THE BEDFORDSHIRE CHURCHES SERIES

This is to be a series of three volumes covering Bedfordshire churches in the nineteenth century. The volumes will contain descriptions of churches “on the eve of restoration” together with contemporary illustrations –most of which will be published for the first time.

For each church, there will be extracts from original records amplified by a commentary and explanatory footnotes. The main source material consists of:

• 1. Extracts from church inventories – mainly 1822

• 2. Antiquarian notes on churches by Archdeacon Bonney, c.1840

• 3. Archdeacon Bonney’s visitation notebooks 1823-1839

• 4. Articles on churches by W.A. – John Martin, the librarian at Woburn Abbey - 1845-1854

• 5. Church descriptions by Sir Stephen Glynne 1830-1870

There is considerable value in having these key sources, with illustrations and commentary, in one place. The descriptions by Bonney and Glynne are purely factual, but John Martin’s articles, highlighting abuses and neglect, make colourful and at times controversial reading. Bonney’s visitation notes - and the supporting evidence from contemporary records such as churchwardens’ accounts – give a clear indication that church buildings were far from neglected in the opening decades of the nineteenth century. Together these sources document features that can still be seen today, and provide information on others that have been lost.

The aim has been to present the text of contemporary sources in their original state, to convey a feeling for the times as well as to provide information. It is recognised that most of the sources could have been condensed by editing - for instance the lists of registers in the glebe terriers and the quotations in the articles by W.A. – but the Editorial Group felt that they should nevertheless be published in extenso.

The introductory commentary for each church includes a summary of the history of the building, focusing especially on eighteenth and nineteenth century restoration and alterations. These introductory notes are generally brief, but may be longer where differences between present and past external appearance merit detailed discussion. Detailed footnotes explain and amplify features mentioned in the text of the original sources and so lead the reader to additional research material.

The Sources – Introduction

Bedfordshire churches on the eve of restoration are well documented in a number of sources. First, there are a great many pictures of churches by artists such as Thomas Fisher and George Shepherd dating from the early Cl9th. Secondly, there are the manuscript sources which describe the condition of church buildings and ornaments in the years leading up to “the age of restoration”.

These sources are described and discussed in detail below. In outline, however, they include the glebe terriers for 1822 which describe the plan of each church and list the ornaments and furnishings. As Archdeacon of Bedford from 1821 to 1844, Dr. Henry Kaye Bonney compiled two notebooks on the churches in his care. In the one, he made detailed architectural notes on each church and its fittings, and in the other he kept a record of the orders made at his archidiaconal visitations between 1823 and 1839. Another commentator was John Martin, the Librarian at Woburn Abbey, who using the signature W.A. wrote a series of pithy articles on Bedfordshire churches for the Northampton Mercury and Bedfordshire Times between 1845 and 1854. Lastly, there are the notebooks of Sir Stephen Glynne who visited over a third of the churches in the County between 1830 and 1870.

Together these sources provide a colourful image of the appearance, condition and atmosphere of Bedfordshire churches at a time when on the one hand they were nearer their mediaeval state than they are today but when on the other they were arguably in their greatest need of attention.

Glebe Terriers (extracts) 1822

After the Reformation, the ecclesiastical authorities became increasingly aware of the need to keep proper records of church possessions. The documents known as glebe terriers fulfil this purpose, and include terriers (recording property and endowments) and inventories (listing goods and chattels). The existence of such records helped to prevent the loss and misappropriation of church property.

Terriers had been compiled for purely parochial purposes in mediaeval times, but in compliance with an archiepiscopal order or canon of 1571 it became a requirement for copies of these documents to be lodged in diocesan registries for safe-keeping.

AMPTHILL

Although the present church dates chiefly from the Cl4th and Cl5th, the foundations of the Cl2th church were discovered during excavations in 1975. The later church has a chancel, nave with north and south aisles, south porch and west tower. It retains its Cl5th roof with angels and shields (though the painted decoration is modem) and there is a ceilure above the former rood.

In 1696 a private pew was constructed for Lord Ashbumham of Ampthill Park in the south aisle of the church. Sir Christopher Wren and his pupil Nicholas Hawksmoor were involved in the design, and the pew was built by Alexander Fort, the King’s joiner. There was a heated legal dispute between Lord Ashburnham and Lord Ailesbury of Houghton House about this pew, which was eventually removed in 1847. The entrance through the east wall of the south aisle is shown in Buckler’s drawing dated 1835 (Plate 2). Lord Ailesbury had his own pew in the church, and there are faculties and papers regarding other Cl8th pews. In 1827 Boissier described the church as “crowded with pews & galleries”. Between 1823 and 1839 Bonney ordered several improvements to the pews, and in 1845 W.A. was highly critical of the arrangement of the church interior.

A faculty was obtained in 1728 to replace the pulpit, take down the chancel screen, and alter various windows. It was probably at this date that the pulpit was placed centrally in the chancel arch where it remained until 1847. Other repairs and alterations in the Cl8th and early Cl9th are recorded in the churchwardens’ accounts from 1718, vestry minutes from 1767, and churchwardens bills from 1823 (listed individually by Andrew Underwood) in the parish records.

Restoration came in 1847-8 under James Tacy Wing of Bedford, who provided new seats and galleries in the nave (Plate 3) and renewed the east window, repaired the roof and stonework, and added a small vestry on the north side of the chancel. In 1851-2 the church was lit by gas.

The tracery of the windows in the south aisle was renewed in 1872-3. Further work followed in 1877 when the vestry on the north side of the chancel was enlarged under James Piers St. Aubyn, although not all the work authorised by the faculty was carried out.

The parish churches of England are among the most noble and conspicuous of the nation’s architectural monuments. Their survival, however, owes more to chance than to good stewardship. Neglect, decay, and deliberate destruction are as much a part of their history as the work of dedicated benefactors and parishioners who strove to make our churches worthy for Christian worship.

As the sources selected for inclusion in this series demonstrate all too clearly, many Bedfordshire churches were in a dilapidated state in the opening decades of the nineteenth century. Others, whilst structurally sound and decently furnished for the worship of the day, needed “restoration” – a term meaning much more than just repair. This was the situation facing the Victorians who – far from vandalising our heritage – sought to restore these precious buildings from years of neglect and adapt them to suit the new liturgical arrangements of the time.

The coming of the ecclesiological movement in the 1840s brought a new concern for the ceremonial aspects of worship – the ministry of the sacraments instead of the ministry of the word. This entailed a change in the arrangement of church buildings, the old “preaching boxes” of the Cl8th giving way to churches in which all attention focused on the chancel and the holy table in the sanctuary. The reformers often exaggerated the poor state of church buildings as a means of drawing attention to the need for change, and the Victorians were invariably critical of alterations and repairs carried out in previous centuries when utility had been regarded as more important than sanctity.

Between about 1840 and 1914 virtually every parish church in England was in some measure restored, and vast sums of money were spent on what was seen to be one of the most worthy causes of the Victorian era. Many churches were rescued from the brink of collapse and given a new lease of life. Some were restored to their former glory. Others were mutilated beyond recognition or wholly rebuilt. Churches viewed by the Victorians as “tainted by classical alterations” were gothicised. Sound buildings were “improved” to suit the needs of a new religious age.

Churches remaining “unrestored” in appearance are to be seen at Chaigrave, Dean, Knotting, Odell, Shelton and Wymington (to name a few of the more rewarding examples in the County), but sadly the phrase “over restored” is all too common in the Bedfordshire volume of Dr. Nikolaus Pevsner’s Buildings of England series.

A brief general survey of post-Reformation church work in the County will be useful as an introduction to the subject. It seems sensible to frame the review round the work of architects - the designers of buildings and of furnishing schemes - who worked at different periods and in different styles. In this way, it is possible to view the changes in ecclesiastical taste in the County in their broader national context.

Post-Reformation church building to 1800

In general terms, church building activity came to an abrupt end at the time of the Reformation. There are, however, exceptions and recent studies in the neighbouring county of Huntingdonshire have demonstrated the extent of building work and improvements to churches into the seventeenth century. This may be untypical of the general picture, and Bedfordshire lacks any particularly distinguished examples of churches dating from the period between 1550 and 1800. Those mentioned below are all relatively minor when compared with the treasures in neighbouring counties, such as:

In Bedfordshire, Hulcote church was rebuilt by the Chemocke family in the late sixteenth century. It is gothic in form, but with a distinctly Renaissance feel. The tower at Blunham was rebuilt in 1583. At Odell there is a fine screen and ringing gallery of 1637 in the tower arch. At Campton, the north aisle dates from 1649. Whipsnade church was rebuilt in 1719. Melchboume has a seventeenthcentury porch brought, it is said, from Woodford in Northamptonshire. The body of the church was rebuilt in the classical style in about 1770. Shillington tower, destroyed in a storm in 1701, was rebuilt in brick in 1750. The 1783 black basalt Wedgwood font at Cardington - another formerly existed at Melchboume - is a particularly memorable example of eighteenth-century church furnishing. In every one of these cases the identity of the architect is unknown.

Having lived and worked in Bedfordshire for the past sixteen years, I have visited every church in the County in the course of my work. While on the staff of the Bedfordshire County Record Office I have been responsible for surveying and listing all the church records, and I am fortunate that this has enabled me to develop an intimate knowledge of the churches and their history.

It is my hope that in preparing these volumes I may be able to pass on some of this knowledge for the benefit of people interested either in specific churches or in the subject generally. I should like to thank the Society for publishing this book. I also wish to thank Gordon Vowles, the General Editor, and my colleagues on the Editorial Group for their constructive comments and suggestions throughout its gestation period.

Formal acknowledgment is due to the authorities and owners who have allowed the publication of their material. The 1822 glebe terriers are published here by kind permission of Lincoln Diocesan Record Office. Archdeacon Bonney’s church notes were among the manuscripts transferred to the County Record Office from the old Bedford Library, while Bonney’s visitation notes appear by kind permission of the present Archdeacon of Bedford, the Ven. Malcolm Lesiter. Sir Stephen Glynne’s Bedfordshire church notes are published by kind permission of Sir William Gladstone. Thanks are also due to Geoffrey Veysey, the Clwyd County Archivist, for providing information on the notes and for allowing me to quote from his article about Sir Stephen Glynne. The sources of illustrations are acknowledged separately.

Material for this volume has been gathered from several record repositories and institutions. My first debt of gratitude is to my colleagues in the Bedfordshire County Record Office, but I must also thank the staff at the British Library, the British Newspaper Library, the library of the Society of Antiquaries of London, the Bedfordshire County Library Service, Lambeth Palace Library, Cambridge University Library, Lincolnshire Archives, and the Hertfordshire County Record Office for their help and advice.

Thanks are also due to all those who have typed parts of the text including Deborah Blake and Ellen Collier, but especially to Pauline Newbery on whom the main body of the work has fallen.

The Mortmain Act of 1736 (9 Geo. n, c.36) required devises of property in trust to be enrolled in Chancery. In 1871 the 32nd Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records printed an index to all the deeds so enrolled on the dorse of the Close Rolls. The index was compiled from the original annual indexes to the Rolls and no attempt was made to check these against the original entries. Since the annual indexes were apparently made from the endorsements on the original deeds there was considerable opportunity for errors to creep in. The printed index therefore contains even more errors and entries can vary from two or three words to two or three lines of details. Although the arrangement of this index is alphabetical by the first letter of the parish or hamlet it is then chronologically arranged, making it necessary to read through all the entries. For more information about the enrolment of trust deeds in Chancery see R.W. Ambler, ‘Enrolled Trust Deeds’ (Archives, vol 20, 1993, pp. 177-186)

The references given here are to the year (regnal or calendar) followed by the number of the roll, and the number of the deed on the roll. If more than one number is given for the deed there is usually a lease and release. To consult the originals at the Public Record Office these references have to be converted to the new C54 reference numbers. For deeds after 1865 there is an index in the search room.

Oakley House to 1772

The Manor of Oakley Reynes was purchased by the Duke of Bedford from William Levinz Junior in 1737? Included in the sale was the Mansion House later called the Burystead. This house was situated to the south-east of the present house and is marked on a map of 1737? The present house was added to the map at a later date in a different ink. It was in a field called Odells Upper Hullands.

The present house was therefore built entirely after 1737 and is not a late seventeenth-century house. It was probable that the Duke always intended to build himself a hunting lodge there.

The admittedly incomplete vouchers of the Russell estate suggest that the house was built between 1748 and 1750. At exactly the same time Woburn Abbey was being transformed by Henry Flitcroft. In the steward's correspondence there are a number of mentions of Flitcroft's involvement with Woburn, never any with Oakley. A voucher presented by Thomas Moore shows that he drew up unspecified plans for Oakley on 6 December 1747? He was the equivalent of clerk of works at both houses and it seems as if Oakley was considered to be of less importance than Woburn and could be left to Moore to both design and oversee.

In a building lease of 1751, granted by the Duke of Bedford to allow him to build a house in King Street on the Russell's Bloomsbury estate, Moore is described as a bricklayer of Ilford, Essex. By 1763 his widow had taken on the lease.

Through the vouchers it is possible to find out who the individual craftsmen were who worked on the house. Jones and Matthews provided much of the metal work from a large neat brass knocker on the front door for 10s 6d to a large “Kitchen Range & cheeks” for £6 3s 11d. The same firm fitted most of the hearth equipment. The library, for example, had “A neat Steel Hearth Plate cutt & vailed with bright O.Gs & large Dutch Back for Do vailed weight 1lb 1qrs 14lb, a Pair neat Steel Globe head Dogs, a pair neat Steel Globe head Tongs and Shovel”, all valued at £7 6s 0d.

Houghton Manor House up to 1740

Henry Brandreth, probably a wealthy City merchant, purchased the Manor of Sewell in the parish of Houghton Regis in 1652. To this he added a couple of years later the main Manor of Houghton Regis, almost certainly including the site of the Manor House. Two views of 1775 show the entrance and one side elevation to the house, which contained three storeys and had three gables. The entrance elevation had six sash windows on each of the two top floors. The ground floor had a pedimented front door with four sash windows. The side elevation illustrated had three sash windows on each floor but otherwise was plain. The other side elevation and the other main front were not included in the drawings, so we can not be sure what they looked like.

It is possible that Brandreth had the house built himself but it is more likely that he had an older house refenestrated and added the pediment to the front door to give the house a more modern, classical feel.

Other details from the views show that to the right of the main elevation was a long lower building, probably containing service rooms, and further on a dovehouse and some stables. In front of the main facade was a walled garden with a fine pair of late seventeenth/early eighteenth-century gates. The house was sited opposite the north east end of the Green, on the north side of the High Street. The coach house was on the other side of the road, on the Green itself.

Henry Brandreth (1610-1672) had three children: Solomon, who was simple and so did not inherit Houghton, Nehemiah (1652-1719), who did, and Alice, who married Sir William Milard and built Houghton Hall by 1700. Nehemiah left a son Henry (1685-1739). Henry left a son, also called Henry (1723-1752), and three daughters. All were under age at their father's death. The inventory published below relates to the estate of Henry Brandreth (died 1739).

The house, as it is described in the inventory, seems to have had its only entrance on the grander south side with the best parlour occupying the south-west corner of the house with two windows facing south and one window west. The common parlour occupied the south-east corner with a similar arrangement of windows.

Leighton Buzzard Prebendal House up to 1749

The Leighs had inherited the lease of the Prebendal estate on the death of John Leigh's father-in-law, Christopher Hoddesdon, in 1610.

The first detailed description of the Parsonage House on or near the site of the eighteenth century Prebendal House is in a lease of 1584. The property is described as the “Mansion House of the parsonage of Leighton Buzzard included the hall, the entry between the hall and the parlour, the buttery, the wool house, the wool house entry, the garner, the kitchen, the larder, the boulting house, the entry between the kitchen and the hall (the screens passage); three little houses adjoining the said entry, the steward's buttery, the Vergys house with lofts, chambers and lodges over them.” The “Kill House” and a house late part of the malt house adjoined. There was a little court near the churchyard and the great garden significantly commonly called, the “New Garden”.

A dispute in 1620 indicates that the house had become decayed but by 1647, after repair and/or a partial rebuild, it could be described as “all that faire Prebend House in Leighton built partlie of stone, partly Brick and partlie Tymber being in very good repaire. Consisting of a Hall Parlour with Drawing Room, Kitchen, Pantrey, Brewhouse, Wash house and Two Cellars, and Porters Lodge, nyne lodging chambers with Six Closetts with one garrett and gallery”. There is a garden adjoining on the south wall. What is described is a typical seventeenth century house or earlier.

At the Sir John Soane's Museum is a list entitled “A short Account of Mr. James Gibbs, Architect And of Several things he built in England & After his return from Italy”. It records that Gibbs “built the House of the Honourable Charles Leigh in Bedfordshire; a very convenient building”. Unfortunately, the author gives no date for this building and no accounts seem to have survived.

At least the document itself can be dated to 1709 or after, when Gibbs returned from Italy. The attribution to Gibbs is at least a possible one, as the Ashmolean Museum holds a plan of a temple identical to the surviving Temple of Diana, that formed part of the estate.

Charles Leigh (1685-1749) second surviving son of Thomas Leigh of Stoneleigh, inherited the Prebendal estate from his uncle Charles in 1704.