Saint Modwen’s is probably Burton’s most significant church since it occupies part of what used to be the original abbey and hence has a history that dates back to that time.
Much of this section, photographs and text, is extracted from a booklet covering the history of Saint Modwen’s Church by kind permission of Dr Robin Trotter who produced it. The booklet is still available at the church.
Select page to view:
An extract from a map of Burton in 1865 below shows what was to become what we now know as the ‘Town Hall’ area. As can be seen it is quite isolated from the main body of the town with no road link between Station Street (recently renamed from Cat Street following the introduction of Burton’s first railway station) and Borough Road.
The area which was soon to see much development, was knows as Burton Moors. This started with the building of Saint Paul’s church by Michael Thomas Bass II a few years after this map was produced, opening in 1874.
In 1878, Michael Thomas Bass II, around four years after the erection of Saint Paul’s Church, also decided to donate Saint Paul’s Institute to be built at the corner of two new streets established with the building of St Paul’s – Rangemore Street and Saint Paul’s Street East. While the Institute was under development, the brewing empire of Bass, Ratcliff and Gretton grew ever stronger and Mr Bass further extended the project and acquired adjacent land so that the scheme could be extended to include the Burton Liberal Club. At the time Mr Bass represented Derby as a Liberal MP.
The Institute was originally intended to be worked under one management but this arrangement was altered for the addition of a Liberal Club which involved considerable extensions, additions and alterations. The final Saint Paul’s Institute and Liberal Club building was erected at the sole cost of Michael Thomas Bass II. The total cost, including land acquisition, was just over £40,000.
Reginald Churchill of Burton was appointed and architectual plans were duly approved. The intention, according to Bass, was to “Better to provide for the scholastic, recreative, and intellectual requirements of the town“. The Institute was officially opened in January 1882, although the main hall had been finished earlier, celebrated with the first organ recital in 1881.
The below plans show the revised scope which, together with the image that follows, formed the centre spread in the 1883 Architect journal.
The original scope of the Institute can be seen below in blue. The large Liberal Club extension, included the distinctive clock tower, can be seen in red.
The now combined development was built in a decorated style in red brick with stone dressings.
In 1888 the benefactor’s son, Lord Burton, paid for the addition of a supper room with minstrels’ gallery, known as the Annexe, at the end of a corridor leading from the hall. This was also designed by Reginald Churchill.
The original proposal looks quite different to the present day image. I am currently trying to research how much of this is down to the original design being changed, and how much is down to later developments after the building was passed to Burton Borough to be re-used as the Town Hall.
The above impression based on the architectual drawing is the subject of a rare early postcard which was the basis of my colourized impression at the top of the page to reflects the architectual proposal of “red brick with stone dressing“.
An actual photograph that shows the original Institute with a number of lovely features missing from the current building, most notably the French style towers.
Some years later, after the building had been re-utilized as the Town Hall, the towers have been lowered, the large circular window added and a number of extensions, including a new two new entrances.
Saint Paul’s Institute
The Institute portion of the building, intended for the general use of the public, had its main entrance in Rangemore Street under an arched porticowas comprised of the public hall, three classrooms at the west end, three more classrooms at the east end, kitchen, larder, wash-up, stores, and cellars under, with cloak-rooms and back offices. It was also to provide a Sunday-school in connection with Saint Paul’s Church, the whole area of the hall and classrooms being occupied for this purpose.
The large west classroom was also used as a parish room, and the upper class-rooms for a children’s library and other purposes. A penny bank was also accommodated. Every convenience for public dinners was provided, apparatus for cooking and serving up the most recherche dinner for 350 to 400 guests being attached to the hall, in addition to which an ‘electro-plate’ was provided, as well as cutlery, linen, glass, earthenware, and kitchen utensils. The other sundries provided were portable tables convertible as high or low, screens, extra platform and proscenium for dramatic performances, and crimson felt for corridors and class-rooms, Sec, and a dancing cloth sufficiently large to cover the public hall when used for public balls, upon which occasions the club premises were used and the reading-room converted for the time into a supper-room. There were also rooms on an upper floor on either side of a large gallery.
The public main hall roof had traceried spandrels and brick decoration, and was panelled throughout in pitch pine, and carried on ornamental rolled iron ribs of Gothic outline and decorated. The interior walls were finished in coloured brickwork, in patterns relieved by stone pilasters, with carved caps carrying the ribs of the roof, the lower part having a dado 6 feet high of glazed red tiles between stone plinth and string-course.
A large traceried circular window was introduced at the west end, and the orchestra and a fine three-manual organ and case designed by the architect was installed in the east end; the original organ was worked by water-power. The hall also had a large stage.
Particular attention was paid to ventilation, which was provided by channels in the brickwork with openings through the window sills. Ventilation was provided by longitudinal cast-iron trusses and gratings in the roof connected with the fleche in the centre, and fresh air was admitted by ducts in each window-sill above the dado. Heating was effected by hot water-pipes in the floor and roof. The floors of all the rooms were laid with wood blocks on concrete. The walls throughout, except for the large main hall, were rendered in Portland cement and finished in Keene’s cement, and in the club portion of the building were covered with Lincrusta-Walton and richly decorated.
Since the building was formally opened, extensive additions have been made to the kitchen department. The kitchen itself has been doubled in size, and fitted up with a large range of gas-stoves, and an oven capable of heating 600 dinner plates at one time. A large, well-ventilated larder has been added as well as a wash-up place, store-room, and large cellar, into which the blowing apparatus of the organ has been removed, the wind being conveyed by an iron trunk through a subway under the floors, a distance of about 80 feet.
The original full-length mullioned windows were converted into arches formed by rectangular piers with heavy capitals when north and south aisles were added around 1900.
Liberal Club
The Liberal Club portion of the building is probably the part that most Burtonians think of because it included the Flemish style clock tower.
The main entrance to the Liberal Club was to be in Saint Paul’s Street (the Square did not yet exist), through a hallway which led to a reception room, decorated with Gothic arches. Originally, this included a refreshment bar which was an arcading of three pointed arches on polished granite shafts and carved caps, and was fitted up with buffet at back and every convenience. To the left was the games rooms with two billiard tables and chess tables. Also on the ground floor was the library which was furnished with about 3,000 volumes.
The staircase was of Wingerworth stone, with twisted iron balusters, and was most elaborately decorated. It receives light from a lantern roof panelled in pitch pine, and carried on stone shafts. The stairs provided access to the club’s reading room, above the billiard room, and library. On the landing at the top of the stairs, the original portrait of the benefactor, Michael Thomas Bass II, still stands proud.
The walls in the Liberal Club were generally of higher quality and covered with Lincrusta-Walton and richly decorated. The club premises were also furnished, and the floors lined with granite pattern linoleum throughout at the cost of Mr. Bass, including also 6 inch speculum telescope, two microscopes and ancilliary equipment by Mr. Browning, of London.
The tower contains a four-dial clock, striking Cambridge chimes, and hour-bell (in D) weighing 21 cwt was cast in 1879. The clock itself was manufactured by Mr. J. Smith, of Derby, and the bells by Messrs. Taylor & Son, of Loughborough.
A house for the club secretary was later built in the north-east corner of the complex, and a bowling green was laid out on the east side.
The general building contract was carried out by Messrs. Lowe & Sons, of Burton, assisted by Mr. de Ville as joiner, and Messrs. Pickering Bros., as plumbers. The fireproof floors were installed by Messrs. Dennett & Ingle. Mr. F. Stevenson carried out the whole of the decorations. The pattern-glazing was carried out by Mr. S. Evans. The entire of the filed floors and walls were supplied and fixed by Messrs. Minton, Hollins & Co. Mr. E. H. Cogswell acted as clerk of the works during a portion of the progress of the work. The whole undertaking was carried out under the personal supervision of the architect, Mr. Reginald Churchill, of Burton.
Replacement Saint Paul’s Institute
When the whole building was gifted to the Borough to act as a much needed Town Hall, start on a replacement building to serve Saint Paul’s, provided by Lord Burton, began in 1892 close to where the Saint Paul’s Court nursing home now stands, at the diagonally opposite corner of the church. As with the original Institute, it was designed by Reginald Churchill and, like the previous building, was of decorated style in red brick with stone dressings. The replacement building also included a hall, recreational rooms open to working men of all denominations,and Sunday school classrooms. It was opened in 1894 and administered by the vicar of Saint Paul’s church.
After several years of misuse, including being used to billet servicemen during the second world war, the building was sold in the 1970s and finally demolished in 1979. The coats-of-arms which can be seen on the Institute building were incorporated into the low retaining wall in front of Saint Paul’s Court and can still be seen today.
A replacement church hall was established inside Saint Paul’s church.
The man above is standing at the corner of Saint Paul’s church, diagonally opposite the original Institute, now part of the Town Hall.
Replacement Liberal Club
The second part of the building, displaced by the Town Hall, was the Liberal Club. A replacement was provided by Lord Burton in 1894, built in George Street. The new building was designed in French Renaissance style by Durward, Brown and Gordon of London and still retains the elaborate 16th century style plaster work.
Fortunately, unlike the Institute, this building still stands in very good condition and, seen above, will be recognised by most Burtonians standing on the corner in Guild Street. The club remained as the Liberal Club until 1944 when it closed and re-opened as George Street Club. It is currently used as a restaurant.
ANGLO-SAXON CHURCH
The Life of St. Modwen references an Anglo-Saxon chapel dedicated to St. Andrew on Andresey, it is possible that it was associated with one of the foundations of the Northumbrian Bishop Wilfrid when he was exercising episcopal functions in Mercia between 666 and 669. Wilfrid founded a number of unidentified ‘monasteries’ in Mercia, and his devotion to St. Andrew is indicated by his churches at Hexham, Northumberland, and Oundle, Northants. The church on Andresey is thought to have been destroyed in a 9th century Danish invasion.
There is also evidence for a pre 11th century minster church serving an extensive parochia in Burton. In the 1120s the abbey was recorded as having the typical exemptions of an earlier minster church: it did not have to pay for ‘chrism or holy oil or any other parochial matter’, nor send a representative to chapter or synod. The extent of the parochia may be suggested by the abbot’s spiritual jurisdiction over Abbots Bromley and Mickleover (Derby) in the 13th century.
The endowment of a monastery on the west bank of the Trent by Wulfric Spot, an Anglo-Saxon nobleman, by a will dated between 1002 and 1004 presumably followed the conversion of the minster church to a Benedictine abbey in the late 10th century. That abbey is treated in an earlier volume of the History.
PAROCHIAL ORGANIZATION TO 1545
In the early 12th century the parish was served by a chaplain, presumably the man named Recelbert who received half the income of the parish altar, a corn render (or thrave), and the provisions of one monk, and who had a lodging house. The abbey supplied him with candles for the parish altar, presumably in the abbey church. He was probably assisted by a man known variously as Alwine the deacon, Alwine the priest, and, evidently in jest, Alwine ‘the bishop’. The abbey endowed Alwine with an annual payment of 2s., 4 bovates of land in Stapenhill worth 6s. a year, the provisions of one monk, fodder for one horse, and a house outside the abbey gate, probably the lodging house which Recelbert had previously held. Alwine’s son, also Alwine, later became chaplain for life with the same endowment as his father. Some time between 1160 and 1175 the younger Alwine was in turn succeeded by his son, a third Alwine, who held the post on similar terms. Vincent, son of the third Alwine, evidently followed in the office c1190.
The abbot and convent were said to be the rector of the parish in 1319, when the clergy included two parochial chaplains and four priests. There were two parochial chaplains in 1324, but probably only one in 1342 and 1383 (styled a perpetual vicar in 1391 but a parish priest in 1421), and still probably only one in 1434. Guild priests may have had some parochial responsibilities from the 15th century, although it is not known precisely how the parish was served when the abbey was dissolved in 1539.
The laity used the west end of the nave of the abbey church for their services probably from the rebuilding of the church in the early 12th century. The division between the upper church for the monks and the lower one for the laity was probably at the first nave pier west of the crossing, and services for the laity were probably taken at the Holy Cross altar, recorded in the early 13th century. In 1459 the pope granted permission for the celebration of a mass before dawn for laity who came to the abbey. A divinity lecture ordered by the abbot in 1537 to be read three times a week in the church by the schoolmaster of Burton may have been intended partly for the benefit of the laity.
Burton college, founded in 1541 after the abbey had been dissolved in 1539, maintained a single parish priest in 1544, whose stipend was £6 13s 4d a year. He was styled a curate in 1545, when the college was itself dissolved.
There was a graveyard for the laity separate from that for the monks by 1402.
GUILD
There is thought to have been a guild in Burton by the mid 13th century, when William ‘de Gildhus’ was recorded as holding land in Branston. He is probably the William ‘atte Gyldehus’ mentioned in 1270. The four priests who celebrated at Burton in 1319 may have been guild priests.
The first definite evidence for a guild is a bequest of 1465, when the guild evidently had more than one priest. By 1466 there were four priests, the normal complement, and the guild was often known as ‘the four guilds’. Each priest, who had his own clerk maintained by the guild, was assigned a part of the parish: Branston, Shobnall, and Sinai; Horninglow and Wetmore; Winshill and Stapenhill; and Stretton. In the 1540s there was lay master of the guild and a steward, who was also styled ‘the warden of the pyx’ of the borough of Burton. The guild presumably ceased to function on the dissolution of the chantries in 1547.
The Guild maintained a chapel dedicated to St. Luke, presumably in its hall; the chapel was probably founded in 1468 when the Crown granted a fair on St. Luke’s day. Each priest had a chest with a chalice, four suits of vestments, altar cloths, and hangings. In addition to its liturgical plate the guild had plate for guild dinners including a great standing cup of silver gilt, 25 silver spoons, 8 brass candlesticks, napkins, towels, and tablecloths. The guild priests also celebrated by turns in the chapel on the bridge over the river Trent, which had its own chalice and three suits of vestments.
Membership of the guild was presumably open to all parishioners, and several testators in the 1530s and 1540s left 3s. 4d. to be included in the guild book and for prayers to be said for their souls. Each guild priest had £4 13s. 4d. a year intended to be raised by the profit of four ‘ales’ (or dinners), to which parishioners brought ‘a dish of meat… to make merry’; any deficit was made up from income from the guild land. Each priest also had a chamber (cubiculum or camera) in what was evidently a row between the church and guild hall, which in 1550 stood on the south side of the market place.
In 1547 the guild held lands in Burton worth no more than £3 a year. In 1564, however, it was claimed that the guild had also held lands at Morrey, in Yoxall, and elsewhere, and in the late 16th century the total value of its lands was said to have been more than £14 a year. After 1547 some of the lands became part of the town lands.
PECULIAR JURISDICTION
Bishop Robert Peche (1121-6) confirmed to Burton abbey as ‘the mother church of Burton’ various rights then said to date from the church’s foundation. The church was free of payments for chrism, holy oil, and ‘any other parochial matter’, and it was not required to send a man or a woman to chapter or synod; moreover, it could hold its own court. The grant was confirmed by archbishops of Canterbury and diocesan bishops in the 12th and 13th centuries, and was acknowledged by archdeacons of Stafford in the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries. In the 1140s the diocesan confirmed that the chaplain of Burton was exempt from paying any custom or exaction to the archdeacon of Stafford, and in 1280 the archbishop determined that the chaplain should pay nothing to the diocesan or archdeacon except 3 shillings for Peter’s pence.
The powers of the abbot’s court were confirmed in the 1120s by Bishop Peche ‘so long as justice is not wanting’, perhaps implying a right of appeal to the bishop. In a later confirmation by Archbishop Theobald (1150-61), however, the abbot’s court was said to be for ‘all causes’. In the mid 13th century the abbot claimed matrimonial jurisdiction, but the right appears to have been stopped by the pope.
In the 13th and 14th centuries the bishop’s right to visit Burton parish was contested by the abbot. The bishop, however, held a visitation of the parish in 1390, and by 1535 the abbey had acknowledged his visitation rights and paid procurations. Bishops and archdeacons continued to visit the parish church after the Reformation.
In the 18th century the peculiar jurisdiction was again contested. The Earl of Uxbridge resisted the bishop’s claim to exercise faculty jurisdiction in Burton when the parish church was pulled down in 1718, although in 1723 the churchwardens by-passed Uxbridge and appealed to the bishop to allot the pews in the new church. In 1751 there was a dispute over the bishop’s attempt to exercise the right of excommunication within Burton.
In the early 19th century it was stated that while the lord of the manor had the uncontested right to prove all wills in Burton, other matters such as licensing the perpetual curate, granting marriage licences, swearing in the churchwardens, and ‘all contentious jurisdiction whatsoever’ belonged to the bishop.
Probate of Wills
There was an official of the abbey’s spiritual jurisdiction in 1344. His functions are unknown, but the survival among the abbey’s muniments of a Burton will made in 1402 suggests that the abbey exercised probate jurisdiction by that date, and an official of the abbey’s jurisdiction was certainly granting probate of wills by 1465. After the dissolution of the abbey, probate jurisdiction passed first to Burton college and then to the Pagets as lords of the manor, and they continued to employ an official of the peculiar jurisdiction, also styled a commissary. Some wills, however, were in the mid 16th century proved in the bishop’s consistory court at Lichfield.
In 1728 the post of official of the peculiar was described as ‘an office of some dignity and trust, but of very little profit and advantage’. Wills were kept ‘in a loose promiscuous manner’ at Sinai Park House, the home of the Earl of Uxbridge’s bailiff; because many had been lost, the Earl appointed Richard Rider, then an officer of the episcopal registry at Lichfield and later chancellor of the diocese, as registrar or assistant to the Burton official, and he kept Burton wills with those proved at Lichfield. In 1729 Rider was succeeded by John Fletcher, who acted as registrar of several peculiar jurisdictions. In the late 18th century two probate courts were held each year in Burton by the official, although in the 19th century at least one will was proved at Lichfield by an attorney acting for the peculiar court of Burton. There may have been some confusion between the jurisdictions of the Burton peculiar court and the Lichfield consistory court: in 1820 a will was proved first at Burton and subsequently at Lichfield. Nevertheless, the lord of the manor still exercised probate jurisdiction in Burton in 1856. Under the Court of Probate Act of 1857 the Pagets’ probate jurisdiction was extinguished in 1858.
PAROCHIAL ORGANIZATION FROM 1545
After the dissolution of Burton college in 1545, the parishioners used the transepts and crossing of the church, in addition to the western arm, as their parish church. By 1687, and possibly from the 1650s, the parish was divided between the ‘town’ (Burton and Burton Extra) and the ‘country’ (Branston, Horninglow, Stapenhill, Stretton, and Winshill), an arrangement reflected in the appointment of two churchwardens for each division.
ST. MODWEN’S PARISH CHURCH FROM 1545
Benefice and Advowson
After the dissolution of Burton college in 1545, Sir William Paget as the lord of the manor was charged with maintaining a curate and a preacher to serve the parish; the two offices were combined from the mid 17th century. Described as a perpetual curacy in 1768, the living became a vicarage under the Incumbents Act, 1868. From 1957 it was held in plurality with Holy Trinity until 1969, when the two benefices were united as the benefice of Burton-on-Trent, and in 1982 St. Paul’s was included in the benefice.
On the dissolution of the college, the Crown appointed a ‘chief curate’, but shortly afterwards it granted the advowson to Sir William Paget and the advowson thereafter descended with the manor. The patron was occasionally susceptible to popular pressure: in the 1690s Lord Paget replaced the curate on the petition of the parishioners
Income and Property
The clergy originally received only what the lord of the manor allowed them. By the terms of the 1546 grant of Burton manor Sir William Paget received all the tithes and in return was charged with annual payments of £7 to the curate for administering the sacraments and £10 to another priest for preaching; there was no other endowment of the living. Paget initially raised the curate’s stipend to £10 and lowered the preacher’s to £7, and from 1558 he dispensed with the preacher and paid the curate £13 6s. 8d. a year. By 1585 there was once more both a curate, paid £14 10s,. and a preacher, paid £14. The salaries were confirmed when the Crown restored the Paget estates in 1597, the preacher then described as being for the borough of Burton. By 1639 the two offices had been combined and the minister was paid £28 10s. By 1689 the minister received £35 from the manor, and that remained the stipend until it was raised to £50 in 1777. Secured by the patron’s endowment of a £30 rent charge in 1826, that stipend was still received from the marquess of Anglesey in 1953 and probably continued until around 1972.
The lord of the manor also received the Easter dues, worth between £7 13s. 4d. and £11 2s. 8d. in the later 16th century, but by 1693 they had been granted to the minister.
The first endowment assigned to the curacy was a grant of £50 a year made by parliament in 1652 out of Hanbury rectory; it evidently ceased to be paid after the Restoration. In 1820 a benefaction of £200 was made by the executors of the Burton lawyer Isaac Hawkins. To meet that benefaction and the securing of the curate’s stipend in 1826, Queen Anne’s Bounty in 1827 made two grants of £300 each; it had already given £800 on account of population in 1825. In 1838 the living was worth only £217 18s. 5d.; by 1855 it had risen to £255. In 1897 the endowment was described as ‘miserable’. In 1902 parishioners devised a plan to guarantee a stipend of £350 a year, and in 1924 Fred Young gave £100 to endow an Easter offering for the vicar.
Incumbent’s House The ‘chamber of the parish priest’ which adjoined the graveyard in 1550 was probably one of the former guild priests’ houses. In 1585 the curate had a tenement (possibly the Earlier chamber) in High Street, provided by the lord of the manor, who was also paying to clothe him. By 1612 the curate occupied a room provided by Paget within the former monastic precinct, and by 1666 he had a house probably still within the precinct.
Lecture
By will proved in 1649 Thomas Boylston, a London clothier who was probably the son of John Boylston of Anslow, bequeathed to the London Company of Clothworkers £800 to establish a lecture in Burton every Thursday morning. The lecturer was to be appointed by the bailiff of Burton and between four and six of the chief inhabitants, on the advice of three local ministers, and he was to be paid £31 4s. a year. For tolling the sermon bell the parish clerk was to have 16s. By the 18th century it was customary for the incumbent of St. Modwen’s to be the lecturer, as a means of augmenting his stipend.
Clerical Provision
The curate appointed by the Crown after the dissolution of the college was Robert Baslowe, formerly a petty canon of the college; he was succeeded in turn by Bartholomew Francis (d. 1557) and Thomas Smith, a former guild priest. Another former guild priest, William Smith, officiated as ‘under curate’ in the 1550s. Anthony Gefscocke, who succeeded on Thomas Smith’s retirement in 1578, had been a scribe of wills in Burton since 1570.
William Browne, minister from the 1690s, was a pluralist with independent means; although he chiefly resided at Burton, he regularly employed an assistant curate from the 1720s. Thereafter there was usually an assistant curate.
Church Life after the Reformation
Under the terms of the 1546 grant of Burton manor, Sir William Paget as lord of the manor was expected to pay £1 a year for bread, wine, and other necessaries; in fact, he usually spent considerably more. Paget also paid for copies of the new Book of Common Prayer in 1549 and 1552. His son Thomas, Lord Paget, was an ardent recusant, and although John Tailor of Burton Extra had an English Bible in 1568 and the will of James Sutton, a Burton carpenter, made about the same time, suggests zealous godliness, committed protestantism failed to get a hold in Burton until after Paget’s flight in 1583. The subsequent influence in Burton of the godly Hastings family of Ashby-de-la-Zouch (Leics.), Earls of Huntingdon, allowed evangelical protestantism to grow.
Peter Eccleshall, the preacher at Burton by 1585 and the curate from 1587, was indicted in 1588, probably for not using the Book of Common Prayer, and it may have been the growth of puritanism in Burton which attracted Philip Stubbes, a godly pamphleteer, to settle briefly in the town in the early 1590s. Eccleshall and Arthur Hildersham, a celebrated godly minister of Ashby-de-laZouch, were conducting a ‘common exercise’ in Burton by 1596. After 1603 the exercise included William Bradshaw, another noted puritan and preacher at Stapenhill, and it rotated between Burton, Stapenhill, Repton, and Ashby until its suppression in 1611.
Eccleshall was one of those who supported the claim made in 1596 by a 13-year-old boy, Thomas Darling of Burton, that he had been bewitched by Alice Gooderidge of Stapenhill and diabolically possessed. Known as ‘the boy of Burton’, he had visions of green angels and a green cat, with convulsions and temporary paralysis. Darling continued a zealous puritan after being exorcized, and when a student at Oxford in 1602 he was sentenced to be whipped and to have his ears cropped for attacking the vice-chancellor’s campaign against puritans.
In 1609 Edward Wightman, a Burton draper and alehouse keeper who had helped record Darling’s fits and who had signed a testimonial of the boy’s character, attended the Burton exercise and began voicing heterodox views about the soul. After presenting James I with an heretical tract concerning the Trinity he was arrested in 1611, whereupon he claimed to be the Holy Spirit. He was executed at Lichfield in 1612, the last heretic to be burnt in England. It was because of its association with Wightman that the exercise was suppressed.
Music
The deacon assigned £4 a year for playing the organ under the terms of the 1546 grant of Burton manor may be identifiable as John Bradshaw, a singing man of Burton college, who was recorded as the organ player in 1557. The organ had probably been removed from the church by the 1580s when Bradshaw was paid the same salary but described as a sexton.
The purchase of a singing book in 1697 possibly indicates the existence of a society of psalm singers, but it is not known how they were organized nor for how long they existed.
Church Buildings
St. Modwen’s Old Church, predecessor of the current church, was part of the former abbey church which was reserved to the parish when the Crown granted the possessions of the dissolved Burton college to Sir William Paget in 1546. It comprised the aisled nave of seven bays, west tower, west porch, crossing with tower and spire, and trans epts. By 1603 the eastern arm, which had been granted to Paget, was in ruins and the arch separating it from the crossing was walled up. In the early 18th century the pulpit and font stood on the south side of the nave, and a ‘spread eagle in brass’ which then stood in front of the pulpit may have been the brass lectern bought by the parishioners from Burton college in 1545. There were three galleries, one each for the ‘town’ and the ‘country’ parts of the parish and a private one for the Every family of Burton and Egginton besides seats for the poor in the south aisle.
The parish registers date from 1538.
In 1545 the commissioners for dissolving Burton college gave one pair of organs and sold another to the parish church.
There were six bells ‘in the college steeple’ in 1545 but only two bells and a sanctus bell in the church in 1553. A ‘great bell’ and a hand bell were mentioned in 1570.
There was a clock in the early 1550s. A later mechanism with chimes was added which needed repairing in 1707.
Maintenance of the fabric was a problem, especially after 1643 when an explosion of gunpowder in the church destroyed the roof and blew out the windows. The church was again in disrepair in 1697 when props had to be inserted in the chancel. Further buttressing was needed in 1707 and in 1710, when all the doors on the south side had to be nailed shut ‘to prevent all danger’ and the dismantling of the spire was considered. It was then claimed that the minister and parishioners could not meet in the church for services ‘without hazard of their lives’, and a brief was obtained to raise money for repairs. In fact, without the consent of minister or churchwardens, and contrary to a resolution of a parishioners’ meeting, the church was dismantled in 1718.
The Earl of Uxbridge was said to have approved the demolition, which was supervised by two close associates, William Woodcock, rector of Egginton, and his relative George Hayne, lessee of the Trent navigation and a resident of the abbey precinct. The costs of demolishing the old church and building the new one, however, were met by levies on the parish.
A combined pulpit and reading desk was provided in 1722. It may also have included a clerk’s seat: in the mid 19th century a three-decker pulpit stood at the east end of the nave. Also in the mid 19th century the font was at the west end of the nave, and the centre aisle was filled with wooden benches; behind the altar were text panels and the royal arms, and the side windows of the chancel were filled with clear and coloured glass.
The stained glass windows were added in 1865. They were given by the Marquis of Anglessey, Michael Thomas Bass and Henry Allsop.
(Photos awaiting sunshine!)
You would be forgiven for thinking that the two above pictures are the opposite sides of Saint Modwen’s church. In fact, whilst the top one is St Modwen’s but the bottom one is actually St Alkmund’s curch in Whitchurch, Shropshire.
They are almost identical, bar a few differences to suit their respective locations and a few additions over the years. Both were designed and built under the supervision of architect and builder William Smith, and his brother Richard. Saint Alkmund’s was completed first but William died before Saint Modwen’s was fully completed.
I had always imagined that churches were all unique so this was quite a revelation. In was strangely disappointing to find that Saint Modwen’s of all of Burton’s churches was a duplicate of an existing church being the mosty historically important church in Burton, and maybe even Staffordshire, occupying the site of Burton Abbey.
Burton from the East – 1800 (One of the most useful sources of the old bridge)
Trent Bridge at Burton – a scene from the early 1800s
Burton Abbey – 1812, View of Manor House (Formerly the private residence of the Abbot.)
Burton Abbey Gates – 1830 (now Abbey Arcade, High Street)
Peel Mill – 1830s (Still evident as apartments, Newton Road, Winshill)
Old Trent Bridge – 1840, although anonymous, this picture provides terrific insight of the time
Old Trent Bridge – 1844 by John Harden (Winshill end of old bridge)
Old Trent Bridge – 1857 by William Wilde (North side, note footbridge and lock gate)
View from Stapenhill- c1870
The Triangle, Stapenhill – by John Harden (Saint Peter’s Street)
Stapenhill Village – by John Harden (Junction of Hill Street and Main Street)
Stapenhill Green – by John Harden (Tree felling on what is now Saint Peter’s Island)
Burton Washlands – 1881 (View from top of the new Saint Peter’s Church tower)
River Trent – 1890s (View from Stapenhill Road)
The name Byrkley, which has changed a few times over the centuries, is derived from the family De Berkeley of Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire. In the 13th century there was a hunting lodge on the site which was in the heart of the ancient Forest of Needwood. Thomas de Berkeley was keeper of the Tutbury ward and occasionally stayed there.
Needwood Chase, as it was then known, had become the hunting preserve of the powerful Norman family de Ferrers, Earls of Derby, whose collective estates were known as the Honour of Tutbury. In 1267 the daughter of William de Ferrers married Thomas de Berkeley.
Because the Ferrers allied themselves with Simon de Montford in his rebellion against Henry 111 they were forced to forfeit their extensive estates to the crown. These subsequently became part of the Duchy of Lancaster which passed to the crown again in 1399.
Those were bloody times but Byrkley Lodge saw the coming and going of generations of monarchs, of charters and changing laws, was controlled by numerous keepers and saw the births, marriages and deaths of numerous tenants.
The hunting lodge was usually the residence of the keeper who was appointed by the King. It was also used on occasions by the monarch on hunting expeditions. Edward IV, who was a particularly keen huntsman, spent lavishly on extensions and repairs. Byrkley Lodge alternated with Tutbury Castle at one time as a venue for the wood mote or forest court. At such times miscreants would be brought before officials who would levy fines for trespass, poaching and other forest offences.
King James I often visited his much loved lodge at Byrkley. The ‘Woodmote Court’ was the only local judicial body. On 19 May 1337 the Chief Forester (Judge) dealt with the following cases:
– A person of Tatenhill fined 2 shillings for stealing three tops of fallen oak trees near Byrkley fishpond.
– Robert Clerk fined 12 pennies for taking one oak tree top from Dunstall Hill.
– Robert Dicon fined 6 pennies for cutting down lime trees.
– Richard Merriot fined 6 pennies for trespassing two colts in the lord’s fenced Byrkley Park.
– The Rector of Tatenhill Church fined 12 pennies for trespassing 140 sheep in Byrkley Park.
– Henry Brown fined 3 pennies for breaking down park palings in Highlands Park half a mile from Byrkley.
All offenders were held in the mercy of the court under surety of the Chief Forester.These courts were no longer necessary once the disafforestation of Needwood was affected after the enclosure in 1801. By this time the forest had changed. Once the home of the wolf, wild boar and wild fallow deer, it was now exploited for timber and pasture. On the lush meadows and grassland grazed the stock and dairy herds and the horses of the Earls and manorial lords. Plentiful oaks supplied acorns for pigs, and where oaks and timber trees were felled underwood and thorn were planted to provide cover for game. Venison, fish from the ponds, and honey from Needwood supplied the Lancastrian households and provided rewards for their supporters and officials.
In 1754 Lord Townshend, whose wife Lady Charlotte Compton had inherited Tamworth Castle and succeeded to the Ferrers barony, acquired the leasehold of Byrkley Lodge as his hunting seat. Here he built a house more extensive and somewhat more elegant than the earlier lodge, where they could retire in peace for a few months of the year.
It had become fashionable in the early 18th century to seek quiet, for some even solitude, in a country retreat, and Byrkley Lodge was ideally situated. Needwood Forest became the haunt of poets, philosophers and painters in search of the picturesque, as well as those in pursuit of the regular sporting pleasures of the forest.
The residents of Byrkley Lodge, like those at Yoxall Lodge lying little more than a mile south on Linbrook, found the natural brook, the valleys and plains, the fertile soils and the picturesque gnarled oaks all lent themselves well to the designs of landscape gardeners. Before he sold Yoxall Lodge to John Gisborne in the mid 18th century Sir Nathaniel Curzon had Ernes, a landscape gardener following the tradition of ‘Capability’ Brown, design improvements for the grounds there. Brown himself was planning the complete rebuilding and landscaping of Fisherwick for the Marquis of Donegal. The Marquis purchased Byrkley Lodge from Lord Townshend and the watercolours of the house and grounds in 1786 show clearly the influence of these gardeners who blended their cultivated art with nature.
On a 1775 map to the nobility Byrkley Lodge is the only building in the wooded area of the Needwood Forest Plateau except for Yoxall Lodge. Its only neighbour at this time was Hanbury Park Farm some 3 miles north.
The inhabitants of many of the great houses in the vicinity were closely associated by ties of friendship and marriage. They shared enthusiasm for hunting and fishing, archery and battledore, books and poetry, music and painting, and exchanged ideas on gardening developments. Many interesting figures of this period found pleasure in this company: William Wilberforce, Erasmus Darwin, Joseph Wright, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (2 of whose 4 wives were sisters of Edward Sneyd) and the novalist Maria Edgeworth.
Richard Edgeworth had 22 children. Edward Sneyd had only one and Mary Emma Sneyd did not marry. But one of her close friends, one of the 6 sons of Thomas Gisborne of Yoxall Lodge, married the daughter of Michael Bass of Burton-on-Trent. Mary (Bass) Gisborne’s brother, another Michael Bass, eventually rented Byrkley Lodge from Emma Sneyd in 1850.
The deeds of this lease are interesting in the detail of care for the property stipulated by Miss Sneyd. Of particular interest are the gardens and greenhouses mentioned, hothouses, shrubberies and pleasure grounds. Michael Bass had to spend £350 for improvements and reparations and ‘keep the gardens and garden grounds belonging to the Mansion House cropped and manured and managed the same according to the most approved methods of gardening’.
Sir Oswald Mosley wrote in his 1863 ‘Natural History of Tutbury’ that: “At Byrkley Lodge, for some years, families of pure white rabbits have been produced in the park where they make a very striking appearance”.
Before the Bass family rebuilt the Lodge, previous occupants had tried to make Byrkley different. Albino rabbits were bred and released in large numbers into the grounds. Byrkley Park was the only country estate in existence to have true white rabbits running wild. When the Bass family lived at the Lodge, workers were not allowed to shoot any of these white rabbits.
Brykley Lodge was completely re-built between 1887 and 1891 for Hamar Bass. The above photo shows the impressive stairway.
The stables at Byrkley Lodge, which survived for some time after the main house eventually demolished, enjoyed some fame and success. The Byrkley Stud produced ‘Love Wisely’ which won the Ascot Gold Cup in 1896. Hamar Bass was also the master of the Meynell (Fox) Hunt for 12 years so the hunt started at the front of the lodge.
Hamar’s son, William, succeeded in his uncle’s baronetcy according to special remainder and inherited Byrkley Lodge. The great mansion left by Sir William Bass and sold in 1952 was demolished.
The Trent Bridge is one of Burton’s most destinguishing features. It has a history almost as old as Burton itself.
The current Trent Bridge was only built in 1864, replacing an earlier one which was a little further downstream. If, like me, you marvel at the foresight of it being built large enough to accommodate today’s traffic, you will be similarly surprised to learn that in fact, up until 1926 it was only half its current width when it was widened to cope.
The tramway that used to traverse it only had a single track to handle both directions of Stapenhill and Winshill as well as the Burton and Ashby Light Railway trams requiring careful timetabling!
Select page to view:
The origin of the old bridge on the north side of Burton is not known, but it is certain that for a long time it ranked amongst the wonders of the land. In the early records of the Abbey there is reference made to a sum of money being set apart for the bridge, but this is thought to be for the repairing of it, not for the building.
There seems to have been a bridge of sorts on the site before the Abbey was established in 1004 AD. For many years after the Abbey was built, High Street, then called Old Street and later Long Street, consisting of very little beside two sloping banks and a ditch between them. There was little else to Burton aside from the Abbey. Some antiquarians even claim that the bridge is over two thousand years old, and that the Icknield Road, stretching from Derby to Ashby, must have crossed it. If that be true, it gives much credit to Roman building skill and materials.
There was certainly a substancial bridge on the site by the early 12th century. A bridge keeper was recorded as holding land on the Winshill side. It is not certain whether it fully spanned the river at this time but it certainly did by the end of the 12th century by which time, burgage plots were established in Horninglow Street, ‘west of the great bridge’. It was probably built of stone, or at least had stone footings, although the first surviving mention of a stone bridge is from 1322. The exact form of the structure is unknown but providing that it was not later substantially altered it would have been as described in the 18th century: running north from Winshill before turning west across the river and the west arm, the bridge was then 515 yards long and 15 feet wide and had 36 arches. By the 1590s water no longer passed through two of the arches where land had silted up at the south end of Burton meadow, creating Umpler green. The east end of the bridge was widened in 1831, and in 1839 the first two arches on that side were filled in.
The west end of the bridge originally terminated with a causeway on the south side of which cottages had been built by 1550. In 1835 there were three houses there and four on the north side. The causeway was raised in the later 1750s, after the road had been turnpiked, and two low arches were inserted as culverts.
Grants of land and bequests of money for the upkeep of the bridge are recorded occasionally in the Middle Ages, and in 1546 the endowment comprised three houses and a small amount of land and meadow, worth 21s 4d a year. The abbey seems to have taken no formal responsibility for maintaining the bridge and much of the money needed for repairs came from alms, presumably collected by a chaplain who maintained a bridge chapel. When part of the bridge was swept away by flood in 1284 John of Norfolk, who was acting as keeper of the works of the bridge, was given royal protection to beg for alms to repair it, as was the keeper in 1324. A grant of pontage made in 1383 was to a body of trustees, including a chaplain who may have been the bridge keeper. John of Norfolk, described as a ‘monk’ in the royal grant of 1284, and a ‘bridge monk’ recorded in 1396 are unlikely to have been monks of Burton abbey, and were almost certainly lay hermits, possibly following the rule of St. Paul: a house called the Hermitage in 1546 stood at the west end of the bridge on its north side, opposite the chapel.
In 1441 the abbot and leading townsmen appointed a layman as keeper and proctor of the bridge for a 30 year term, and a layman was appointed for life in 1493. In 1527 an appeal for funds was launched by the abbot, the prior of Tutbury, George, Lord Hastings, and local gentry.
Some of the £20 a year that Burton college was obliged, probably from its establishment in 1541, to spend on making and repairing roads may have been applied to the upkeep of the bridge. At its dissolution in 1545 the college was paying 33s. 4d. a year to a bridge master named William Mason (or Edge), who seems to have been a stone mason retained originally by the abbey; he was still paid a fee by the Paget family in the later 1560s. The annual cost to the manor of maintaining the bridge was estimated at £16 13s. 4d. in 1585. The Pagets evidently assumed responsibility for the bridge, and the obligation was specifically included in the Crown’s grant to William Paget of his father’s forfeited estates in 1597. The cost of repairs was a constant drain on the manor in the 17th and 18th centuries, and when the road over the bridge was turnpiked in 1753 the earl of Uxbridge was awarded £20 a year from the tolls for bridge repair. It remained the lord’s responsibility until 1864.
Bridge Chapel
There was a bridge chapel by the 1260s, and its dedication to St. James was recorded in 1332. On the eve of the Reformation services were being celebrated there by the town’s guild priests. The chapel stood at the south-west end of the bridge and had a south door onto Burton hay. There was also a cross at the east (now Winshill) end of the bridge in 1598. The chapel, having fallen into disrepair, was demolished in 1777.