into both stories they were not substantiated by the records or by contemporary evidence.

Dorothy Chatwynd was said to have strangled her husband Sir Walter Smyth, three times her age, and to have been executed by being burned to death. Dorthy was an aunt of Thomas Chetwynd, who married Dorothy Coleman, a granddaughter of William Comberford of Comberford Hall and the Moat House, Tamworth.

But when I looked into this story in greater depth, it turned out there is no primary evidence nor are there contemporary records of either the murder or of the supposed execution on Wolvey Heath in Warwickshire.

The second tale involves the sisters Elizabeth Cuting and Emma Hollinhurst, said to have been buried alive in the old churchyard in Rugeley on the capricious orders of Oliver Cromwell. But it takes only a little probing to realise how impossible this was: Cromwell died in 1658 and the sisters died in Rugeley almost 40 years later: Elizabeth in 1695 and Emma in 1696.

However, across the road from the ‘Old Chancel’ and the shared tomb of the two sisters Elizabeth and Emma, two headstones in Saint Augustine’s churchyard tell real stories of Victorian murders in Rugeley. One headstone, on the southside of the churchyard, is to Christina Collins, who was murdered on a canal boat near the church in 1839. Fresh flowers are still laid on her grave regularly.

The grave of Christina Collins, murdered on a canal boat in 1839 … fresh flowers are laid on her grave regularly (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Nearby, under the yew trees at the west end of the church, is the grave of John Parsons Cook, murdered by Dr William Palmer (1824-1856). Undoubtedly Palmer had many other victims, but Cook’s murder was the only one for which he was convicted, and he was executed 170 years ago, in 1856.

Palmer is known as the ‘Rugeley Poisoner’ or the ‘Prince of Poisoners’. He poisoned his friend with strychnine, but he was also suspected of poisoning several other people, including his brother, his mother-in-law and four of his infant children – and there may have been many more. Charles Dickens called him ‘the greatest villain that ever stood in the Old Bailey’.

But why did he do it? Palmer made large sums of money from the deaths of his wife and brother by collecting on life insurance, he had defrauded his wealthy mother, and may have murdered his own children rather than bearing the expense of feeding and clothing them. And, it seems, it was all to feed an insatiable gambling addiction.

William Palmer was born at Church Croft House in Rugeley, between the canal and the ‘Old Chancel’ on 6 August 1824, the sixth of eight children of Joseph and Sarah Palmer. His father, a sawyer who made his fortunes in coalmining and collieries, died when William was 12, leaving his widow Sarah with a legacy of £70,000, the equivalent today of about £9.5 million.

At 17, Palmer was apprenticed to a chemist in Liverpool, but after three months he was dismissed amid allegations of theft and embezzlement. He was then taken on as a ‘walking pupil’ at Stafford Infirmary, went to London to study medicine at Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital, and received a diploma from the Royal College of Surgeons. He returned to Rugeley at the age of 22 in August 1846, styling himself Dr Palmer and setting up practice as a local GP.

Palmer met a plumber and glazier George Abley at the Lamb and Flag public house in Little Haywood, near Wolseley Bridge and half-way between Rugeley and Stafford. There Palmer challenged Abley to a drinking contest; Abley was carried home and died in bed. Nothing was ever proved, but local people noted how Palmer showed an interest in Abley’s attractive wife.

A year later, Palmer married 20-year-old Ann Thornton, also known as Ann Brookes, in Saint Nicholas Church, Abbot’s Bromley, on 7 October 1847. Her mother, also called Ann Thornton, was the mistress of Colonel William Brookes, a former East India Company office who had lived in Stafford. After Brookes died by suicide in 1834, she had inherited a fortune of £8,000, worth about £1.35 million today.

The elder Anne Thornton had lent Palmer money, and she died on 18 January 1849, two weeks after she came to stay with him. An elderly Dr Bamford recorded a verdict of apoplexy while Palmer, for his part, was disappointed with the smaller-than-expected inheritance he and his wife gained from the death.

Palmer became interested in horse racing and borrowed money from Leonard Bladen. They had met at the races, Bladen lent him £600, and then he died at Palmer’s house on Anson Street on 10 May 1850. Bladen’s wife was surprised to find that he died with little money on him despite having recently won a large sum at the races, that his betting books were missing, and there was no evidence that he had ever lent money to Palmer. The death certificate said Palmer was ‘present at the death’ and the cause of death was an ‘injury of the hip joint, 5 or 6 months; abscess in the pelvis’.

Palmer’s first son, William Brookes Palmer (1848-1926), outlived his father. But his four other children all died in infancy, and the cause of death for each child was given as ‘convulsions’. At the time, no one seems to have suspected anything untoward about these deaths, but after Palmer's conviction many suggested he had poisoned them to avoid the cost of feeding them.

An image of William Palmer on a tourist notice board on Market Street in Rugeley (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

By 1854, Palmer was heavily in debt and was forging his mother’s signature to pay off creditors. He took out life insurance on his wife, paying a premium of £750 for a policy of £13,000. She died soon after, on 29 September 1854, at 27.

Palmer was still heavily in debt, owing £12,500 and £10,400 to two creditors, who threatened to speak to his mother and expose his fraud. He then took out life insurance on his alcoholic brother Walter, paying a premium of £780 for a policy of £14,000, and then plied Walter with several bottles of gin and brandy a day until he died on 16 August 1855. The insurance company refused to pay out, sent two inspectors to investigate the policy and demanded a further inquiry into Walter’s death.

By then, Palmer was having an affair with his 18-year-old housemaid, Eliza Tharme. Nine months after Anne’s death she gave birth on 26 or 27 June 1855 to a son Alfred, only adding to the doctor’s financial burdens. Palmer’s life and debts were spiralling out of control and he set about plotting the murder of his friend John Parsons Cook, a sickly young man who had inherited a fortune of £12,000.

Palmer and Cook went to the races in Shrewsbury in November 1855, where they bet on a number of horses. Cook won £3,000 but Palmer lost heavily. The pair had a party to celebrate but Cook began to complain that his gin had burnt his throat, fell violently ill and told two friends: ‘I believe that damn Palmer has been dosing me.’ The two men returned to Rugeley on 15 November, and Cook booked a room at the Talbot Arms. A day earlier, Palmer received a letter from a creditor named Pratt, who threatened to visit his mother to demand repayments.

By then, five-month-old Alfred was unwell and he died of erysipelas, a bacterial infection, on 17 November 1855. That same day, Cook thought he had recovered from his illness, met Palmer again for a drink, but became sick yet again.

At this point Palmer assumed responsibility for Cook. Cook’s solicitor, Jeremiah Smith, sent over a bottle of gin, and when a chambermaid took a sip she became ill. Cook was given the rest of the gin, and his vomiting became worse. A day later, Palmer bought three grains of strychnine from a Dr Salt, put them in two pills and gave them to Cook along with two ammonia pills. Cook died in agony at about 1 am on 21 November, screaming that he was suffocating.

When Cook’s stepfather, William Stevens, arrived in Rugeley on 23 November, Palmer told him Cook had lost his betting books, that all bets were cancelled and that Cook had £4,000 in outstanding debts. When Stevens demanded an inquest, Palmer produced a death certificate from an 80-year-old Dr Bamford giving the cause of death as ‘apoplexy’.

The Talbot Arms on the left and Palmer’s house to the right … an image of Market Street, Rugeley, at the time of Palmer’s trialin 1856

At a post mortem in the Talbot Arms on 26 November, Palmer interfered and took away the stomach contents in a jar, supposedly for ‘safekeeping’. When a second post mortem was held three days later on 29 November, the local postmaster Samuel Cheshire intercepted letters to the coroner and gave them to Palmer, and was later jailed for interfering with the mail. Palmer wrote directly to the coroner, asking for a verdict of death due to natural causes and enclosing a £10 note.

The jury delivered a verdict on 15 December saying Cook had ‘died of poison wilfully administered to him by William Palmer’. Palmer was arrested for murder and forgery, was held in Stafford Gaol, and put on trial at the Old Bailey in London on the grounds that a fair jury could not be found in Staffordshire. When the bodies of Ann and Walter Palmer were exhumed and reexamined, Walter was too badly decomposed to make any new findings but antimony was found in all the organs in Ann’s body.

Palmer’s was defended by Sir William Shee (1804-1868). The chemist Dr Salt and another chemist, Charles Roberts, admitted selling Palmer strychnine, believing he was going to poison a dog, but both had failed to record the sales in their poisons books. At the trial, Palmer’s finances and debts were detailed, showing he had only £9 in the bank on 3 November 1855. A man desperately in need of money to avoid the debtors’ prison at all costs had murdered his friend for his money and tried to cover his tracks by sabotaging the post-mortem.

It is said 30,000 people gathered at Stafford Gaol on 14 June 1856 to see Palmer’s public hanging. As he stepped onto the gallows, he looked at the trapdoor and exclaimed, ‘Are you sure it’s safe?’ He was not yet 32. He was buried beside the prison chapel in a grave filled with quicklime. After his execution, his mother is said to have cried out: ‘They have hanged my saintly Billy.’ Her words inspired the title of Robert Graves's final historical novel, They Hanged My Saintly Billy (1957).

The grave of John Parsons Cook in the churchyard of Saint Augustine’s Church, Rugeley (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The only victim for whose murder Palmer was convicted, John Parsons Cook, was buried in Saint Augustine’s churchyard, close to the grave of Christina Collins, who was murdered on a canal boat in 1839, close to the house where Palmer was born and was living as a child, and across the street from the ‘Old Chancel’ and the tomb shared by Elizabeth Cuting and Emma Hollinhurst, with effigies depicting them in tied, linen shrouds.

The Vicar of Rugeley had so many people visiting the churchyard to see where Cook was buried that he paid for a gravestone with two lines of Scripture: ‘Enter not into the path of the wicked. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away’ (Proverbs 4: 14-15).

As for the Talbot Arms, where Palmer murdered Cook and where the sabotaged post-mortem had taken place, it took its name from the Talbot family, a local family of titled magnates who were descended from John Chetwynd, a first cousin of Dorothy Chetwynd, the alleged husband-killer.

John Chetwynd’s great-granddaughter, Catherine Chetwynd, who inherited Ingestre Hall and 10,500 acres in Staffordshire, married John Talbot (1710-1756) in 1748. The Talbot family owned coalmines, collieries and large tracts of land in Rugeley, Brereton and Cannock, and the Crown, a coaching inn on Market Street in Rugeley, was renamed the Talbot Arms.

It is part of the local lore in Rugeley that the name of the Talbot Arms was changed to the Shrewsbury Arms after Palmer’s hanging because of the embarrassing associations with Palmer’s murder of Cook and the subsequent inquest.

However, once again, this is probably another example of myth trumping history. The pub had been known as the Crown until 1810, when its name was changed to the Talbot Arms in honour of the grandson of Catherine Chetwynd and John Talbot, Charles Chetwynd Chetwynd-Talbot (1777-1849), 2nd Earl Talbot and later Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1817-1821).

In the next generation, his son Henry John Chetwynd-Talbot (1803-1868) was Conservative MP for Armagh (1831), Dublin (1831-1833) and South Staffordshire (1837-1849). He succeeded his father as the 3rd Earl Talbot and 3rd Viscount Ingestre on 10 January 1849. Then, on 19 August 1856, a mere two months after Palmer’s execution, Talbot succeeded a distant cousin in the Talbot family as the 18th Earl of Shrewsbury and 18th Earl of Waterford.

The line of succession was not clear or obvious, and there were other claimants to fend off, including distant Talbot Irish kinsmen in Co Wexford and in Malahide. The House of Lords eventually ruled in favour of the Rugeley claimant, and the Talbot Arms in Market Street celebrated the occasion, changing its name to the Shrewsbury Arms.

Today the pub boasts the more trendy but less classy name of ‘The Shrew’ … possibly in the hope that the name will tame any future potential imitators of William Palmer.

Palmer is less well-known than Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen (1862-1910) nor is he as notorious as Dr Harold Shipman (1946-2004). But he remains the most prolific murderer in Rugeley and part of local lore and history.

The Talbot Arms, where Palmer murdered Cook, later became the Shrewsbury Arms and is now called ‘The Shrew’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Towcester has Roman origins and it claims to be the oldest town in Northamptonshire

Towcester in Northamptonshire, like many towns along Watling Street, has Roman origins (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Many people know Towcester in Northamptonshire because it is close to Silverstone or because of the racecourse. Towcester is only 14 km from Stony Stratford, further north along the A5, but – despite an hourly bus link – I only visited the market town for the first time earlier this week.

Like many towns along the route of Watling Street, Towcester too has Roman origins: think of St Albans (Verulamium) in Hertfordshire, Fenny Stratford (Magiovinium) in Buckinghamshire, Mancetter (Manduessedum) near Atherstone, or Wall (Letocetum) outside Lichfield.

Towcester is a growing market town with a population of 11,500 that is growing to 20,000 with new housing. It claims to be the oldest town in Northamptonshire and one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in England.

As a former coaching town along Watling Street, Towcester has many similarities with Stony Stratford. But I was interested too in seeing the remains of the motte and bailey or ancient castle known as Bury Mount, visiting Saint Lawrence’s Church, which has Norman, Saxon and possibly even Roman roots, and learning a little more about the town’s associations with Charles Dickens.

Bury Mount is the site of the motte-and-bailey castle built by the Normans (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Towcester was the Roman garrison town of Lactodurum on Watling Street, and it was enclosed by a wall and a ditch. The name Towcester indicates the town’s Roman origins, referring to a Roman camp or settlement by the River Tove.

Saint Lawrence’s Church is said to stand on the site of a large Roman civic building, possibly a temple, and there was a bath house in the area too. There are two possible sites for the Battle of Watling Street, fought in 61 CE, close to the town: Church Stowe 7 km (4.3 miles) to the north, and Paulerspury, 4.8 km (3 miles) to the south.

When the Romans left in the fifth century, the area was settled by Saxons. In the ninth century, Watling Street became the frontier between the kingdom of Wessex and the Danelaw, and Towcester became a frontier town. Edward the Elder fortified Towcester in 917.

The Normans built a motte-and-bailey castle on the site in the 11th century. Bury Mount is the remains of the fortification and was renovated in 2008.

The Saracen’s Head, the best-known coaching inn in Towcester, was known to Charles Dickens as the Pomfret Arms (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Sir Richard Empson (1450-1510), who owned the Manors of Towcester and Easton Neston, was a powerful political figure in Tudor Northamptonshire. He was MP for Northamptonshire, Speaker of the House of Commons, High Steward of Cambridge University and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

After John Comberford’s wife Joan Parles had died, John, his son Thomas Comberford and his daughter-in-law Dorothy (Beaumont), sold the former Parles and Comberford family estates near Towcester, including Stoke Bruerne, Shutlanger, Alderton and Wappenham, totalling about 400 acres, to Sir Richard Empson in 1504.

Empson and Edmund Dudley made Henry VII very rich when they raised taxes using extortion, harassment, and other dubious though legal means. When Henry VIII became king, he had the two arrested; they were tried in Northampton for treason in 1509 and were beheaded on Tower Hill on 17 August 1510.

Empson’s estates were later bought by Richard Fermor, and they remained with the Fermor family – later the Fermor-Hesketh family and Earls of Pomfret – until 2005. William Fermor, who inherited the estates, married Jane, a cousin of Sir Christopher Wren, in 1671, and rebuilt Easton Neston to designs by Wren’s assistant Nicholas Hawksmoor. Work started in the 1690s, and the work was completed in the late 1720s.

Meanwhile, the Monastery, once the manor house of the Comberford estate in Shutlanger, outside Towcester, had become a farmhouse on the Fermor estate. It was included in an exchange between the trustees of the 5th Earl of Pomfret and the 5th Duke of Grafton at the time of inclosure in 1844.

Figures of Venus (left) and Apollo (right) on the façade of the Saracen’s Head in Towcester, said to have come from Easton Neston (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

When the stagecoach and the mail coach were in their heyday in the 18th and early 19th centuries, Watling Street became a major coaching road between London and Holyhead and the main route to Ireland, and Towcester flourished as a major stopping point. Many coaching inns were established in Towcester, and they provided stabling facilities for travellers. The coaching inns that remain include the Saracen’s Head, alongside older pubs in Towcester such as the Brave Old Oak and the Plough.

Charles Dickens refers to Towcester in The Pickwick Papers (1837). The Saracen’s Head, which was renamed the Pomfret Arms in the 1830s, dates from the18th century but has older origins. The central carriage arch typifies these coaching inns. The round-arched window above the arch is flanked by niches holding fine lead statuettes of Venus (left) and Apollo with a harp (right). They are said to have come from Easton Neston.

Sam Weller in The Pickwick Papers recommends it as a place where a ‘very good little dinner’ could be got ready in half an hour. It returned to the name of the Saracen’s Head in 1944.

A year after Dickens published The Pickwick Papers, the coaching trade came to an abrupt halt in 1838 when the London and Birmingham Railway was opened. It by-passed Towcester and passed through Blisworth, which is four miles away but near enough to result in Towcester quickly returning to being a quiet market town.

The Town Hall was designed by the Towcester-born architect Thomas Heygate Vernon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Town Hall and Corn Exchange was designed by the Towcester-born architect Thomas Heygate Vernon (1837-1888) and built in 1865. Leading figures in Towcester formed a company, issued shares and raised the capital to build the town hall, and its Italianate frontage is a reminder of their confidence and enterprise.

Towcester was linked to the national rail network in 1866 with the first of several rail routes. In time, Towcester had rail links with Blisworth (1866), Banbury (1872), Stratford-upon-Avon (1873) and Olney and Bedford (1892). But these links closed one-by-one, and goods traffic finally closed in 1964 with the Beeching cuts.

The nearest station today is in Northampton, 16 km (10 miles) away, and the site of the old railway station is now a Tesco supermarket.

The Chain Gate was built by the Fermor family in 1824 as part of the Easton Neston estate (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Towcester Racecourse on the east side of the town is a venue for both horse races and greyhound racing. It was originally part of the Easton Neston estate. The Chain Gate, today the main entrance to the racecourse, was built in 1824 and was designed in the classical style as the entrance to Easton Neston House and Park. The Roman archway which is supported by Corinthian columns and flanked with colonnades and gatehouses.

When the Empress Elizabeth of Austria (‘Sisi’), who built the the Achilleion Palace in Corfu in 1888-1891, visited England in 1876, she rented Easton Neston House, with its fine stabling for her horses. During that visit she established a race meeting of her own, when a course was laid out in Easton Neston Park and a stand erected for guests. It was the first horse race at Towcester.

After Sisi left Towcester, a meeting at the Pomfret Arms decided to repeat the steeplechase meeting and Sir Thomas Fermor-Hesketh gave a 51-year lease to hold Easter Monday races at Easton Neston Park.

Three years later, while she was hunting in Co Kildare in 1879, Sisi strayed on her horse into the grounds of Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth. There she encountered the Acting President of Maynooth, William Walsh, a future Archbishop of Dublin. On her return to Ireland a year later, Sisi presented the college with a statue of Saint George and she later donated a set of vestments of gold cloth, decorated with gold and green shamrocks and the coats of arms of Austria, Hungary and Bavaria. While she was visiting Geneva, Sisi was assassinated at the Beau Rivage Hotel on 10 September 1898 by an Italian anarchist Luigi Luccheni. She was 61.

The Easton Neston estate was sold by the Hesketh family in 2005 to the Russian oligarch Leon Max, who was born Leonid Maksovich Rodovinsky.

Towcester is bypassed by the A43, but traffic on the A5 still passes through the town centre (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Although Towcester is now by-passed by the A43, traffic along the A5 still passes directly through the town centre. Towcester is twinned with Zhydachiv in the Lviv region in west Ukraine.

Towcester has sent five ambulance, filled with medical supplies and other aid, to Ukraine, and I heard this week about how the town is sending a sixth ambulance to charity workers in Lviv. The ambulances are filled with essential items, including warm clothing, blankets and disability aids.

The initiative is led by Saint Lawrence Church in Towcester and the Tove Benefice, which have been working to acquire and fill ambulances with supplies for Ukrainian paramedics. The Tove Benefice and the local Rotary Club continue to work to raise money through various events, including a Vicarage Fete and Open Gardens, selling ribbons and sunflowers, a concert and hosting families.

In Saint Lawrence’s Church on Monday, I saw yet another ambulance being filled with medical equipment. The ambulance is due to leave Towcester next Sunday (23 March), when Steve Challen from the Tove Benefice and Alex Donaldson begin a 1,350-mile drive to Lviv.

But more about Saint Lawrence’s Church in Towcester on another day, hopefully.

Signs of hope for Ukraine … Bansky-style street art in Whitton’s Lane in Towcester (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Mary’s Church in Somers Town, the church of the great ‘slum priest’ Basil Jellicoe, is at risk

Saint Mary’s Church on Eversholt Street, between Euston Station and Camden High Street, is covered in scaffolding (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Saint Mary’s Church on Eversholt Street, halfway between Euston Station and Camden High Street, has been covered in scaffolding and corrugated fencing for a long time now and is on the ‘high risk’ register of English Heritage.

But the church, which was built 200 years ago, is part of the story of Somers Town, an area that once had some of the worst slum housing in London, and is forever associated with the work of Father Basil Jellicoe, one of the pioneering Anglo-Catholic ‘slum priests’ in London the early 20th century.

The slums expanded as the railway stations at Euston and King’s Cross opened in the 19th century. As time moved on, living standards in the area stagnated. Somers Town is also the location for a number of significant films, including the Ealing comedy The Ladykillers (1956), with Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers; Neil Jordan’s Mona Lisa (1986), starring Bob Hoskins; and Shane Meadows’s Somers Town (2008), filmed around Phoenix Court in Purchese Street.

Eversholt Street was originally the name of only the northern part of the street above Cranleigh Street, formerly Johnson Street, which is on the Bedford Estate. The portion in Somers Town includes the former Upper Seymour Street and the part of Seymour Street north of Drummond Crescent. The lower part continues south to the Euston Road immediately east of Euston Station.

Inside Saint Mary’s Church, Somers Town, designed by Henry William Inwood and his father William Inwood (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Mary’s Church was built as Saint Mary’s Chapel in 1824-1827 as a chapel of ease for Saint Pancras Old Church on what was then Upper Seymour Street. At an early stage it was known as ‘Seymour Street Chapel’ or ‘Mr Judkin’s Chapel’, referring to its first priest, the hymnwriter and painter the Revd Thomas James Judkin (1788-1871).

The church was designed by Henry William Inwood (1794-1843) and his father William Inwood (1771-1843), and was built by IT Seabrook in 1824-1827. Henry William Inwood was an architect, archaeologist, classical scholar and writer. Father and son are best known as the joint architects of Saint Pancras New Church (1819-1822), where their design was inspired by classical Greece, using elements from the Erechtheum, especially the caryatids, and the Tower of the Winds in Athens.

The Inwoods collaborated on two other Greek Revival churches in the parish of Saint Pancras: All Saints’ Church, Camden Town (1822-1824) and Saint Peter’s Church, Regent Square (1822-1825, now demolished). Both father and son died within four days of each other in 1843.

Inside Saint Mary’s Church, Somers Town, built in what was described as a naive ‘Carpenter’s Gothic’ style (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Mary’s was built in what was described as a naive ‘Carpenter’s Gothic’ style. A parliamentary grant paid for the construction and local taxes funded the purchase of the site and for the interior decoration.

Saint Mary’s was consecrated on 11 March 1826. The Revd William Stephen Gilly (1789-1855) attended as the minister, but apparently he seldom preached there. Soon after its consecration, Saint Mary’s attracted some notoriety as the scene of the vaunted conversion of many people in the neighbourhood from Roman Catholicism. The church also became known as the ‘Cabbies’ Church’, serving the cabbies of the horse-drawn cabs that queued up at Euston Station and their families.

Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, the architect of the Gothic Revival in England and Ireland, satirised Saint Mary’s, comparing it with Bishop Skirlaw’s Chapel at Skirlaugh, Yorkshire, built in 1401-1405 by Walter de Skirlaw when he was the Bishop of Durham. Yet the architectural historian Sir Niklaus Pevsner later described the chapel as ‘a perfect piece of Perpendicular architecture’.

Charles Dickens went to church in Saint Mary’s during his schooldays when his family was living nearby at Cranleigh Street. Owen P Thomas, a schoolfellow at the Classical and Commercial Academy on Hampstead Road, relates how he and Dickens ‘very piously attended the morning service at Seymour Street Chapel.’

Inside Saint Mary’s Church, Somers Town, looking west ... it was originally built as a plain ‘preaching box’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Mary’s was built as a plain preaching box in an elegant Gothic style. It has a central tower, prominent pinnacles and a row of 12 windows along the north side. The church has slate pitched roofs and brick walling with stone dressings. Inside, elegant cast iron columns support Gothic style arches, and the ceiling has rib vaulting.

Three schemes reshaped the interior of Saint Mary’s in the 19th century: it was decorated by JK Colling in 1874; the chancel was added by Ewan Christian in 1888, when the side galleries were removed; and in 1890 by RC Reade inserted traceried transoms in the windows and the west gallery was taken out.

The High Altar and reredos date from 1915 and are by the sculptor Mary Grant (1831-1908), who also sculpted the figures on the West Door of Lichfield Cathedral. The Calvary in Saint Mary’s, originally from Saint Mary’s Church, Charing Cross Road, is also her work. It was moved to Somers Town in the early 1910s, and has been restored recently.

The Calvary in Saint Mary’s Church, Somers Town, first designed by Mary Grant for Saint Mary’s Church, Charing Cross Road (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Father Basil Jellicoe was Missioner at the Magdalen College Mission which was run from Saint Mary’s in the 1920s and 1930s. His ground-breaking work in the Saint Pancras Housing Association cleared the area’s slums and tackled the causes of poverty.

The Revd John Basil Lee Jellicoe (1899-1935) was the eldest son of Bethia Theodora and the Revd Thomas Harry Lee Jellicoe (1861-1943), the Rector of Saint Peter’s Chailey and a cousin of John Jellicoe (1859-1935), 1st Earl Jellicoe. He was educated at Haileybury and Magdalen College, Oxford, and during World War I he was with the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean. He then studied at Saint Stephen’s House, Oxford, and was ordained in 1922.

Jellicoe became Missioner at the Magdalen College Mission, the outreach arm of Magdalen College, based at Saint Mary’s. When he arrived in Somers Town, the slums near Euston and King’s Cross had expanded and grown and it was an area of exceptional overcrowding and poverty. He believed people should see God’s work in action in their lives, and his great concern was that Christianity should be about showing people God loves them and they should have the right to decent lives.

The pulpit in Saint Mary’s Church in Somers Town ... Father Basil Jellicoe was Missioner at the Magdalen College Mission from 1922 to 1934 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

In his crusade for slum clearance, he founding the St Pancras House Improvement Society, later the St Pancras Housing Association, in 1924. For many years it was run by Irene Barclay (1894-1989), a campaigner for social housing and the first woman to qualify as a chartered surveyor.

The association built high-quality homes at decent rents the people who were living in the slums and could to afford to rent the new properties. He commissioned ceramic decorations by Gilbert Bayes that continue to adorn some of the buildings where the slums used to be.

On one occasion, he theatrically burned paper mâché representations of vermin. He became the landlord of a local pub when he opened the Anchor in Chalton as a ‘reformed pub’ in 1929. The first drinks were served to the then-Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang.

Basil Jellicoe also founded several other housing associations in East London, St Marylebone, Kensington, Sussex and Cornwall. He toured England in his small car fundraising and selling loan stock to fund his housing projects.

He was at the Magdalen College Mission and curate of Saint Mary Somers Town until 1934, when he became the curate of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, where Canon William Patrick Glyn (‘Pat) McCormick (1877-1940) had succeeded Canon Dick Shepherd as Vicar.

But, while he was improving the lives of others, Basil Jellicoe allowed his own health to suffer and probably worked himself to death. When he died in Uxbridge on 24 August 1935 he was only 36. He is commemorated in the Diocese of London with a memorial day on 24 August. The annual Jellicoe Sermon at Magdalen College is named in his honour, and his work continues to the present.

Saint Mary’s was one of the first churches in the Diocese of London to celebrate the Mass facing the people (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

After World War II, when much of the church building had fallen into disrepair, the interior was redecorated and refurbished in a simpler style. Saint Mary’s was designated a Grade II listed building in 1954.

Reflecting the new liturgical emphases from the 1970s on, Saint Mary’s was one of the first churches in London to decide to celebrate the Mass using the westward position, facing the people.

The church provided a safe haven for women who worked in the area in the 1970s and 1980s, when it was known as a red light district.

Saint Mary’s Church has been the spiritual heart of Somers Town for almost two centuries (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Mary’s has been the spiritual centre of Somers Town for almost two centuries. But during work at the vicarage in 2022, serious structural faults were found at in the church, and these were confirmed in detailed studies by stonemasons, architects and structural engineers.

Saint Mary’s was temporarily closed in June 2022 and reopened in September 2022. Protective scaffolding was erected in 2023 to catch falling masonry. The roofs are in poor condition along with the gutters, flashings and rainwater goods. There is water staining internally, along with dampness at a low level. Areas of stone are decayed and past repairs using cement are becoming detached.

The parishioners were told in December 2023 the church could be demolished because of its crumbling disrepair. Today it remains wrapped in scaffolding and corrugated fences amid concerns about falling masonry.

The scaffolding and fencing cost £100,000 a year, and when Saint Mary’s exhausted its own funds, the Diocese of London agreed to bear this cost, but stated this is not an indefinite solution. Estimates suggest it could take £1.7 million to repair the building fully, including £1.2 million for immediate repairs to the stonework and cement, and another £500,000 is needed for urgent repairs to the roof, electrics and heating. The key priorities involve restoring the stonework, removing the costly scaffolding, decorating the porch after a leak repair, replacing the roof and installing a sustainable heating system.
The demolition of the church would be a drastic step that would mean the end for a church that has served generations of families since it was consecrated in 1826.

Looking out from Saint Mary’s Church through the cladding and scaffolding onto Eversholt Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Since 2003, Saint Mary’s has been part of a team of four parishes that includes Saint Michael’s Church, Camden Town, Saint Pancras Old Church and Saint Paul’s Church, Camden Square, as one parish with four districts. Father Paschal Worton, a former Franciscan friar and missionary in Zimbabwe, is the parish priest of Saint Mary’s.

The Magdalen Club is named after the Magdalen College Mission, which came to Saint Mary’s in 1908. The Magdalen Centre recalls the parish’s longstanding commitment to the local community. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the Magdalen Centre hosts a drop-in for young families from the local area between 1 and 3 pm.

In the winter months, Saint Mary’s joins with other churches in the area to host C4WS, a local charity providing shelter for the homeless, as well as helping people to find work and permanent housing.

The regular services at Saint Mary’s include the Parish Mass at 11 am and Benediction at 5 pm on Sundays, and weekday Masses at 11 am on Tuesdays, 6 pm on Thursdays, 1:05 pm on Fridays and 10:30 on Saturdays. Benediction at 5 pm on Sundays is described as ‘a gentle half-hour with Jesus, as he comes to us in love in the Blessed Sacrament’, with prayers, hymns, contemplation and silence. Tuesday morning Masses are followed by coffee and conversation.

Saint Mary’s Church is part of a team of four parishes in the Old Saint Pancras and Camden Town area (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Soho Square and the origins of a name and a family motto: are hunting links no more than myths?

Soho Square at the heart of Soho in London’s West End … but where does the name comes from? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Before having a bad tumble on Oxford Street last week, when I ended up in the A&E unit in University College Hospital London on Euston Road, I had spent some time in the Tottenham Court Road, Oxford Street and Soho area, looking for old churches and buildings of architectural interest.

I have been in Gerrard Street and Chinatown before, and I first stayed in an hotel off Oxford Street back in 1970 or 1971. But I had never really got to know Soho.

Of course I knew of Soho as a centre for the theatre and music industries and its seedy reputation in the past as a centre for the sex industry, prostitution and night clubs that featured regularly in salacious reports in tabloid pressarchi from the 1950s on.

I knew of Soho too in lyrics from hits in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the Kinks (‘I met her in a club down in old Soho / Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like Coca-Cola’) and the Who (‘Ever since I was a young boy, I’ve played the silver ball / From Soho down to Brighton, I must’ve played ’em all’) to Shane Macgowan and the Pogues singing ‘Rainy Night in Soho’ in 1990:

I took shelter from a shower
And I stepped into your arms
On a rainy night in Soho
The wind was whistling all its charms.

Soho is a much different area in recent years, to a degree. Many parts of it have been gentrified, with attractive cafés and restaurants, hotels and bars, theatres and music studios, although there is still a whisper everywhere of its recent salacious past.

Soho was a part of the ancient parish of Saint Martin in the Fields, forming part of the Liberty of Westminster.. But Soho never was an administrative unit with formally defined boundaries. It is about a square mile in area, and is usually considered to be bounded by Shaftesbury Avenue to the south, Oxford Street to the north, Regent Street to the west, and Charing Cross Road to the east. The area to the west is Mayfair, to the north Fitzrovia, to the east Saint Giles and Covent Garden, and to the south Saint James’s.

The ‘Tudorbethean’ mock ‘market cross’ building at the centre of Soho Square was built in 1926 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Soho Square in the centre of Soho has been a public square effectively since 1954 when it was transferred by the Soho Square Garden Committee to Westminster City Council. It was originally called King’s Square to honour Charles II.

But the name of Soho goes back long before King’s Square became Soho Square.

I have long been interested in the origins of the name Soho, wondering whether its etymological origin has any connection with the motto with slight variations on most Comerford coats-of-arms and that has long escaped a credible explanation or translation: ‘So Ho Ho Dea Ne.’

Most accounts say the name of Soho derives from an English 16th-century hunting cry ‘So-Hoe’ when the area was open fields and grazing land. There are also places called Soho near Handsworth in Birmingham, once a part of Staffordshire, and New York and Hong Kong, although the name of Soho in New York is an acronym for South of Houston Street.

The history of Soho as we know it today does not begin until after the Great Fire of London in 1666. It was originally a royal park used for fox and hare hunting. The fire destroyed two-thirds of London, creating in a huge demand for new housing. Soho quickly went from open fields to an fashionable residential location.

Immigrants began to settle in the area from around 1680 onwards, particularly French Huguenots after 1688, and the area became known as London’s French quarter. Greek Street was first laid out around 1680 and was named after a nearby Greek church. The early Irish residents included Arthur Annesley, 5th Earl of Anglesey, and Peter Plunket, 4th Earl of Fingall, and later Josiah Wedgwood ran his main pottery warehouse and showrooms there.

Building work in Golden Square, Gerrard Street and Old Compton Street began in the 1670s and Soho Square itself was laid out in 1681. When building began on Soho Square in 1681, one of the first residents was the Duke of Monmouth, one of the many illegitimate sons of Charles II. The square had become known as Soho Square by 1720, and when John Rocque drew his keynote map of London in 1746, the name of Soho Square had replaced King’s Square.

Monmouth House in Soho Square, built for the Duke of Monmouth, later became the French ambassador’s residence, but was demolished in 1773.

Soho Square was still close to the countryside in the late 18th century. Speakers of the House of Commons had houses in the square and a number of foreign embassies were there, including those of France, Russia, Spain and Sweden. But, between 1778 and 1836, the square was also home to the infamous White House brothel at the Manor House, 21 Soho Square.

Joseph Addison and Richard Steele wrote of their character Sir Roger de Coverley in The Spectator, saying, ‘When he is in Town he lives in Soho-Square.’

By the mid-18th century, the aristocrats who had been living in Soho Square or Gerrard Street had moved away to more fashionable areas such as Mayfair. By the 19th century, they had been replaced by prostitutes, brothels, music halls and small theatres.

In A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens has Lucie and her father, Doctor Manette living on Soho Square. It is believed that their house is modelled on the House of Saint Barnabas, and so the name of Rose Street was changed from Rose Street to Manette Street. Golden Square is mentioned by Dickens in Nicholas Nickleby, and Ralph Nickleby has a house on the square.

Robert Louis Stevenson had Dr Henry Jekyll set up a home for Edward Hyde in Soho in the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Soho was badly hit by an outbreak of cholera in 1854. John Snow’s study of the outbreak was significant in the history of epidemiology and public health. He mapped the addresses of the sick and noted that they were mostly people whose nearest access to water was the Broad Street pump.

Many small restaurants and cafés sprang up in Soho in the 19th century, particularly as a result of Greek and Italian immigration.

Soho Square has two churches, Saint Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, partially on the site of Carlisle House, and the French Protestant Church, as well as the House of Saint Barnabas, which closed last year. Saint Anne’s Church on Wardour Street was built in 1677-1686. Nearby, the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and Saint Gregory on Warwick Street was built in 1788 and is the only remaining 18th-century Roman Catholic embassy chapel in London.

At the centre of Soho Square is a listed mock ‘market cross’ building, built in 1926 to hide the above-ground appearance of an electricity substation. It is a small, octagonal, rustic gardener’s shed with black-and-white, timber framing, a steep hipped roof and a squat upper storey with jettying, supported by timber columns. It incorporates 17th- or 18th-century beams and its style has been described as ‘Tudorbethan’.

The much-weathered statue of Charles II was carved in 1681 by the Danish sculptor Caius Gabriel Cibber, father of the Poet Laureate Colley Cibber. It became the centrepiece of the square, set on a pedestal above a fountain and basin, with four figures representing four rivers, the Thames, Severn, Tyne and Humber.

In time, the fountain ceased to function, the basin was filled, and eventually the statue was removed In 1875 during alterations in the square by Thomas Blackwell, of Crosse & Blackwell, the food firm then based at 20-21 Soho Square.

Blackwell gave the statue to a friend, supposedly, for safekeeping, and it was absent for many decades, stashed away as a private garden feature in a country house. It was returned to Soho Square in 1938, although the garden was not restored and opened to the public until 1954.

Cibber’s statue of Charles II, sculpted in 1681, was returned to Soho Square in 1938 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The name Soho dates from at least 1632, but ‘So Ho!’ has been used as a hunting cry from perhaps the early 1300s. It was used in calling from a distant place to alert hounds and hunters when a hare had been sighted, similar to the use of ‘Tally Ho!’ in fox hunting – when a fox breaks cover and ‘soho!’ is the cry when the huntsmen uncouple the dogs.

Various dictionaries say ‘soho’ was a synonym for ‘tally-ho’, and the the word ‘soho’ as a call by huntsmen to direct the attention on the dogs or of other hunters to a hare that has been discovered, or to encourage them in the chase. Soho in London developed on an area that had been a royal park once associated with hunting and the area was developed from farmland by Henry VIII in 1536, when it became a royal park.

Interestingly, the Duke of Monmouth used ‘Soho!’ as a rallying cry for his troops at the Battle of Sedgemoor, the final battle in his rebellion. But the name Soho or So Hoe was in use for the area at least 50 years before the Duke of Monmouth led his troops with the battle cry.

Will Noble, editor of the website Londonist, wonders whether the link between the hunting cry ‘So Ho’ and the name of Soho is little more than an ‘unsubstantiated urban myth’. He dismisses as ridiculous another theory that Soho is an abbreviation of South of Holborn, pointing out that, in fact, Soho is to the west of Holborn.

Walter Thornbury discussed another cry theory in the Victoria County History in 1878. He suggested that ‘soho’ might come from ‘the footpad’s slang of the 16th century, when the fields were lonely at night, and divers persons were robbed in them.’ Footpads were the equivalent of highwaymen on foot, but there is nothing to substantiate Thornbury’s claim.

There are many other Sohos, SoHos and SOHOs around the world, from Malaga to Buenos Aires and Beijing, and all seem to take their name from Soho in London.

There is another Soho in Handsworth, which was once in Staffordshire but has been subsumed into Birmingham. The name of this Soho is said to come from an inn sign on Soho Hill that depicted a huntsman with the word ‘Soho!’ coming from his mouth. Other sources suggest Soho in Handsworth takes its name from a map reference to a building called South House, abbreviated as ‘So. Ho’. But it is also possible that the name was taken from Soho in London. Soho is now part of Handsworth and the name is used primarily with reference to the long and linear shopping centre along Soho Road.

As Will Noble writes, ‘the sketchiness of our Soho’s etymology is part of what makes this place so special.’

The Dog and Duck in Soho … the pub signs are a reminder of Soho’s hunting past (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The motto ‘So Ho Ho Dea Ne’, with variations in spelling, has been used in the heraldry of the Comerford and Comberford families from at least the early 17th century. Any attempts to translate, explain or interpret the motto have always been inadequate, and it remains inexplicable. But the motto may relate to the presence of a talbot or hunting dog in the Comberford arms, which in turn may be associated with the arms of the Wolseley family, though the colouring is inverted. A similar hunting dog can be seen today in places in Soho, including the ‘Dog and Duck’ on the corner of Bateman Street and Frith Street.

The coincidence of the ‘So Ho …’ motto and the talbot in the Comberford and Comerford coats of arms may have been associated with the imaginative myth, repeated in Joseph Comerford’s fantastical pedigree in 1724, that ‘Roger de Comberford of Staffordsh[ire] came into Ireland with King John & was Great Master of the Game.’

The origins of the name of Soho in London seem less difficult to unravel than the origins of my family motto.

The motto ‘So Ho Ho Dea Ne’ has been used in Comberford and Comerford coats of arms since the early 17th century (Photo collage: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Three former synagogues in Soho are reminders of immigrants, tailors and strikes in the West End

Soho Theatre on Dean Street in the heart of the West End is housed in a former synagogue (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Soho was once a notorious red light district, but it has been gentrified in recent years, and is known today for its theatres, restaurants, cafés and music scene. Soho Square is one of the prettiest and most unexpected open spaces in the West End, and in the past it was the home to many Jewish impresarios, producers, directors, and the locations of some now-lost synagogues, Jewish charities, schools and more.

Soho Theatre on Dean Street is one of London’s busiest theatre and comedy venues, with a year-round festival programme and a buzzing bar in the heart of the West End. The theatre, which opened in March 2000, is housed in a former synagogue, having raised the funds to buy and redevelop the building.

When I was in Soho last week, I searched for the stories of Jewish Soho. I visited this former synagogue and went in looking for some of its predecessors, including the former Beit HaSepher Synagogue on Soho Square and the former West End Talmud Torah and Bikkur Holim synagogue on Manette Street.

The West End Great Synagogue, which was known as the West End Talmud Torah and Bikkur Holim Synagogue until about 1950, was first formed in 1910 with the merger of the West End Talmud Torah, which had been founded at Green’s Court in 1880, and the former Bikkur Holim Synagogue, which had been at Brewer Street, off Golden Square. It also incorporated the Beit HaSepher synagogue on Soho Square.

Karl Marx and his family lived in abject poverty at 21 Dean Street from 1848 to 1856 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Karl Marx and his family lived in abject poverty at 21 Dean Street from 1848 to 1856, until his wife inherited a legacy and they could afford to move to Haverstock Hill in Belsize Park. By the late 19th century, the Jewish community in Soho was made up of shopkeepers and immigrants who had moved into the West End.

The dominant local industry was tailoring, with people working in hard conditions in their flats and workrooms on bespoke suits and theatre costumes and supplying trimmings, and embroidery, from Saville Row to West End theatres.

Then in 1912, 1,500 skilled West End tailors, mostly immigrants from central and east Europe, went on strike, and 12,000 Jewish tailors in the East End also went on strike in support of them. The strikes were successful, and brought an end to the exploitation of sweated labour. Royalty Mansions on the site of the former Royalty Theatre on Meard Street, off Dean Street, were first built in 1908, and are a reminder of these skilled workers.

The former Manette Street Synagogue at 14 Manette Street, between Greek Street and Charing Cross Road (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

These highly exploited but low-paid workers were, by and large, members of Orthodox Jewish families that were immigrants from central and east Europe, and they needed small chevrot there, just as they were needed in the East End.

The Talmud Torah Synagogue first began above a shop at 9 Green’s Court, off Golden Square in Soho in 1880. The Bikkur Holim Synagogue was formed at 41 Brewer Street, also off Golden Square in 1910. They soon merged, and after a brief time in Berwick Street moved in 1916 to 14 Manette Street, between Greek Street and Charing Cross Road, and behind Soho Square, where it was known as Manette Street Synagogue.

Manette Street was originally known as Rose Steet, and takes its name from A Tale of Two Cities, in which Charles Dickens has Dr Alexandre Manette and his daughter Lucie living on Soho Square. Their house is said to have been modelled on the House of Saint Barnabas, which Dickens visited. Because of this association, Rose Street behind the House of Saint Barnabas was renamed Manette Street.

The Soho Square Beth HaSepher Synagogue was established in 1910 and in 1916 moved to 26A Soho Square, beside the Charity House or House of Saint Barnabas on the corner of Soho Square and Greek Street.

The building was once a workhouse associated with Saint Anne’s Parish and had a variety of religious uses from the 1830s for over a century. It was a church-run commercial school from 1839 to 1847. The it was part of the House of Charity until that moved around the corner to 1 Greek Street in 1862. It was then the Saint John the Baptist Mission House and Industrial School (1870-1899), followed by Saint Patrick’s Home for Working Boys (1903-1916).

The Beth HaSepher synagogueS founded in 1910, moved to 26A Soho Square around 1917. It was affiliated to the Federation of Synagogues.

The Soho Square Beth Hasepher Synagogue moved to 26A Soho Square in 1916 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The two synagogues on Manette Street and on the corner of Soho Square and Greek Street merged in 1948, and moved to 21 Dean Street, where the new synagogue was renamed the West End Great Synagogue.

For many years, Soho had a distinguished rabbi in Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Ferber (1879-1966), the author of many books. He was the rabbi of the West End Talmud Torah Synagogue from 1913, established the Chesed V’emeth Burial Society in 1915, and consolidated the various activities and religious life of the community of Jewish working class immigrants in Soho into one institution.

He was described as a ‘man of saintliness and gentleness, loved and admired by all who came into contact with him’. He remained Rabbi of Soho for 42 years, from 1913 until his retirement in 1955.

The West End Great Synagogue owned its own cemetery, consecrated in 1915. Because of this, over the years, many smaller congregations affiliated with it and with its burial society. Some of them or their members still retain this affiliation, although many of these congregations are no longer active. They include Commercial Road Great Synagogue, Congregation of Jacob Synagogue, Ezras Chaim Synagogue, Fieldgate Street Synagogue, Great Garden Street Synagogue, Nelson Street Sephardish Synagogue, Sandy’s Row Synagogue and Teesdale Street Synagogue.

Royalty Mansions on the site of the former Royalty Theatre … a reminder of the skilled clothing workers who lived and worked in Soho a century ago (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The original building on Dean Street had been damaged by German bombs during World War II and was rebuilt as a new synagogue in 1964. Rabbi Maurice Lew was appointed Rabbi of the West End Great Synagogue in 1963, and his official induction as rabbi also involved the consecration of the rebuilt building.

Maurice Lew was born in Siedlce in Poland, and his father, Rabbi Israel Joseph Lew, was the Rabbi of the Mile End and Bow Congregation. Rabbi Maurice Lew retired as Rabbi at Dean Street in 1979.

The West End Great Synagogue maintained a minyan or quorum for many years and generously donated to Jewish charities and student activities. The building on Dean Street included halls used for dancing and by the Labour Friends of Israel. The Ben Uri Gallery, founded in 1915 to support East End artists, relocated there in the 1970s and remained there until 1996.

When the synagogue at 21 Dean Street closed in the 1990s, the remaining members moved to the Western Marble Arch Synagogue. The synagogue still exists nominally as an independent congregation, with an address at the Western Marble Arch Synagogue but with its own burial society and cemetery and some affiliation to the Federation of Synagogues.

After the former West End Great Synagogue moved to the Western Marble Arch synagogue, the former synagogue on Dean Street became the Soho Theatre.

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום‎

The Soho Theatre on Dean Street opened in the former synagogue in 2000 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Mary Bishophill Senior, the site of an old Roman villa and an early church in the heart of York

The gates leading into the site of Saint Mary Bishophill Senior in York (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Saint Mary Bishophill Senior was once an Anglican parish church in the Bishophill area of York, and I visited the church site within the city walls when we were staying in York last weekend.

The churchyard stands behind gates and tall railings at the point where Bishophill meets Cromwell Road. Carr’s Lane, an old cobbled lane on the east side of the churchyard, runs down to Skeldergate, separating the churchyard from the site of an old Quaker burial ground, where the burials include the American abolitionist John Woolman (1720-1772) and several members of the Tuke family.

Across the street from the old churchyard and the former Quaker burial ground, the Golden Ball stands on the corner of Cromwell Road and Victor Street, facing the entry to Carr’s Lane. It is York’s first community co-operative pub, and I enjoyed visiting it too last weekend.

Saint Mary Bishophill Senior … the church before its demolition depicted on a noticeboard on the churchyard railings (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Mary Bishophill Senior had long fallen into disuse when it was demolished in 1963. At the time the church was being demolished, excavations in 1959-1960 and 1964 came across evidence of a Roman presence on the site and a of 10th century cemetery with a precinct wall, although there was no clear evidence was found of an associated church and nothing was found to support speculation that there had been a Saxon cathedral on the site.

A Roman villa or town house, with an open courtyard, was first built on the site of the later churchyard ca 350.

It has been suggested that Saint Mary’s Church, Bishophill Senior, is the aula of Saint Mary, referred to by Alcuin as existing in the 8th century. However, there is no evidence for ecclesiastical use of the site before the 10th century, when a rectangular enclosure was formed on the site in the 10th century, probably as part of a religious burial ground.

The earliest church on the site was built in the early or mid-11th century, before the Conquest. It was a small rectangular stone building, reusing some Roman and Northumbrian stones. By the late 11th century, there was a single-cell church on the site.

Additions were made to this church in the early Norman period but after damage by fire in 1137 an entirely new church was built. A north aisle and a south doorway were added ca 1180 and the enclosure was also enlarged, to both east and west.

Carr’s Lane, an old cobbled lane, on the east side of the churchyard, runs down to Skeldergate (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The oldest surviving record of the church is from 1202. Both the crown and successive noble families had the right to appoint rectors, and the church often had two incumbents, until the mid-18th century.

The chancel added in the early 13th century was longer than the original structure, which became the church nave. The north aisle was extended one bay further east ca 1300, and a north chapel was built ca 1319. A severe thunderstorm on 6 April 1378 destroyed the wooden porch and part of the stone belfry. The north aisle of the chancel was rebuilt, perhaps in 1403, two south windows were inserted in the late 15th century, and the east window and roof were replaced.

After the Tudor Reformation, the parish was extended in 1586 to include Clementhorpe, outside York city walls.

Brick was used to heighten the chancel in the 17th century, and a north west tower was built in 1659, replacing a detached tower in the churchyard. Work on the church continued when a brick porch was added in the late 18th century. A gallery was built in 1841 to house a growing congregation.

Saint Mary Bishophill Senior was grade I listed but was demolished in 1963 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The church was restored in 1859-1860, by the York architects and brothers JB and W Atkinson. They were also commissioned to build Saint Clement’s Church on Scarcroft Road to meet the needs of a developing suburb on the other side of the city walls.

When the new Saint Clement’s Church on Scarcroft Road was made the parish church in 1876, Saint Mary’s was falling into decline and it was reduced to being a chapel of ease. This decision was unpopular with parishioners, and the church was transferred instead to the parish of Saint Mary Bishophill Junior instead in 1885.

The church was used for worship until 1919, and was closed entirely in 1930. By 1950, it was in a poor state of repair. Although it was grade I listed, the church was demolished in 1963.

The churchyard remains consecrated ground, with many surviving headstones,and is run as a community garden (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Much of the stonework was rescued by the architect George Pace During excavations on the site, three fragments of an Anglo-Saxon cross shaft were found, all dating from the 10th and 11th century. But local speculation that there had been a Saxon cathedral on the site was not confirmed.

George Pace reused parts of the fabric in building Holy Redeemer Church, on Boroughbridge Road, Acomb, on the west side of York. Some of the monuments and fittings inside the church were moved to Saint Clement’s Church on Scarcroft Road, while the organ and plate were moved to Saint Mary Bishophill Junior.

The churchyard remains consecrated ground. The earliest visible headstone dates from 1775. The wall and gates largely date from the 17th to the 19th centuries and are grade II listed. The section to the south-east may incorporate part of the boundary wall of the Saxon burial ground.

Since the church was demolished, the Bishophill community has taken responsibility for maintaining the churchyard as a community garden in partnership with the Parochial Church Council of Saint Mary’s Bishophill Junior.

The Golden Ball, across the street from the churchyard, is York’s first community co-operative pub (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Across the street, in the heart of Bishophill, is the Golden Ball, where Charlotte’s father introduced me to the Sunday music evening. The pub stands on the corner of Cromwell Road and Victor Street, facing the entrance into Carr’s Lane. It is a Grade II listed free-of-tie pub with a well-preserved Victorian layout and tiled bar, and it is York’s first community co-operative pub.

The pub was first mentioned in newspapers in 1773, and it is said locally that Charles Dickens, was a patron during his frequent visits to York to relative who worked on nearby Micklegate.

The future of the Golden Ball was thrown into question some years ago, when the licensees, Linda and Dave Foster, decided to retire. But its regulars stepped in with a plan to secure its future, and a co-operative was launched on 12 November 2012, making the Golden Ball the first city centre pub in England that is owned by the community.

In time, 200 members paid £400 to sign up to the co-operative, and the pub’s community links have blossomed since then. A range of community groups use the pub. It has hosted beer festivals and an annual summer fete, sells works by local artists and hosts local music nights.

The Golden Ball supports local independent businesses, selling locally sourced food as well as local, free-range eggs from Johnson’s in Terrington delivered directly each week. Visitors are invited to donate a box of eggs to Hoping Street Kitchen to help provide free meals for people in need. The pub was grade II listed in 2010 and is listed in CAMRA’s National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors.

The Golden Ball in York is the first city centre pub in England that is owned by the community (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)