It is a full year since my last article about the arrival in Penn of the Revd John Grainger, and the many changes which he made  to  the  interior  of  the  church,  inspired  by  the  Oxford  Movement with its advocacy of a higher degree of ceremony in  worship  to  bring  it  nearer  to  that  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church. This also required ‘improvements’ to the fabric  of the church, which in effect meant the removal of any feature which was not in accord with the ideal of the architecture of the medieval Decorated period (c.1280-1380).

Thus,  as  I  noted  before,  two  galleries  were  removed,  a  two-storey  south  porch  was  taken  down  and  the  three-decker  pulpit  was  removed.  In  addition,    an  altar,  carrying  a  cross  and  candlesticks,  was  restored  after  more  than  three centuries,  although the altar was of wood rather than stone  as  it  would  have  been  before  the  Reformation.
The  eagle  lectern,  another  reversion  to  medieval  tradition,  may  have been installed around this time and the black and red Victorian tiles laid on all the floors.  The natural colour of the  oak  of  the  roof  timbers  still  survives  in  the  tower,  but  elsewhere they were stained black, probably at this stage.  The very fine, early 18th century pulpit, oak with marquetry, arrived  from  the  Curzon  chapel  in  Mayfair  when  it  was  closed in 1899.

The photograph is of a water-colour of the exterior of Penn Church by Henry Zeigler (1793-1874). He was a leading painter in his day and taught Queen Adelaide,  the wife of William IV, to whom the 1st Earl Howe was  Lord Chamberlain. The painting shows the church as it was in c.1860, just before the first significant changes were made to it since the 1730s, and  was  presumably  commissioned  for  that  reason.  The  east window was still the ‘Road to Emmaus’, installed in the 1730s and set in a brick wall.  Both were soon to be taken down and replaced with a more suitably Gothic window set in the knapped black flint fashionable at the time.

The two lancet windows in the north wall were presumably regarded  as  too  early  and  too  primitive,  and  so  the  single  lancet  was  blocked  in  (to  be  rediscovered  in  1952)  and the double lancet was replaced by a copy of the late 15th century clerestory (higher level) window on the other side of the porch. The three-light brick window in the clerestory the other side of the porch was rebuilt as a copy of the other two original 15th century clerestory windows and the lower brick window was filled in. All these changes were aimed at  producing    a  symmetrical  all-Gothic  appearance  to  the  church as you approach from the main road.

On  the  far  side  of  the  church,  Two  semi-dormer  windows  were  put  in  the  south  isle,  presumably  replacing  either  worn  out  original  14th  century  windows  or  unacceptable  later replacements.

The  first  Earl  Howe  paid  for  this  work  and  one  wonders whether his money was well spent. Fortunately, our mainly 14th-century aisle and tower were seen as correct, so what happened in Penn was only a modest example of Victorian restoration,    when    well-intentioned,  but    over-zealous    concerns to sweep away the past often carried away much of value that contributed to the atmosphere of the church.  In other local churches, such as Beaconsfield and Amersham, very little is visible of  the former medieval church.

Penn Church, North East view, c.1860, by Henry Zeigler (1793-1874).

Miles Green, Penn Parish Newsletter No.53, November 2018

© Eddie Morton ARPS, Earl Howe

The East window of our church has been changed several times over the centuries to accord with changing fashions. We don’t know what it was like in the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic era, but all churches were required to remove any such evidence of Popery and the windows are plain glass in the earliest surviving view, a late 17th-century drawing.  In 1736, the new Proprietor, Sir Nathaniel Curzon, the 4^th baronet who had been brought up in Penn, and was the second son of Sarah Penn, commissioned a ‘painted’ window picturing ‘Christ Making Himself Known to his Disciples at Emmaus’ (Luke 24:30). We see it, set in a brick wall, in the photograph of Henry Zeigler’s water colour of c.1860 which hangs in the church.  The top of the window contains three coats of arms.  On the right: the Curzon arms, centre: the Penn arms, and on the left: the Penn and Curzon arms combined. The window was made by John Rowell, of ‘High Wickham’, and was probably his last piece of work before moving from Wycombe to Reading.

Penn East window, postcard c.1920

Soon after Henry Zeigler’s water colour was painted, in 1865, perhaps encouraged by a new Vicar, and as part of considerable changes to the church, Earl Howe paid for an expensive and imposing new window in the traditionally Gothic tradition advocated at the time by the Victorian Oxford Movement. The window depicted Jesus’ Transfiguration, and had Jesus in the centre with Moses on his right and the prophet Elijah on his left. It was set in a rebuilt chancel east wall of Bath stone and black knapped flint.

Then, in 1931, the Vicar, of High Church persuasion, was intent on restoring the more Catholic tradition of an altar curtained at the back and sides by a dorsal and riddell posts. However, the curtain covered the bottom foot or more of the Victorian East window. The Vicar therefore commissioned the present window with coloured green glass at the bottom to go behind the curtain.
The green glass incorporates a notice “This window was drawn (and donated) by Margaret and Hugh Pawle at A.K.Nicholson’s Studio’s 105 Gower Street WC1. In the event of the dorsal ever being removed please apply to the above for the complete design”. The curtain was duly removed in 2003, but by then, the designer’s workshop had long since closed. The window is dedicated to Hugh Pawle’s mother and sister, who lived at Hutchins Barn, Knotty Green.

So what happened to the Victorian window? Many years ago I was assured by Pat Cuthbert and more recently by Herbert Druce, that they remembered the stained glass had been given to Penn Street Church. I tried to find evidence of this, but all the Penn Street windows were firmly assigned to the same 1849 date when the church was consecrated. I could find nothing in local or Diocesan records, or the Bucks Free Press.

Penn’s 1865 E. window, now in Penn Street’s N. transept

The solution to the mystery came from Michael Hardy, who was photographing the Penn Street windows and read a 1988 NADFAS report which noted that in the North transept the stained glass was not tall enough for the window height and the gap above had been filled in with opaque pale yellow mottled glass. He checked the design and size against the only surviving shadowy old photograph of the 1865 Penn window and there was no doubt they are one and the same. Mystery solved!

More details with superb photographs of all the stained glass windows can be seen on the Stained Glass of Buckinghamshire website,
I strongly recommend a visit!
Stained Glass of Holy Trinity, Penn.
Stained Glass of Holy Trinity, Penn Street.

Miles Green with Peter Strutt, Penn Parish Newsletter No.54,  January 2020
Photos and descriptions: Michael Hardy
East Window painting c.1860, © Eddie Morton ARPS, courtesy Earl Howe.

Death of the Late Vicar of Penn.

The Rev. John Grainger, who was one of the first assistant mathematical masters at Eton under the ….. of the late Rev. Stephen Hawtry, from 1851 to 18.. has died at St. Mary Hearne, Hants, aged 81. In 1860 Mr. Grainger was presented by the first Earl Howe to the living of Penn, and continued to hold it til last year (1898), when he resigned owing to advanced age and failing health.
Bucks Herald April 29th, 1899.

Transcription from the Bucks Herald, Saturday December 2nd, 1899

To the Editor of the Bucks Herald

Sir, – I have been waiting for some little time fully expecting that your attention would have been drawn by other persons more directly interested, or by the Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society, to the extraordinary proceeding – I can call it nothing less – on the part of the Vicar of Penn Church, the Rev. Benjamin John Short Kirby. A few weeks since I received a catalogue from a firm of London booksellers offering for sale, at the price of 175 guineas, the following: –

PENN RELICS

“The pulpit of Penn Church, the pulpit cloth (worked by Martha Penn), and the ancestral pew of the Penn family.

The vendors offered as guarantees of the genuineness of these historic relics of one of our most celebrated Buckinghamshire families the following declarations, which, Sir, you will note are attested by the reverend gentleman: –

“I, Benjamin John Short Kirby, Vicar of the Church of Holy Trinity, in the parish of Penn, in the County of Buckinghamshire, known as Penn Church, do hereby solemnly declare that the properties hereafter specified were formerly part of the ordinary furniture or fittings of Penn Church, a structure dating from the year 1213, wherein the Penn family the ancestors of that William Penn who settled in Pennsylvania, were wont to worship, and that they were sold by me to Messrs J and M L Tregaskis.

“1. The complete parts of a pulpit which stood in the north-east corner of the nave, next against the chancel (as shown in the view annexed), which was the pulpit of Penn Church from some remote period, no record of any alteration therein having been found in the registers of the said Church, which date from 1560, until the date of its removal under a faculty, by my direction, in August 1899.

“2. The doors, seats, cheek, and other sound parts of a high-backed pew, presumably the ancestral pew of the Penn family, Lords of the Manor, situate at the east end of the south aisle (as shown in the view annexed), facing the 16^th and 17^th century tombs of the Penns. Under the flooring the coffin of William Penn, who died in the year 1638 was discovered. In later times the pew had been divided by a partition, and had been repaired with a panel, containing the Creed, taken from the walls of the Church. These were removed under a faculty, by my direction, in August, 1899.

“Witness my hand this 23^rd day of September in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and ninety-nine.”
(Signed) BENJAMIN J S KIRBY, “Vicar of Penn”

“I, Benjamin John Short Kirby, Vicar of the parish of Penn in the County of Bucks, do hereby solemnly declare that the red velvet pulpit cloth is the pulpit cloth referred to in the following extract from “A Terrier for the Vicarage of Penn” dated 27^th May 1726, and attested by the vicar and wardens of the parish of that date:-

“There is an old green pulpit cloth, with a green cushion, both of which are fringed round with a green silk fringe, and were constantly used till ye year 1721, in which year Ms Martha Penn, sister to Roger Penn, Esq, patron of ye Church, was so kind as to give a handsome pulpit cloth of crimson velvet, with a broad gold lace all round it, and also a cushion of ye same, bound with ye same sort of lace, and a gold fringe tassel at each corner, and letters and figures upon ye pulpit cloth are these – M. P. 1721”

“Witness my hand this 5^th day of October 1899″
(Signed) BENJAMIN J S KIRBY, “Vicar of Penn”

Now, Sir, I ask this reverend gentleman the meaning of this act of vandalism on his part, for these relics, are valuable beyond price. For, Sir, these are not only relics of antiquity, hallowed by their age and association with the sacred edifice from which they have been so sacrilegiously divorced by the person, of all others, who should most have cherished them, but, historical and national, from their connection with that family of Penn of whom our county is so justly proud. Possibly their future and last resting place is to be across the Atlantic in that State founded by and taking its name from the great member of the Penn family – William Penn. Thus, we are possibly for all time the losers, while those things thought of such little count here by their custodian will be in their new resting place a revered, a most precious, and a prized possession. Sir, where was the Patron of the Living of Penn, where the Lay Rector, the Churchwardens, and the parishioners, that this most monstrous procedure on the part of the Vicar of Penn should have been possible or permitted. Had he the right to do this? I suggest it was his duty to have prized and preserved these relics, and have handed them on as he received them, safe-guarded and kept, in the fullness of time, to his successor. I trust, Sir, that public opinion will be so roused in the matter that the Vicar of Penn will be forced to obtain again these relics and replace them in their ancient and proper resting place.   Yours truly, ‘OLD MORTALITY’

Transcription from the Bucks Herald, Saturday December 2nd, 1899

I went to see Herbert Druce, a few weeks after his 100th birthday, with the thought of recording his long memories of Holy Trinity, Penn, which start in 1922 when he was a 7 year-old choir boy and there was no electricity or water in the church. It will take two or three articles to recount all his memories and I will start with the secret passage. When the Penn and Tylers Green Society started, in about 1980, to collect information about local houses of interest, the then owners of the Old Vicarage next door to the church said that when they first came to the house there was an underground passageway to the church from their cellar which they had blocked up.

This account is confirmed by Herbert Druce, who was told about the underground passage before the last War, by Bert Randall who was Captain of the Tower. Herbert doesn’t know the line of the tunnel, but assumes it had been revealed when Bert Randall was involved in putting a boiler house at the back of the tower. There was no west door in the tower at that time.  Herbert himself had been in the Old Vicarage cellar. He was locked in there as a joke when a boy and remembered it was always flooded. He didn’t know anything about an entrance at the time and doesn’t remember seeing one there.

The present Old Vicarage we see today was built in 1825, but stands on the same ground as its many predecessors so the passageway could have been built at any time. Of course, it could have been simply to give a warm, dry passage to the church rather than to allow a Catholic priest secret entry to the church, but we do have to remember that the Reformation was a dangerous time for churchmen. We should also have in mind that the manorial Penn family remained Catholic in sympathy for nearly a century after the Reformation.

On 30 August 1539, Thomas Cromwell was sent a letter reporting that Thomas Grove and William Culverhouse had accused the Vicar of Penn of ‘the utterance by him of certain opprobrious words’. The Vicar’s own confession was enclosed and he had been committed to gaol in Aylesbury. Both the Vicar’s accusers were from well established Penn families and may well have been the two churchwardens. It was an extraordinary event and allows us just a glimpse of the conflict and turmoil that the process of reformation had stirred up in a country parish. One wonders how the confession had been encouraged.

Finally, I was intrigued by a comment from a map dowser, who without any prior briefing, reported that he had found a 3 ft wide passageway entering the Vestry, which is indeed where you would expect it to go to.

© Miles Green March 2015

Herbert, who was born in 1915, followed his father’s example and was in the choir for 70 years from the age of 7 and a bellringer from the age of 12. He loved singing and used to sing all day when working at Slades Garage. There was no electricity in the church until 1938 and he was a candle boy responsible for the nine candles on the candelabra over the chancel step and on the altar, lighting them with a taper on a long arm and putting them out after the service. Oil lamps were lit by Mr Busby. The organ was between the Lady Chapel and the choir stalls and was powered by bellows which were pumped manually by a handle behind the organ with a floating indicator to tell you whether more air was needed. Heating was a tortoise stove. Earl Howe’s pew was still in the chancel with red cushions.

Rev. Ernest Smith

He just remembers Mr Kerby, who was the Vicar from 1898 to 1922.  He had a nanny goat beard, and, so he was told, used to bash the pulpit if people slept during his sermon. He remembers a sixth bell being installed in the tower to mark the signing of the Peace Treaty in 1919. Herbert was there for the licensing of the next Vicar in 1922, the Rev. Ernest Smith, a nice man, he remembered, but he didn’t go down too well with many of the parishioners because he was so High Church, replacing the communion table with an altar and using incense. The congregation dropped off.  (See Altar Arrangements, Part 4)

In 1937, the Rev. Smith retired and a new Vicar, Kenneth Mumford, arrived. Herbert had already met him as a boy when, as Vicar of Coleshill, he was their religious studies teacher at the Penn Church school. He remembers a biggish man who drove a little Austin 7, and recalls, ‘he was a remarkable man. You could hear a pin drop when he stood on the chancel steps to give a sermon. No notes’. He energised the congregation, started the Parish Magazine which has continued to this day, raised large sums for much-needed repairs, installed electric light and water and played an important part in the discovery of the Doom painting. Herbert told me that a good many pieces were found in the dell used as a parish rubbish dump in the field off Gravelly Way, opposite what is now known as Lions Farm.

Unhappily, Kenneth Mumford died of lung trouble after only 15 months. He was always very short of breath, which Herbert attributes to a result of gassing in the First War, and is buried with his wife, a former ballet dancer, at Coleshill.

It is extraordinary to have a first-hand witness to these events of nearly 100 years ago and I am very grateful that Herbert Druce is still with us to provide them.

© Miles Green, May 2015