A bus shelter in Tamworth now blocks a restored listed building on Lichfield Street, but was this the chapel of the Moat House?

The former Peel School at No 17 Lichfield Street, Tamworth, has been restored in recent years … was this once the private chapel of the Moat House? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

Mark Sutton and a small team of dedicated local skilled tradesmen in Tamworth have dedicated the last three years to restoring one of Tamworth’s lost jewels. They are close to completing a beautiful and sympathetic restoration of a long neglected grade II listed property, the former Peel School at No 17 Lichfield Street.

Mark has also been running No18 Coffee House and Wine Bar next door for the past three years too, and they celebrated that third birthday on Friday night at No18 with live music from Matt Sutton. Earlier, on Friday morning, I called into No 18 for a double espresso, but also visited No 17, the former Peel School, to see the work in progress as they put the finishing touches to the building, installing a new floor.

The old wooden doors have been removed, the original front stone window has been recreated, and all the stonework has been restored by Jason Petricca. The front is as close as Mark Sutton and his team can imagine how the building was originally designed when it was commissioned in 1837 by Sir Robert Peel.

But just before the window board was removed, in what can only be described as a work of cultural vandalism on the weekend before last, Staffordshire County Council erected a fresh new green bus shelter right in front of the newly created window, blocking it from view all along Lichfield Street.

‘I could cry if it wasn’t so laughable,’ Mark posted on social media. ‘Why they couldn’t put it 10 feet to the left where the bus stop actually is I'll never know. We have had no consultation in this whatsoever.’

Inside No 17 Lichfield Street, Tamworth, with a glimpse of the new bus shleter at the front door (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

I have long had a personal interest in the former school Mark Sutton is restoring, not least because I have long wondered No 17 Lichfield Street may once have been the private chapel of the Moat House, the Comberford family Tudor-style mansion a little further west along the same side of Lichfield Street.

This building at 17 Lichfield Street looks like a Victorian chapel and it was built as a school for Sir Robert Peel in 1837. It was the second building for the Peel School, which was first founded in 1820 in Church Street, beside Saint Editha’s churchyard.

The school moved to Lichfield Street when this building was erected in 1837. But it was housed there for little more than a decade and moved once again in 1850 when Sir Robert Peel replaced it with a new, third school across the street designed by Sydney Smirke.

In recent years, No 17 was a betting shop and then a furniture shop until it was closed and was sold in 2018. Until it closed, it was a whitewashed building. It has a large Gothic window in the gable, flanked by a lower Tudor-headed window and door.

Inside No 17 Lichfield Street, Tamworth, as its restoration moves closer to completition (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In a comment on a Tamworth Facebook page some years ago, Andrew Hale suggested that this building was originally a private chapel and was located in the original grounds of the Moat House.

He says the original bill for moving the building was paid not by the owners of the Moat House but by Sir Robert Peel, on the condition that it was converted into a school.

Andrew Hale did his prize-winning history project on the Moat House and its history in 1978-1980 while he was at Wilnecote High School. His mother was the head chef at the Moat House for many years and much his information came from the trust and owners of the Moat House at that time. The history project earned him the school history and research prize for 1980.

When Sir Robert Peel was moving his school from Church Street to Lichfield Street in 1837, Dr John Woody was living at the Moat House, having bought it with his mother in 1821. The Woody family had been tenants of the Moat House, and they bought it when parts of the Tamworth Castle estate were being sold off by a London auctioneer, John Robins, to clear the debts of the Townshend family.

If Sir Robert Peel moved the former chapel at the Moat House lock, stock and barrel to a new location further each along Lichfield Street for use as a school, was this the original chapel at the Moat House? And does this explain some of its pre-Victorian details, including large the Gothic window in the gable and the lower Tudor-headed window and door?

The premises at No 17 Lichfield Street long after the furniture shop closed (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

I first visited the Moat House around 1969 and 1970, and have often been shown the panelling that was said to have hidden more than one ‘priests’ hole’ that allowed Catholic priests to escape searches of the house in Elizabethan times when the Comberford family was recalcitrant in its recusancy.

The Act of Uniformity in 1559 had made absence from church a punishable office. Those who failed to come to church were known as ‘recusants’ and were to be fined. The Comberford family remained staunchly Catholic at the time and family members were frequently in trouble and were accused of taking part in some of the many plots against Queen Elizabeth.

On 20 January 1573, the Earl of Shrewsbury informed Lord Burghley that he had apprehended Thomas Comberford of Comberford, near Tamworth, ‘where masses were frequented.’ He also arrested two mass priests who had said a very large number of Masses there. Shrewsbury added that he wished ‘bishops and others in authority … would have more regard unto their charges and not suffer dangerous vagabonds to rest unpunished in their jurisdiction.’

Thomas Comberford was released after a short period. He, his wife Dorothy, and many other members of the family were fined on several occasions in Wednesbury and Leek in the 1580s for non-attendance at church. Thomas appears to have more careful to conform for the rest of his life. Although he and his family were frequently in trouble for non-attendance, he appears to have avoided the punishments inflicted on him.

However, in April 1588, his tenants, including Thomas ‘Heethe’ [Heath], were accused of harbouring seminarians and priests, including one ‘James Harryson.’ Harrison and Heath were arrested at Comberford were imprisoned in London. They were eventually released, but Harrison was arrested again in Yorkshire in 1602 and executed in York.

The Moat House on Lichfield Street, Tamworth … did it once have a private chapel? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

In the summer of 1606, acting on a tip-off, Sir Humphrey Ferrers of Tamworth Castle sent the bailiffs of Tamworth with a number of his servants to break into the locked Moat House, then the home of Humphrey Comberford. They were ordered to search all the rooms, including under the beds and behind locked doors and panels, for priests and for any evidence that the Mass was being said in the house.

Ferrers gave a dramatic account of the search when he wrote to the Earl of Salisbury on 18 June 1606. Three men were found hiding in the house and, with the search party also finding a number of religious tracts, they were arrested on suspicion of being seminarians. But, despite the weight of circumstantial evidence, there was no convincing proof that Mass was being celebrated in the Moat House.

A ‘priests’ hole,’ said to have been used by the Jesuits harboured in the Moat House by Humphrey Comberford, led to the River Tame. The river may have provided safe routes down to Wednesbury Manor or north to the homes of other Catholics among the Staffordshire gentry.

It was whispered that the oak panelling inside the Moat House hid more than one ‘priests’ hole’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Although I have often seen the location of the supposed ‘priests’ holes’ in the Moat House, I was not aware until recent years that there may have been a private chapel in the grounds of the Moat House. Until the late 17th century, members of the Comberford family used Saint Catherine’s or the Comberford Chapel in the north aisle of Saint Editha’s Church, Tamworth, as the private family chapel, including for family burials and memorials. There was also a private chapel in Comberford Hall until the late 17th or early 18th century, according to the historian of Catholic Staffordshire, Michael Greenslade. Some more research is needed on a possible chapel in the Moat House.

As for the third Peel school on the other side of Lichfield Street, it had been turned into church rooms by 1907, and after the 1930s it was used as the Civic restaurant. That building later became a small factory for Hart and Levy Tailoring and then part of the Shannon’s Mill housing complex.

After being shown around No 17, I called into No 18 on Friday for my morning double espresso, and sat out in the sunshine in the small open yard at the back shared by both No 17 and No 18.

I had a bus to catch to Hopwas, where I wanted to see some more church buildings and locations, and to walk by the canal banks before continuing on to Lichfield. After coffee in No 18, I waited for the Lichfield bus – in the new, eyesore of a bus shelter outside No 17.

I hope to return soon to see No 17 when Mark Sutton and his team have completed their restoration project. By then, too, I hope the bus shelter has been moved to another location along Lichfield Street.

The new bus shelter on Lichfield Street blocks most views of No 17, just at its restoration is near completion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Brereton Methodist Church, one of the oldest Methodist churches in Staffordshire, has closed after 216 years

Brereton Methodist Church, the first church in Brereton, was built in 1809 and rebuilt in 1872 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

In my recent visits to churches in the Stafford and Rugeley areas in Staffordshire, I have been visiting churches I first got to know when I was in my late teens and early 20s, over 50 years ago, when I had a number of friends around Rugeley and Brereton and began writing freelance contributions to the Rugeley Mercury and the Lichfield Mercury.

At the end of last week, I visited Saint Michael’s Church in Brereton, which I wrote about yesterday. I later crossed the Main Road in Brereton to see the sad state of Brereton Methodist Church, which has been closed for over a year now and is on the market.

Brereton Methodist Church and Free School closed last year (March 2025), due to a dwindling congregation and a lack of funds. Although a sign outside continues to say there is a Sunday Service and Junior Church at 10:30, a larger sign advertises its sale through Creative Retail.

When Brereton Methodist Church was built in 1809, it was the first church building in Brereton, predating by almost 20 years Saint Michael’s Church, the Church of England parish church, which was built across the street on the opposite side of the Main Road in 1837.

Methodism was introduced to Brereton in 1806 by Thomas Gething, a colliery manager, and Brereton became a centre of Methodism in the 19th century. A group of Wesleyan Methodists in Brereton registered the house of Thomas Gething’s house as a meeting house in 1806, and a house in Rugeley was registered as a Wesleyan meeting house in 1808.

The first Wesleyan chapel in Brereton was built in 1809. Brereton House was the lifelong home of a local Methodist benefactor Elizabeth Birch and her sister Ann. In 1824, Elizabeth Birch built Railway Cottages, a row of six almshouses close to the Ginny Wagons tramway. The residents were to be poor persons of good moral character, aged over 50, who regularly attended the Methodist Chapel.

Elizabeth Birch also founded the Free School, built in Brereton in 1838 on land she bought from the trustees of the Wesleyan Chapel. The school provided education for boys aged 6-14 with poor parents living within three miles of Brereton. The master was always to be a member of the Wesleyan Methodist Society and the teaching was along religious lines, although lessons had to be free from any sectarian tendencies.

The school was endowed by Elizabeth Birch with £1,500 to pay £50 a year salary to the master and £10 a year for stationery. The school ran a night class for working miners, and fuel to heat the classrooms was provided free each winter from 1876 by Earl Talbot’s collieries in the area.

Two memorial stones marking the rebuilding of Brereton Methodist Church in 1872 (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Thomas Birch and Elizabeth Birch also built six cottages or almshouses in Brereton in 1824 for poor widows aged 50 and over. She left a bequest of £1,500, the income to be spent on repairs and on the provision of 4 shillings a week to each occupant who attended the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Brereton.

Elizabeth Birch died in 1842 and was buried in the grounds of Brereton Methodist Church. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Brereton House was occupied by successive general managers of the collieries.

The Methodist Chapel in Brereton was replaced by the present church in 1872.

The school was closed in 1899 and the site was exchanged in 1904 for a larger one, also the property of the trustees of the Wesleyan Chapel. The endowment scheme was reorganised and provision was made for applying any surplus income for exhibitions at Rugeley Grammar School for boys and girls from Brereton.

The school became a controlled school in 1949 and by 1952 it was known as the George Vickers Methodist Primary School, recalling George Vickers who was schoolmaster from 1853 to 1904.

A pair of semi-detached Victorian houses with small front gardens, Wesley Cottages, were built in 1895, close to the road and the old Methodist Free School.

The symmetrical façade of the substantial dark red brick Methodist church stands close to the road, and its buttresses rise to stone pointed finials, creating a distinctive feature on the skyline of Brereton. The single-storey school stands back from the road in an unobtrusive position, yet it has an interesting roof shape and decorative brickwork, as well as a prominent datestone. In recent years, the building was used as a Sunday School and meeting room.

Elizabeth Birch is buried in the small walled graveyard behind Brereton Methodist Church. In all, 26 people are buried there, but the burial ground has not been used since the late 19th century and the last burial was in 1897. The trustees of the Cannock Chase Methodist Circuit agreed last year (2025) to formally close the burial ground at Brereton Methodist Chapel to all new burials ‘with immediate effect’.

Brereton Methodist Church closed last year, and ha been on the market since then with offers in excess of £125,000 being invited. A Methodist church stood on the site for more than two centuries, and a notice outside still says, ‘God welcomes all sorts’. The closure means a sad loss to the life of Brereton.

Brereton Methodist Church closed last year, and has been on the market since then with offers in excess of £125,000 being invited. A Methodist Church stood on the site for more than two centuries, and a notice outside still says, ‘God welcomes all sorts’. The closure means a sad loss to the life of Brereton.

Signs of the times … Brereton Methodist Church closed last year and the building is on the market (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

An Old Town Hall and some houses that are part of the Georgian andVictorian legacy of Buckingham

Buckingham has a rich collection of Georgian and early Victorian public buildings and houses, including the Old Town Hall in Market Square (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

In these weeks before Christmas, I have spent time strolling around Buckingham and neighbouring villages, mainly searching for the architectural work of Edward Swinfen Harris and members of the Scott family, including Sir George Gilbert Scott and John Oldrid Scott.

I have also spent time looking for the old coaching inns, including the former Cobham Arms on West Street, the White Hart in Market Square and the Swan and Castle, now the Villiers Hotel on Castle Street, and looking for the old pubs, including the Mitre, the Tudor house that is now Mey, the Whale, the King’s Head and the Grand Junction.

The great fire in 1725 explains why Buckingham has so few Tudor, Elizabethan or Jacobean buildings, and the arrival of the railways in 1838-1850 marked the death knell of coach travel and resulted in the closure of many of the coaching inns.

On the other hand, Buckingham has a rich collection of Georgian and early Victorian public buildings and houses, from the Old Town Hall in Market Square and White House on Market Hill to Chandos House on School Lane and Wharf House at the west end of the town, with a story intimately linked to the hey-day of canal traffic in Buckingham.
The Old Town Hall dominates the south-west end of Market Square in Buckingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Old Town Hall dominates the south-west end of Market Square and it is set back behind a broad area of paving. The first town hall in the town was built in the Market Place on the initiative of the local MP Sir Ralph Verney in 1685. It became dilapidated in the mid-18th century, and the town’s civic leaders decided to build a new town hall the south of the original building.

The new Town Hall was designed in the Georgian style, built in red brick and was completed in 1783. The roof is made from old oak timbers that are said to have been rescued from the old parish church that collapsed in 1776.

The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with five bays facing onto the Market Square. The central bay had a round headed doorway with a fanlight, sash windows that were recessed in blank arcading on the ground floor and plain sash windows on the first floor.

On the left hand side, there was a semi-circular projection. The roof has a dentilled cornice and a square clock turret with a finial surmounted by a copper weather wave in the form of a swan that recalls the swan of Buckingham on the town’s coat of arms. The clock dial was illuminated in 1882.

Inside, the assembly room on the first floor had a high ceiling and was reached by a fine staircase that had been recovered from the first town hall.

A court room on the first floor was used for sittings of the Quarter Sessions and the Petty Sessions, and for the summer Assizes until they were moved to Aylesbury in1848. The top floor was used by the local Literary and Scientific Institution, while the ground floor included the council chamber, and the borough offices.

Local lore says that when the swan turns its back on the town it is a bad omen for Buckingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Buckingham became a municipal borough in 1835, with its headquarters in the town hall. The town council acquired ownership of the building when the 2nd Duke of Buckingham was declared bankrupt in 1847. The suffragettes Lilias Ashworth, Lydia Becker and Helen Beedy spoke for women’s voting rights at a public meeting in the building chaired by a future MP Egerton Hubbard in 1875.

When the building was slightly shortened on the right-hand side in the early 20th century to facilitate widening Castle Street, a section of the cornice was left overhanging the street. The wide central round arch head doorway approached by stone steps. This doorway is beneath a semicircular 20th century iron and glass canopy.

The town hall continued to function as the headquarters of the borough council until 1965, when the council moved to Castle House on West Street. In recent years it has become part of the Villiers Hotel on Castle Street, with the Cellar Bar below.

The 18th century Golden Swan, the weather vane that crowns the Old Town Hall, has a long and chequered history and was lost for many years. Local lore says that when the swan turns its back on the town it is a bad omen – perhaps because it means the wind is blowing from the south.

The White House stands on the corner of Market Hill and Verney Close (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The south-east side of Market Hill lacks the continuity seen found in other parts of Market Square, but it as an interesting assortment of buildings with diverse character creating an interesting and eclectic mix. The listed buildings on this stretch include the White House at 2 Market Hill and Christ Church Hospital.

The White House stands on a prominent corner at the junction of Market Hill and Verney Close, and seems to dwarf many of the neighbouring buildings. Its sheer size and handsome rendered elevation make it a focal building within the streetscape.

It is a three-storey, five-bay mid-18th century house. The central three bays of which break slightly forward of the elevation and support a pediment.

The Old School on School Lane is now private housing known as Old School Court (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Old School on the west side of School Lane dominates the north end of the street. The building is now private housing and is known as Old School Court. It has been extended north to create additional accommodation and at its south end to create a carriage entrance with views to the banks of the River Great Ouse. A number of dormers have been inserted along the length of the roof and break through the eaves line.

A wide dormer with three windows is in a central position in the elevation. It has a carved plaque with the date 1872 and the words Tu Rex Glorie Christe. To the right of the central dormer and forming a prominent feature in the roofscape is a small bell tower built of brick and stone.

The Old School House on the opposite side of School Lane, opened as a school in 1863 after the vicar and churchwardens of Buckingham bought a cottage and its grounds for £120 to create an infants’ school. During World War II, primary pupils evacuated from Marylebone School went to school there.

The school reverted to domestic use after the war and the Old School House was on the market in recent months as a five-bedroom house through Russell and Butler of West Street, Buckingham, with an asking price of £550,000.

Chandos House on School Lane takes its name from one of the many titles held by the Dukes of Buckingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The east side of School Lane has an eclectic collection of buildings, many set back from the road on raised ground. The most prominent building is Chandos House, which dates from the early 1800s. Its name, like Chandos Road and other places in Buckingham, recalls some of the many titles held by the Dukes of Buckingham until their line died out in 1889.

Chandos House is a Grade II listed two-storey house. It is built of imported yellow bricks rather than the local orange and red bricks found everywhere in Buckingham. The roof is hipped and covered with Welsh slate.

The open porch has fluted Roman Doric columns on rendered plinths, and matching pilasters, a triglyph frieze and deep cornice with mutules. Inside, the house is said to have a dog-leg stair with stick balusters and a ramped and wreathed mahogany handrail.

The house was bought by Buckingham Rural District Council in 1926 and was its headquarters until 1974. It is now private offices.

Wharf House at the south-west end of Stratford Road at the junction with High Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Wharf House is at the south-west end of Stratford Road at the junction with High Street and it forms a strong focal point for views from the High Street towards Stratford Road.

The street broadens out at this point to form an asymmetrical triangular area in front of Wharf House, Fern Cottage, Elmdale, Bromley and Stratford House, a row of attractive semi-detached brick cottages that still have many of their original features from the late 19th or early 20th century.

Wharf House is an attractive, symmetrical 19th century, red-brick, two-storey house with a hipped slate roof. It has a central doorway and an open porch supported on fluted pillars and pilasters. Flanking each side of the central porch are canted bay windows with pitched slate roofs.

This part of Buckingham around Stratford Road and to the rear of Wharf House is interesting because it is the site of the terminus of the Buckingham arm of the Grand Junction canal, later the Grand Union Canal. The canal opened in 1801, and roughly followed the course of the River Great Ouse from Cosgrove through Deanshanger, Thornton and Leckhampstead towards Buckingham, where it followed a course between lower Wharf Houses and Stratford Fields, turning to the left between Stratford Fields and Stratford Road and entering Wharf Yard opposite what is now the road to the Page Hill Estate.

The canal was an important transport link, bringing cheap materials to Buckingham and exporting agricultural produce to London and the Midlands. The heyday of the canal lasted into the 1850s. The arrival of the railway and the opening of the Bletchley to Banbury road caused trade to decline and the canal eventually closed in 1964. Memories of the canal continue to survive in the names of place such as Wharf House and the Grand Junction at 12 and 13 High Street.

Winter colours by the River Great Ouse at Old School Court in Buckingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Bernardine’s Church, Buckingham, includes some of the best examples of post-Vatican II church architecture and art

Saint Bernardine’s Church on Chandos Road … an excellent example of the collaboration of George Mathers, Angela Godfrey and Dom Charles Norris (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

During my visits to Buckingham this week, I visited Saint Bernardine’s Church, the Roman Catholic Parish Church on Chandos Road, almost opposite the Royal Latin School and close to the Chandos Road campus and the Medical School of the University of Buckingham, which is spread across three sites.

At first sight, the church looks like a large 1970s suburban house, squeezed between the other, older buildings on Chandos Road. I almost passed the church by, as there is little about its outside appearance to indicate that this is a church, apart from the entrance doors. To the left of the entrance is a garage door, the wall to the right is faced in stone, and above is a prominent mansard-type slate roof with four dormer windows, lighting ancillary rooms over the entrance lobby.

But the church is a treasure trove of post-Vatican II ecclesiastical architecture, designed by George Mathers and includes some of the finest of 1970s church art and fittings, including doors and an altar by Angela Godfrey, dalle de verre windows by Dom Charles Norris, striking Stations of the Cross by Martin Hughes, and a crucifix by Stephen Foster.

The story of Saint Bernardine’s Church goes back almost a century and a half to 1892 when a Belgian Franciscan friar, Father Thaddeus Hermans, arrived in Buckingham on the Feast of the Ascension to open a college for men wishing to become Franciscans.
He rented a cottage in Elm Street, where he said the first Mass, before moving to 9 Chandos Road, which as laid out in 1853 to link Buckingham railway station with the town centre, and there he set up his first chapel. He later obtained a permanent site on London Road and by the end of 1895 he had built a Franciscan school and college.

The college was placed under the patronage of Saint Bernardine, a Franciscan saint, and so the parish of Saint Bernardine grew up around the college. Few Catholics were living near Buckingham at the time, but in 1900 the registers record 12 Baptisms. The college chapel was blessed and opened for public worship in 1912.

Inside Saint Bernardine’s Church, Buckingham, looking towards the liturgical east (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Bernardine of Siena (1380-1444) was born at Massa Maritima near Siena in Tuscany into the noble degli Albizzeschi family. While studying in Siena in 1400 he offered to help in the hospital to deal with many plague victims. He joined the Franciscans on his 22nd birthday in September 1402, and was ordained a priest in 1404. For 12 years he led a deeply spiritual life.

A sermon he preached during a visit to Milan marked the beginning of his missionary life throughout Italy, sometimes preaching many times a day. His success was said to be remarkable, and ‘Bonfires of the Vanities’ were held at places where he preached, with people throwing mirrors, high-heeled shoes, perfumes, locks of false hair, cards, dice, chess pieces and other frivolities to be burned.

However, he was also of a strict, moral temper, preached fiery sermons against many classes of people, characterised some women as ‘witches’, and called for ‘sodomites’ to be ostracised or removed from the human community.

Bernardino is regarded today as being a major protagonist of Christian antisemitism. In Orvieto in 1472, he blamed the poverty of local Christians on Jewish usury, and his calls for Jews to be banished and isolated from their wider communities led to segregation. His listeners often used his words to reinforce actions against Jews, and his preaching left a legacy of resentment on the part of Jews.

Yet Pope Pius II called him a second Paul. At different times, he turned the offer to become bishop of Siena, of Ferrara, and of Urbino He led the revival of discipline among the Franciscans and from 1438 to 1442 he was Vicar-General of the order. He was canonised in 1450 and his feast day is 20 May.

Inside Saint Bernardine’s Church, Buckingham, looking towards the liturgical west (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

As the Catholic parish in Buckingham expanded after World War II, the friars opened Mass centres in many neighbouring towns and villages, including Brackley. But circumstances changed, the college closed in 1968, and the buildings were sold to Buckingham County Council. The friars continued to use the chapel until the parish could build its own church, and eventually the decision was taken to build onto the new friary on Chandos Road where the friars had set up their first chapel.

The new church was designed by the architect George AJ Mathers (1919-2015) of Williams and Mathers, Cheltenham, and was built by Pollard and Sons, Buckingham. Mathers is best-known for his Grade II listed Marychurch in Old Hatfield, Hertfordshire.

George Mathers was born in 1919 in London. His father was a postal worker. He studied architecture at the Northern Polytechnic, now the University of North London, and during his student years he became a Roman Catholic and a pacifist. As a conscientious objector he was expelled from the polytechnic and jailed in Wormwood Scrubs. There he met Paul Mauger, a Quaker architect, a prison visitor who had been a conscientious objector in World War I. Mauger offered him a job, but Mathers was jailed for a second time for his pacifism before joining Mauger on a permanent basis, eventually becoming a partner.

Maters began working for Paul Mauger designing council housing and other public buildings. His career as a church architect began when he was asked to design a convent chapel in 1957. He set up his own practice in mid-Hertfordshire with Barrie Thomas in 1960, and was commissioned to design Saint Bartholomew’s Church, St Albans (1963), and the circular Marychurch, Old Hatfield (1970).

Saint Bartholomew’s Church, St Albans, was the first church in the Diocese of Westminster built in the round, shortly before the liturgical reforms of Vatican II. There, Mathers brought in the sculptor Angela Godfrey, who had recently graduated from King’s College, Newcastle upon Tyne, to design the altar.

Perhaps the most notable church by Mathers is the round Marychurch in Old Hatfield, which was grade II listed in 2013 – a rare achievement for a living architect. Here again Mathers worked with several notable artists, including Dom Charles Norris and Dom Paulinus Angold, who contributed the dalle de verre glass, and Angela Godfrey, who designed the welded steel screen and font.

Mathers lived for much of his life in Ware, Hertfordshire, before moving to Cheltenham. He retired when he was 94 and died aged 96 in 2015.

The front door by Angela Godfrey with the ‘IHS’ logo associated with Saint Bernardine’s preaching (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Mathers worked closely on Saint Bernardine’s Church, Buckingham, once again with Angela Godfrey and Dom Charles Norris, and with the Cheltenham artist Martin Hughes.

The front door is made from resin and filled with sand to give it a more solid feel. The altar front is of a similar design. Both were designed by Mathers and were made by Angela Godfrey.

Angela Godfrey, whose first commission after graduating had been from Mathers for the altar in Saint Bartholomew’s Church, St Albans, also worked with Richard Hurley (1932–2011), one of the leading church architects in Ireland interpreting the post-Vatican II liturgical reforms, reordering churches in Hoddesdon, Harrow Weald, Maidstone, and Ballyporeen, Co Tipperary. She designed the bishop’s throne and Paschal candle for Saint Mel’s Cathedral, Longford, when it was rebuilt by Hurley. Her prize-winning ‘Gilpin’s Bell’ (1994) is a large street sculpture in Edmonton.

Her entrance doors at Saint Bernardine’s include a high-relief grip representation of the IHS monogram with rays, traditionally associated with images of Saint Bernardine.

Angela Godfrey also made the altar in Saint Bernardine’s Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

From the low entrance lobby of the church, the levels drop down into the main space, consisting of a single space, with a raised clerestory on the south side lighting the south wall and a long monopitch roof down to the north side. The boarded roof is supported by thick laminated raking trusses, which in turn is carried on laminated posts towards the low north side.

The north and east walls are plastered and painted, and the north wall is faced in painted concrete blocks. At the west end, a door leads into the sacristy and presbytery and some of the former external exposed stonework of the presbytery is retained as a feature.

The furnishings of the church include a reredos or crucifix and tabernacle surround on the east wall by Stephen Foster. The reredos replaced a painted Crucifixion, possibly by Martin Hughes, who painted the dramatic mural Stations of the Cross on the north wall.

On the south wall under the eaves are panels of coloured dalle de verre glass, from the workshop of Dom Charles Norris at Buckfast Abbey, Devon.

The Stations of the Cross on the north wall were painted by Martin Hughes (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Martin Hughes, then a young artist, painted the Stations of the Cross on the north wall. He first painted miniatures and from these he took photographic slides that he then projected onto the wall. This allowed him to quickly and accurately reproduce the Stations of the Cross.

Hughes lived in Cheltenham for most of his life, and in the 1970s and 1980s, he combined commissions producing a series of murals for churches throughout England with creating the album cover for Traffic’s ‘When the Eagle flies’. He worked in a variety of mediums, including acrylic, pastel, charcoal, pen and ink, and emulsion. His commissions included shops, restaurants, hair salons and night clubs, as well as fresco and paint effects in people’s homes. The characters in his work included fictional fantasy figures, mystic and ethereal, from Greek mythology to Shakespeare’s plays.

Hughes may also have painted a Crucifixion above the High Altar that was influenced by Salvador Dali’s ‘Christ of Saint John of the Cross’ and that has since been replaced.

Around the same time as he was working in Buckingham, Hughes also worked in 1974 in the new Sacred Heart Church in Northampton, also designed by Mathers. There Hughes completed the Stations of the Cross there in only four weeks, sometimes working through the night and even sleeping in the church.

Hughes was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2015 and died in June 2015. His daughter Naomi Hughes described him as ‘a free spirit’, saying: ‘Murals were his thing and walls were his canvas.’

Martin Hughes who painted the Stations of the Cross died in 2015 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Dom Charles Norris (1909-2004), then a 75-year-old Benedictine monk, made the dalle de verre stained glass windows on the south wall. Dom Charles was born Louis Charles Norris and studied at the Royal College of Art in the 1920s. He entered Buckfast Abbey in 1930 and began to work as a stained glass artist in 1933. He worked with a team of monks to rebuild the abbey, including the east window in dalle de verre.

Pierre Fourmaintraux is said to have brought the dalle de verre technique to Britain before joining James Powell and Sons, later Whitefriars Glass Studio, in 1956. He trained Dom Charles Norris in this technique, and Norris became one of its most prolific British proponents.

In addition to his work at Buckfast Abbey, Dom Charles also had an association with the workshop at Prinknash Abbey and with Aylesford Priory in Kent. From 1949, Aylesford Priory was a creative hub, attracting artists such as Adam Kossowski, Philip Lindsey Clark, Michael Clark, and Dom Charles Norris.

Many of the internal features and furnishings in Saint Bernardine’s Church came from the earlier college chapel in Buckingham (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Father Christopher Ulyatt OFM, the then Parish Priest in Buckingham, and Colonel Bill Sharpe, an active parishioner, oversaw building the new church designed by Mathers. Bishop Charles Grant of Northampton blessed the new church on 26 October 1974. Father Christopher had died two weeks earlier and never got to enjoy the end results of his labours.

The building project created a substantial debt. However, a later parish priest, Father Phelan Daniel O’Leary OFM, worked to clear the debt and the church was consecrated in August 1982. The parish formally became part of the Diocese of Northampton in 1989.

Many of the internal features and furnishings in Saint Bernardine’s Church came from the earlier college chapel in Buckingham, including statues of Saint Anthony, Saint Francis and Saint Bernardine, the font, the church bell, the organ and the organ pipes, the pews and the octagonal stone font (1946). The statue of Our Lady was donated by a later parish priest, Monsignor John Ryan, in 1993 in memory of Ernie Taylor in recognition of his work in the church.

Stephen Foster designed the Calvary, based on the cross at San Damiano, and the tabernacle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

To celebrate the Millennium, Stephen Foster, a sculptor specialising in wooden carvings, was commissioned to design the Calvary or reredos and the tabernacle. The Calvary depicts Christ ascending from the Cross, closely resembles the original Crucifix of Saint Damiano that inspired life and ministry of Saint Francis of Assisi. The Calvary is made from 10 panels and its design is similar to the triptych in Northampton Cathedral. The Tabernacle surround also reflects features of the Calvary design and is made of wood and decorated in gold leaf.

The wall behind the statue of Our Lady has painted vertical features, suggested by Stephen Foster and similar to those in the design of the Calvary.

The Royal Latin School, facing Saint Bernardine’s Church, moved to Chandos Road in 1907 from the mediaeval Chantry Chapel in Buckingham, which I was discussing last night (5 November 2025). Meanwhile, Buckingham University acquired the former friary and school in 1977. The Franciscan Building on the Verney Park site was converted into residences, a library, language laboratories and tutorial and lecture rooms.

• Father Bosco Gunturu is the Priest-in-Charge of Saint Bernardine’s Church. Sundays Masses are: 5:30 pm (Saturdays, Vigil Mass) and 11 am (Sunday mornings). Weekday Masses are 9:20 (Tuesday to Thursday, and Saturday), 10 am (Fridays) and 7 pm (Wednesdays and Fridays).

The Royal Latin School moved to Chandos Road in 1907 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Chantry Chapel is the oldest building in Buckingham and is now a café and bookshop

The Chantry Chapel of Saint John the Baptist is the oldest surviving building in Buckingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

I have been in Buckingham twice this week, and yesterday, for the first time, I managed to see inside the Chantry Chapel of Saint John the Baptist, the oldest surviving building in the town.

I have seen this chapel on many occasions, it had been closed each time. So it was a delight to find it opened yesterday morning.

Few buildings in Buckingham date to before the 18th century because a large fire destroyed much of the town in 1725. But the chantry chapel survived, and is tucked away on Market Hill in a cosy corner off the Market Square.

Over the centuries, this chapel has had many uses, including a hospital, chapel, school and, in recent years, a second-hand bookshop and coffee shop.

The Chantry Chapel was built in the late 12th century as part of Saint John’s Hospital, Buckingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Chantry Chapel was built in the late 12th century as part of Saint John’s Hospital, Buckingham, when Saint John’s Hospital for the Poor and Infirm was built by William Frechet. Some time later, the hospital fell into disuse, and it was restored was restored by Matthew Stratton, the Archdeacon of Buckingham.

The hospital was granted to the Master of the House of Saint Thomas of Acon in London, which was dedicated to Saint Thomas à Becket. The building became a chantry chapel in 1268, founded by Matthew de Stratton, Archdeacon of Buckingham.

The Royal Latin School was founded in the chapel in 1423, with the chantry priests probably serving as the first schoolmasters. A schoolmaster’s house was added to the north. The school was originally established to teach boys the Trivium: Latin grammar, logic and rhetoric.

The Chantry Chapel retains the original Romanesque doorway (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The building was in ruin again by the 1460s, and the present building dates from the 15th century, when John Ruding, Archdeacon of Lincoln, undertook rebuilding work in 1471 and 1481, incorporating the Norman doorway. Ruding also gave the school its motto, ‘Alle May God Amende,’ in 1471.

The chantry chapel was dissolved, along with other chantries, at the Tudor Reformation, and it was known as the Royal Latin School from 1540. In 1548, King Edward VI granted a charter for the school, for 30-40 pupils, with an endowment of £10 and with 12 trustees.

The school endowment of £10 8s ½d from a separate chantry in Thornton was transferred to the school at Saint John the Baptist in Buckingham in 1597. From that date, the Royal Latin School inherited royal status and a requirement to teach six boys.

The former altar area and the (liturgical) east end of the Chantry Chapel in Buckingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

At several times in its history, the chapel has been near to decay. A major fire in 1696 destroyed the Master’s House which was rebuilt by Alexander Denton, complete with a garden.

The nearby parish church, Saint Peter and Saint Paul collapsed in 1776, and the school was temporarily relocated so services could be held in the chapel. Much of the timber from the church may have been used to re-roof the chapel when the building was restored at the expense of Earl Temple of Stowe in 1776. Some time later, an extra floor was added to create an upper and lower storey, although this was later removed.

By 1781, the chantry chapel was also serving as a Sunday School, said to be only the second Sunday School in England.

The chapel was twice restored by public subscription, in 1857 and again in 1879, under the direction of Sir George Gilbert Scott.

Looking towards the (liturgical) west end of the Chantry Chapel, now a café and second-hand bookshop run by National Trust volunteers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

By the 1870s, the school had 65 pupils, including 25 boarders, and four masters, and became known as Saint John’s Chapel Grammar School and Saint John’s Royal Latin School.

Inspectors advised the trustees in 1898 that the old buildings were totally inadequate and unsuitable for modern educational requirements. Buckinghamshire County Council agreed to establish the school on a new site on Chandos Road, and the Royal Latin School moved from the Chantry Chapel in 1907.

The chapel was bought by public subscription In 1912 and given to the National Trust. Since then, it has been open to the public as a café and second-hand bookshop.

The rose window above the (liturgical) south door in the Chantry Chapel, Buckingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The chapel is an aisleless rectangle, built of uncoursed limestone rubble with limestone dressings and a plain-tile roof.

The chapel retains the original Romanesque doorway. The Norman doorway is near the middle of the left side with one order of shafts with leaf capitals, imposts with palmette-in-zigzag ornament, an inner arch with ornaments of shallow pointed-arched arcading, and a chevron ornament to the outer arch and to the hoodmould. The gabled bellcote at the apex was added in the 19th century.

The chapel is a Grade II* listed building since it was added to the list by English Heritage in 1952. It was closed each time I visited Buckingham in the past, although a sign outside indicated the National Trust has plans to reopen it soon. So I was pleased to find the chapel open yesterday morning.

The piscina on the (liturgical) south wall of the Chantry Chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The aumbry on the (liturgical) north wall of the Chantry Chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today, the chapel houses a second-hand bookshop and the ancient and much altered interior is open to the public.

Originally, an altar would have stood before the south window (the liturgical east end), but no internal features are now visible due to the plaster covering. The building still contain the aumbry once used to hold the sacred vessels, on the north liturgical side of the altar area, and a piscina on the south liturgical side of the altar area, where the priests rinsed their hands and the chalice and patten.

The roof is a mediaeval and 19th-century mix with tile covering that probably dates from the 20th century. The floor is entirely modern.

The remains of two blocked, early windows can be found in the stonework of the west (liturgical south) wall. One is adjacent to the door, and the other is above it. The blockings almost certainly took place in the 1870s when all the windows were restored, and new ones added.

A small bellcote sits atop the ridgeline of the roof. Putlog holes for scaffolding from previous building or renovation works can also be seen on the exterior of the building.

The café serves sweet treats, tea and coffee. The second-hand bookshop takes up most of the public space of the main chapel building.

Buckingham has two other former chantries or hospitals dating from the 13th to 15th centuries and that survived the Reformation, Barton’s Chantry and Hospital on Church Street and Christ’s Hospital on Market Hill.

The Latin House beside the Chantry Chapel, part of the late mediaeval school complex (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Visiting Addington near Winslow to see the former schoolhouse built in 1876 by Edward Swinfen Harris

The Old School House in Addington, near Winslow, Buckinghamshire, was designed by Edward Swinfen Harris in 1876 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

My research into the life and work of the Stony Stratford architect Edward Swinfen Harris (1841-1924), is developing and growing in many exciting new directions. There are further invitations to speak about his work and its importance, and there is talk too of a new book.

But as I write about his work I also need to see it for myself with my own eyes. Two weeks ago I went to see Tylecote House on Hartwell Road, Roade, half-way between Old Stratford and Northampton.

This week I caught a bus from Stony Stratford to Addington to see the Old School House, Addington (1876), outside Winslow, a Jacobethan-style school and schoolmaster’s house that is now a private house.

Addington is a village in Buckinghamshire, about half way between Winslow (3.2 km) and Buckingham (4.8 km), and with a population of 145 people.

Addington is first referred to in the Domesday Book (1086) as Edintone, a name that means Eadda’s Estate. At the time, the manor was in the possession of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux.

The main buildings in Addington include Saint Mary’s Church, Addington House on the site of the much older manor, and Addington Equestrian Centre, one of the prime sites for equestrian sports in the UK. The parish church is dedicated to Saint Mary the Virgin. The church has three bells, the oldest dating back to 1666, hung for English change ringing and one sanctus bell hung for chiming.

Addington is about half way between Winslow and Buckingham in Buckinghamshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

I was in Addington to see the former school and schoolmaster’s house designed by Edward Swinfen Harris and built in 1876, with its bellcote and tall ‘Jacobeathan’ chimneys. The school was the gift of John Gellibrand Hubbard (1805-1889), a London financier, Conservative MP for Buckingham (1859-1868) and the City of London (1874-1887), and later Lord Addington (1887).

Swinfen Harris designed the house in a picturesque ‘Jacobeathan’ style and it was built in red brick with bands of blue brick and stone dressings. It has a tiled roof with ornamental panelled bargeboards.

The single-storey school room to the right has two gabled bays of three-light stone mullioned windows with bonded stone surrounds, small square centre lights over and small stone roundels at the apex of gable. The elaborate external chimney stack between bays has a decorative date plaque and an octagonal stone shaft.

The door to the left has an open timber porch with a hipped roof, an ogee arch with ornamented spandrels at the front and balusters with decorative cusping to the side. An enclosed porch at the right gable is half-timbered with some herringbone brick infill and a pointed arched door.

The open bellcote over the right-hand bay has a shingled spirelet. The two-storey schoolmaster’s house in the cross wing to the left has a hipped roof and tall ‘Jacobeathan’ chimney shafts. The gable at the front has a three-light sash window with stone mullions on first floor and square bay window with similar lights and a hipped roof below.

It has been converted and extended so that today it is a detached house with four bedrooms and four bathrooms and 2379 sq ft of space, with double glazed windows and has been extended since construction before 1900. When it was on the market recently a price of £1.5 million to £2 million was quoted.

Saint Mary’s Church in Addinton may stand on the site of an earlier Anglo-Saxon church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The former manor house in Addington was used twice during the English Civil War as the headquarters of the parliamentarian forces. The Addington Manor estate was bought by JG Hubbard in 1854 before he was elected MP for Buckingham. He demolished part of the old house in 1857 and built a new Addington Manor to designs by Philip Charles Hardwick (1822-1892) in 1856-1857. Its site was near the earlier Addington House, which had belonged to John Poulett son of Vere Poulett, but had fallen into disrepair.

Hardwick is best known for designing the Doric Arch and Great Hall at Euston Station and the Great Western Hotel at Paddington Station. He designed the new manor in a French style with a large conservatory.

Addington Manor was built of brick with Bath stone quoins and dressings and heavy lead roofing, in the modified form of the French chateau style, with three lofty towers and a fine conservatory.

Round the great central tower were inscribed the words ‘Except the Lord build the house their labour is but lost that build it. Anno Domini 1857’. Over the library window, amid decorations of vine foliage and fruit, were the words ‘Dei Donum’. The third storey windows on the south and west sides of the mansion were crowned with the initials in monogram of the Lord and Lady Adlington, while on the north and south fronts of the building was the family’s heraldic emblem and the motto Alta Petens (‘Seek Higher Things’).

The ceiling of the oak hall was decorated by Owen Jones, and was said to be an exact copy of the oak ceiling in the older Addington Manor.

The Hubbard family moved into Addington Manor in December 1858 and there their distinguished visitors included the Duke of Connaught, Princess Victoria Louise, Bishop Wilberforce, members of the Gladstone family and prominent political figures.

Hubbard also built and endowed Saint Alban’s Church, Holborn, which was designed by the architect William Butterfield, and as patron appointed Father Alexander Mackonochie as the priest.

His son, Egerton Hubbard (1842-1915), 2nd Baron Addington, was MP for Buckingham in 1874-1880 and 1886-1889. He died in 1915, and during World War I the house was let as a school. Later, the house was occupied by Mrs Lawson-Johnston and family, and was then a guest house and hotel with Mrs Hocker and Mr Gordon Holmes.

Addington Manor was sold in 1926 to CB Smith-Bingham who lived nearby at Addington House. An auction sale to dispose of fittings and materials was held in June 1928 with a further auction a month later. He demolished Addington Manor in 1928 and it was rebuilt in the neo-classical style in 1928-1929, designed by the architect Michael Theodore Waterhouse (1889-1968).

During World War II, Addington Manor was a safe house from 1940 to 1945 for the Moravec, Strankmüller and Tauer families of the Czechoslovak military intelligence staff, who had their headquarters in London. František Moravec planned the assassination in Prague of Reinhard Heydrich, one of the principal architects of the Holocaust, although his killing was masterminded in London and not in Addington.

The house was eventually sold to Kenneth James William Mackay, 3rd Earl of Inchcape, who founded the Addington Equestrian Centre on the estate.

Addington House, Park House, Addington Place and Addington Grange were once one house (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Addington House, Park House, Addington Place and Addington Grange were once one house, formerly Addington House, but are now divided into four separate units. This house dates from the late 17th century and it was much altered in 1859-1860 and again in the 20th century.

The Stable Block, Vine Cottage and the Stocks are developed from a former stable block at Addington House that has been converted onto flats and workshops. The date 1642 is inscribed on a tablet re-set above central arch.

The Tythe Barn in Addington was built in the late 16th century and it too is now converted into housing.

Saint Mary’s Church was open when I visited Addington this week, and I must describe it in detail in a posting in the days or weeks ahead.

The former schoolhouse designed by Edward Swinfen Harris is now a private house (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The village of Castlethorpe in Buckinghamshire no longerhas a mediaeval castle but is now a conservation area

Autumn colours in Castlethorpe in north Buckinghamshire in yesterday’s morning sunshine (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025;click on images for full-screen viewing)

Patrick Comerford

I am continuing to enjoy visiting the neighbouring villages and towns that are close to Stony Stratford, exploring their history and legacy, architecture and churches. One of the great gifts from the early town planners and architects who had a vision for Milton Keynes over half a century ago was that each satellite town or village should retain its own identity and character. Some days I just hop on a bus at random to see where it brings me and to enjoy seeing the unexpected.

I was back in the pretty village of Roade in Northamptonshire last week, visiting a house designed by Stony Stratford’s great architect of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Edward Swinfen Harris. On the bus journeys there and back, I noticed a number of villages I wanted to look at again, as well as Salcey Forest.

So, on two days this week, I took the 33 bus from Wolverton to Northampton and visited Hanslope one morning and Castlethorpe on another. Tuesday next is the Feast of Saint Simon and Saint Jude (28 October), and as yesterday was a bright sunny day, I decided to visit Castlethorpe, where the parish church is dedicated to Saint Simon and Saint Jude and where they preparing to celebrate the patronal festival.

The parish church in Castlethorpe is deidacted to Saint Simon and Saint Jude, whose feastday is 28 October (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Castlethorpe is on the border of Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire and has a population of about 1,000 people. Despite its rural location and ambience, it is part of the City of Milton Keynes. It is about 4.8 km (3 miles) north-east of Stony Stratford, 6.4 km (4 miles) north-west of Newport Pagnell and 11 km (7 miles) north of Central Milton Keynes.

Although prehistoric flints and Romano-British metalwork and coins, dating from ca 200 CE, have been found near Castlethorpe village, there is no evidence to confirm an early settlement there.

There may have been a Danish settlement in the area as it was close to the Danelaw. Before the Norman invasion in 1066, the Saxon lord of the manor of Hanslope was Aldene, who had been a member of the bodyguard of King Edward the Confessor.

The grassy mounds of the former motte-and-bailey castle, a complicated system of earthworks north of the church and overlooking the valley of the River Tove (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Castlethorpe is not named in the Domesday Survey in 1086, but it was part of the larger mediaeval manor of Hanslope, which was taken from Aldene and granted to Winemar the Fleming. The castle belonging to the lords of Hanslope was there by the mid-12th century, if not earlier.

The village grew up around the castle, and a settlement of servants and workers developed into Castlethorpe. The impressive humps and hollows around the village, especially near the church, appear to be part of the original castle. The fortification of Castlethorpe may have been strengthened by the Mauduit family who supported the Empress Matilda against King Stephen the civil wars known as the ‘Anarchy’.

The castle survived the ‘Anarchy’ but 70 years later became involved in barons’ revolt against King John. On the king’s orders, Faulkes de Breauté destroyed the castle and took possession of Hanslope Manor. Robert Mauduit eventually regained the manor before he died in 1222 but the castle was not rebuilt.

All that is left today are the grassy mounds of the former motte-and-bailey castle, a complicated system of earthworks that extend over an area of about 10 ha beside the church and overlooking the valley of the River Tove. South Street probably developed later along the line of the outer ditch of the castle. By 1268, the manor had passed to William Mauduit’s nephew, William Beauchamp, who obtained a royal licence in 1291 to fortify his hall and build a new garden court.

The parish church, Saint Simon and Saint Jude, may date back to Anglo-Saxon times, although there is no evidence of a pre-Norman building. The church at Castlethorpe was originally superior to that of Hanslope but Bishop Grosteste changed the precedence ca 1250.

The centre of the village is designated a conservation area, and a large number of traditional old stone cottages still survive.

Elm Tree Cottage on North Street, beside the churchyard and castle mound … the centre of the village is designated a conservation area, and a large number of traditional old stone cottages still survive (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

In the 16th century, the demesne lands of Hanslope Manor in Castle Thorpe, sometimes called Castle Thorpe Manor, were leased first to Thomas Slade, then to Christopher Wren and John Knight, and then to Thomas Butler. Ambrose Butler later transferred his lease to Richard Troughton, before it passed to Thomas Tyrell, later Sir Thomas Tyrrell, in 1626. Tyrell obtained a grant of this manor with all reversions and remainders in 1663. He was buried at Castlethorpe in March 1672.

His son Sir Peter Tyrrell had been given the title of baronet in 1665. The mansion-house occupied by Sir Peter Tyrrell in 1703 adjoined the castle yard, but the greater part had been taken down and the remainder would be converted into a farmhouse.

Sir Peter Tyrell’s son Thomas Tyrell and grandson, also Sir Thomas Tyrell, succeeded to the title and estate. The last head of the Tyrrell family to live there was Sir Thomas Tyrrell.

When Sir Thomas Tyrell died in 1714, the title of baronet became extinct and the Castlethorpe estate passed to his two daughters, Christobella and Harriet, and their husbands, John Knapp and Francis Mann. Castlethorpe estate was bought soon afterwards by Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, one of the most influential women of her time.

Castle House is all that remains of the much larger house that once belonged to the Tyrrell family from 1626 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Castle House is all that remains of the much larger house that once belonged to the Tyrrell family from 1626 until the early 18th century. It may have been built on remains of the castle kitchens or stables and has been known as Castle House and Castle Yard. At one time in the 19th century it was known as the Dower House, although there is no evidence that it was ever the home of the widowed mother of the head of the family.

The house subsequently passed into the hands of the Dukes of Buckingham and then to their descendants, the Carrington Family, who owned considerable property in Castlethorpe. Later owners included the Carrington family, whose titles included Marquess of Lincolnshire, Viscount Wendover and Lord Carrington.

The house had been divided into several cottages when it was sold by Lord Carrington in 1961 to Patricia St John, one of the tenants. The Edmunds family restored it to a single house once again in the mid-1960s and completely changed the interior design.

The Carrington family are remembered in the name of the Carrington Arms public house at No 1 South Street, which opened in the early 19th century but is now closed.

The former Stores Shop at No 5 South Street forms an unsual street corner (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Inglenook at 2-4 South Street is one of only two houses in the village whose thatch survived the Great Fire of 1905 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Fires in 1899 and again in 1905 destroyed many of the older houses in the village. But Castlethorpe still has one scheduled ancient monument, one grade I listed building, and 20 grade II listed buildings. The listed houses in the village include:

Manor Farm House datwa from the mid-1730s, but may date back further to the mid-16th century. The last resident farmers were the Markham family, and Manor Farm was sold in 1963 in a number of lots.

Elm Tree Cottage is an early 18th century cottage that was probably modernised in 1763 when a second chimney was built and a rear wing was added as a dairy. Since then, it has had several more additions and alterations.

The Stores Shop at No 5 South Street was run by the Gregory family from the late 19th century, and family members included Annie Gregory, a teacher in Castlethorpe School from its opening in 1891 until she retired in 1925. After the fire in 1905, the shop and house were rebuilt in 1908, using stones from the cottages that had been burnt down, and the building remained a shop until 1977. Since then it has been divided into several dwellings.

Castlethorpe First School in the heart of the village is a Victorian building–full of character. It was opened by Lord Carrington on 15 October 1891.

No 45 and No 47 North Street and the Corner House at No 49 North Street date from 1731 and appears to have been built by William Kitelee. In the first half of the 19th century, this was ‘Mr Addison’s School’ where the subjects included English, Latin, Writing, Arithmetic, History, Geography, Mathematics, and ‘the use of the Globes’. Additional fees were charged for Greek, French, Dancing and Drawing.

The Inglenook at 2-4 South Street is a pair of cottages with a thatched roof and dating from the late 17th century. It is one of only two houses in the village whose thatch survived the Great Fire of 1905.

No 12-14 North Street, with three gables, was once two cottages, and seems to have originally been three almshouses, dating from the 17th century and re-fronted in the19th century.

The subjects at ‘Mr Addison’s School’ included ‘the use of the Globes’ and additional fees were charged for Greek, French, Dancing and Drawing (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Hanslope has been part of Milton Keynes since 1973 and is in the Milton Keynes North constituency. It won the title of ‘Best Kept Village in Buckinghamshire’ in 2016.

The West Coast main line between Euston and Glasgow runs alongside the west side of Castlethorpe. But there the train station in Castlethrope closed over 60 years ago in 1964, and the stations nearest to Castlethope, Hanslope are at Wolverton and Milton Keynes Central.

There are many other attractive villages along the 33 and 33X bus routes that I still want to see in the weeks ahead, including Ashton, Hartwell and Grafton Regis.

Meanwhile, more about Saint Jude and Saint Simon Church in Castlethorpe tomorrow, including the ornate Tyrrell family monument, and about the neighbouring village of Hanslope and its tall church spire in the days to come, hopefully.

Autumn leaves at the former almshouse on North Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)