Patrick Comerford
As I was walking last week between Buckingham and Gawcott, the home village of the Gothic revival architect Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811-1878), the Mitre pub and Mitre Cottage on Mitre Street in Buckingham caught my attention. Both were once historically part of the Manor of Gawcott and Lenborough, and I wondered whether the Mitre could be the oldest pub in Buckingham, as it likes to boast.
A devastating fire in Buckingham in 1725 destroyed 138 houses and left 507 people homeless. This explains why Buckingham has a range of interesting Georgian architecture, but it also explains why few if any pubs in the town can match the claims to antiquity of the Mitre.
For centuries, Gawcott had a church and mediaeval Gawcott was part of a prebend of Buckingham. At the time of the Domesday Survey, the estate that became known as Prebend End Manor, or Buckingham with Gawcott Manor, formed part of the endowment of Buckingham Church.
Prebend End was a district with a priest but no church. The local economy was supported by nearby farms, businesses, and pilgrims visiting Saint Rumbold’s Well, a sacred spring said to have emerged upon the saint’s death. The greater part of Buckingham formed part of the large prebendal estate whose landlords were generally absentees. Prebend End includes the vicarage and Prebend House, a two-storey building dating from the 16th century.
Until after the Reformation, Prebend End Manor or Buckingham with Gawcott Manor belonged to the prebendaries of Sutton cum Buckingham in Lincoln Cathedral. In 1254, Matthew, also Archdeacon of Buckingham, claimed jura regalia in Gawcott as part of his prebend.
Another early prebendary was Cardinal Napoleone Orsini (1263-1342), cardinal deacon of San Adriano al Foro, Archpriest of Saint Peter’s Basilica, Rome, and a nephew of Pope Nicholas III, who appears to have held the prebendal stall for about 40 years. He is first mentioned ca in 1298, but he seems to have spent little time in England, and in 1303 he was ‘staying beyond seas’. Cardinal Neapolio crowned Cardinal Jacques Fournier as Pope Benedict XII in 1335. He lived until 1347, but he resigned his prebendal stall at least five years before that. The prebendal stall was again held by an absentee cardinal in 1376. Cardinal Peter of Saint George was the prebendary in 1388 and Cardinal Henry of Naples in the following year.
After the Dissolution of the monastic houses at the Tudor Reformations, the manor became a lay fee and was subject to temporary or life grants. It was held by Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, brother of Queen Jane Seymour and uncle of Edward VI, in 1547, and by Seymour in 1569 and in 1595. But by 1609 it was held again by the Crown. The manor was sold in 1613 to the Denton family, and passed by marriage to the Coke family. It was bought in the 19th century by Richard Plantagenet Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville (1797-1861), 2nd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, shortly before he went bankrupt, having accumulated massive debts through extravagant spending, ill-judged land purchases and an unsustainable lifestyle. The Prebendal House is now part of the University of Buckingham.
The Mitre Inn and Mitre Cottage, which give their name to Mitre Street, may date back to ca 1420. They were originally linked to the Lord of the Manor of Gawcott and Lenborough, paying a quit rent in exchange for exemption from military service.
The Mitre Inn is a half-timber and brick house of two stories and attics, and the pub claims to be the oldest pub in Buckingham. It appears on John Speed’s map of Buckingham in 1610, when it is shown beside Mitre Cottage at the corner of Bonehill Lane (now Mitre Street) and Hunter Street. The pub also features on a Rutgers map in 1661.
Originally a thatched, stand-alone building, the Mitre was expanded in the late 17th or early 18th century. After renovations in the late 18th century, the bar was laid out with multiple rooms with doors between them, and a central off-sales counter. The bar was further forward, with the beer being served using jugs from barrels on stillages in the room immediately behind the bar.
The cellar was excavated in the 1970s, and the barrels moved downstairs. At the same time, the bar was moved back to its previous position before we then installed the new bar nearer to its original position, which can be seen today.
The garden and patio areas were laid out in 2007-2008, having been previously divided into two as public and private areas. The fireplace in the lounge came from No 7 Mitre Street and was installed in 2009. Before then it held a gas fire with a 1960s surround.
During renovations in 2012, fragments of the original thatch were uncovered in the top-floor walls. Additions from this period include a set of stables to the left and a small lounge with a fireplace, which now shares a wall with Mitre Cottage. At the same time, the pub’s upper floors were extended, the roof was tiled, and loft space was converted into three bedrooms. A new brick façade was added at the time, and the windows to the front were extensively renovated or replaced in 2014. Further evidence of the working past of the Mitre emerged when the stable floor was unearthed in 2015. The outline of the hayloft door and an original window can still be seen from outside.
The Mitre is a friendly local pub, with beams, an open fire, and real ales served from the cellar. It has won the Milton Keynes and North Buckinghamshire Camra ‘Pub of the Year’ award in 2015, 2020, 2023 and 2025 and the Buckinghamshire Camra ‘Pub of the Year title in 2025.
Mitre Cottage next door is a Grade II listed building. It a timber-framed cottage with a thatch roof and full cruck trusses either end and to the left of centre. The cottage was originally built in the 15th century and was altered in the 17th and 19th centuries. Part of Mitre Cottage was once a butcher’s shop, and part of it was demolished for road-widening in the 20th century.
Today Mitre Cottage is on the market through Russell and Butler of Buckingham with an asking price of £425,000.
