Exhibition: The History of Walton Hall

St Michael’s Church – early history

The first image on this page show St Michael's Church, the parish church of Walton, photographed in 2023. There is believed to have been a church building on this site since 1189. During extensive restoration work by The Open University in the 1970s, evidence of the original church walls were found at the bottom of the inner wall of the nave. Large fragments from a twelfth century stone font were also recovered from the church. These fragments were located buried beneath a later stone font base. An image of two of the pieces, now archived at Milton Keynes Museum, can be viewed on this page.

In 1190 the Bishop of Lincoln granted parochial (parish) status to the two manor houses that existed at Walton (later known as Walton Hall and Walton Manor) which had jointly founded the church dedicated to St Michael in 1189. Over the next three centuries the families of the two manors each recommended or ‘presented’ a priest - a process known as Advowson - thus St Michael’s maintained two rectors during this time. This process came to an end in 1458 when the owners of both manor houses requested that one rector represent them and from that date the new rector was presented alternately by the owners.

The parish register of Walton only began in 1598, 60 years after the first parish registers were introduced in Britain by Thomas Cromwell. In Walton the register began the same year that a new rector, William Pyxe was appointed. The first entry recorded is the baptism of Thomas Toogood on 1 July 1598.  

According to ‘The Victoria History of the County of Buckinghamshire’ published in 1927, “In 1291 the church of Walton is returned at £5 6s. 8d., and at the Dissolution the rectory was worth £9. In 1495 lands in Walton were granted to the gild at Fenny Stratford”.

The church building we see on The Open University campus today was rebuilt in the fourteenth century from a mixture of limestone and ironstone rubble covered with thin cement – the present nave and chancel date from that period. The tower (or some of it) was constructed during the fifteenth century and the heavily restored porch may also be from that date. In 1975 an article was written about the church in the OU staff magazine 'Open House' by Peter Salway (a professor of history and archaeology at The Open University 1970-1991) who made some interesting observations about its construction:

“The nave and tower are of solid construction and good architectural quality, with some outstanding features. The most immediately remarkable is the staircase to the lost rood loft, apparently quite unrestored and acceptable as untouched 14^th century work. The chancel is of much lower quality, though not without rustic charm. The ‘decorated’ windows in the nave are good professional work of the period, those in the chancel quite pretty from outside but conveying a decided air of medieval ‘do-it-yourself’ when viewed from within. Can nave and chancel be of one piece, even of one date? Structural examination, particularly at the junction between them, may produce new evidence.

The tower, which we are asked to accept as purely 15^th century, provokes more suspicions. It has windows at three levels and the arch between it and the chancel is massive and placed oddly off-centre. The west window is undoubtedly Perpendicular in style but surely must be entirely of recent date. The recorded restoration work in 1861 seems a likely date. It is the upper part of the tower that provokes real unease. The second level of windows are almost entirely repaired in cement but probably of 15^th or 16^th century date. However, above them, the four bell chamber windows look not only original but difficult to date on style later than the middle of the 14^th century; in other words the sequence is the wrong way up! Anything as simple as a purely 15^th century tower is therefore ruled out, even if the four windows were reused from somewhere else, (but where?). Returning now to the junction of tower and nave, it is clear from the outside that there was an earlier roof with a steeper pitch which has left its mark on the tower. Inside, the present nave roof is a striking example of late Elizabethan or Jacobean decorated timber construction. It is supported on stone corbels or brackets in a would-be classical style which is repeated in the woodwork itself.”

The third image on this page shows fragments of the Medieval painted glass windows recovered from St Michael's Church in the 1970s. The fragments date from the late fourteenth to the early fifteenth centuries and are now archived at Milton Keynes Museum. According to Dennis C. Mynard of Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society... "A quantity of painted glass, much of which was almost clear and had red painted decoration often highlighted with yellow stained areas, was found. The decoration was typical of the fifteenth century, with formal borders, foliate designs, a foliate design with a human face and a border with a bird." (Ref: Excavations on Medieval sites in Milton Keynes 1972-1980 by D. C. Mynard. Published by Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society, 1994).