PENN PARISH
Conservation Area
Penn village is part of a combined Conservation Area with a part of Tylers Green in the neighbouring parish. It is a large area and very varied, encompassing about 85 acres (34 hectares) with some 329 properties of which 50 are Listed Buildings. There are also Locally Listed and many unlisted buildings, particularly vernacular cottages, which contribute to the special character of the Conservation Area.
Penn village
Penn is the more rural settlement, lying within the Green Belt and AONB. A small traditional village centre has grown up around the church. It has a grand house (The Knoll), next to the 12th-century church, which belonged to the manorial family, a former vicarage, a small green (where the stocks used to be) with a war memorial, a former school (Penn Church Hall), a 16th century pub (The Crown), a Parish Room from where the Vestry administered the parish, and a cluster of old cottages. Most of the buildings are Listed and later refronting often conceals older 17th century timber-framed buildings. Ribbon development has been encouraged by the abundant ground water along the ridge top towards Tylers Green, and to a lesser extent down Paul’s Hill. No shops survive here.
Many of the houses along Church Road, Penn, are quite grand with a distinct architectural style and large gardens, taking best advantage of the views that reach as far as Windsor Castle. There are several late 17th century houses and some fine stuccoed Georgian buildings and an early Methodist Chapel.
Holy Trinity Church, Penn
The church is a grade 1 listed building dating from 1177, by far the oldest building in Penn. The church provides the focal point for the village. John Betjeman, who knew the village quite well, observed (in 1948) that ‘within and without, the church has the charm of old water-colours’. The nave is late 12th century (also the font, consecration crosses and stone tomb), the south aisle and low tower are early 14th century, with the chancel and Lady Chapel largely rebuilt in brick in the 1730s. The clerestory and the fine queen post roof with arcading were added in c.1400. The nave is built of flint, with clunch and tiles incorporated into parts of the quoins, buttresses and porch. All the exterior roughcast was removed in 1952 to reveal the flint work and stone.
The 'Penn Doom', one of only five surviving wooden tympanums in the country, is a 12 feet wide painting of the 'Last Judgement' on oak panels and hangs above the chancel arch. It has twice been on display in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. There is also an attractive arrangement of 14th century Penn floor tiles set into the floor of the Lady Chapel as part of a millennium project and a fine collection of Tudor and Stuart brasses of the Penn family. There is a well preserved example of Queen Anne’s arms. Six grandchildren of William Penn the Quaker, founder of Pennsylvania, are buried in a large family vault under the centre of the nave. Heraldic shields on the roof corbels portray eight centuries of English history. There is a particularly fine collection of 18th and early 19th century wall monuments, mainly to the Curzons and Howes.
The earliest marked grave in the churchyard is of William Penn, the lord of the manor, who died in 1693. There are many well known names, but the most notorious are Donald Maclean, who defected to Russia in the 1950s and David Blakely who was shot by Ruth Ellis in 1955, the last woman to be hanged in England.
Penn’s medieval tilers
For two or three generations in the 14th century, Penn was home to England’s leading floor tilers and Penn floor tiles were far and away the most popular choice for royal palaces and castles, cathedrals, abbeys, churches and manor houses, all over London and the south-east. The tilers were working at Windsor Castle for eight years laying more than a quarter of a million tiles. There were nearly 200 different designs, the majority singles, but many 4-tile and a few 9-tile and mosaic patterns. Only one complete floor survives – in the Aerary (treasury) in Windsor Castle, but evidence of tiled floors has been found in 180 different sites in 18 counties, as well as in 80 sites in London.
Most of the tile designs found on the Aerary floor at Windsor Castle, which were laid in 1355, have also been found in three gardens at the top end of Beacon Hill, which all back on to the same deep clay pit. This phase of Penn’s tile industry was clearly focussed there. The tilers would have required a blacksmith for their carts, the predecessor, perhaps, of Slades Garage and a water supply, presumably from nearby Pistles Pond. It is also clear from the location of other tile finds and the many clay pits on the Commons, that at some stage the tilers had their kilns fronting the common all the way from Beacon Hill down to Yonder Lodge. At their busiest, the tilers were operating at least 15 kilns all working flat out to meet the demand for floor and roof tiles. They completely dominated the parish economy and even changed the name of their part of it to Tylers End Green.
Widmer Pond
This pond is arguably the focal point for the Conservation Area. It is one of a series of ponds marking the parish, district and deanery boundaries, and has done so, unchanged, for well over 1,000 years. Widmer probably means ‘wide pond’ in Old English and nearby fields took the same name. The pond was used for washing clothes, but not for drinking-water, which came either from roof water collected in underground tanks in every cottage garden, from a spring at Stumpwell off Beacon Hill, or in times of drought, from a 350 foot deep well at Rayners. The concern used to be to keep the water clean, and vociferous complaint was made if ducks were allowed on the pond. The Victorian pump was installed in 1989 in memory of Ken Stevens a long time chairman of CWPC.
Beacon Hill
Penn beacon was part of several beacon chains - south to Portsmouth, west to Aylesbury vale east towards London, and even north via Coleshill. It gave its name to Beaconsfield. All serious place-name experts agree that 'beacon' rather than 'beech' is behind the name and that it was the beacon at Penn. Beaconsfield first appears in the record in 1184 as bekenesfelde - the ending -field denotes a stretch of uncultivated country which lay below the beacon. The beacon was in use during the Viking invasions and so its use preceded the development of the town below by many centuries.
There is further evidence of its defensive importance since the strip of common land on which the beacon stood used to be called Garret Green (corrupted to ‘Gerrards’ in later manor rolls). 'Garret' is from an old French word which Shakespeare used to mean a ‘watchtower’.
Pubs
There are two well-known pubs in Penn - The Crown near Penn church and the Red Lion by Widmer Pond
Beaconsfield 'for Penn' railway station - The opening of the Marylebone railway in 1906 encouraged London commuters and this coincided with the financial need for the Penn Estate to sell land for building and rapidly altered the whole nature of what had been a relatively isolated rural community.
Miles Green