A History of Clewer

The Clewer Group

Modern Clewer

To get there:

Bus from Central Windsor - alight at Mill Lane. Takes ten minutes - fare 80p each way.

Car - drive along Maidenhead Road [A308] - under dual carriageway, turn right into Mill Lane after Mobil Garage - road parking.

Walk along river past the Leisure Centre until you see the church spire.

Hatch Lane is ten minutes walk south - Vansittart Road is en route from Windsor to Clewer

In the days when the River Thames meandered through a wide flood plain and, in the absence of bridges, the ford was an important place, Clewer was well known.

The only way of crossing the river for several miles, it became a focus for soldiers, traders and pilgrims.

A chapel was built beside the ford to minister to travellers en route from St Leonard’s Hill to the south to the Chiltern escarpment to the north. Muggers and highwaymen were prevalent and law enforcement was in the hands of the local landlords.

Clewer is the oldest village in the area - [New] Windsor did not assume importance until after the Conquest with the building of, first, the Castle and, later, the bridge over the river.

Clewer remained important through the years until the whole area of Windsor was subject to considerable expansion in the 1840s with the arrival of the Railways – GWR and SR - and the permanent residence of the Royal Family in the Castle. The arrival of the Court involved a considerable amount of building for the courtiers - expensive houses in central Windsor - and their servants - smaller houses further out from the Centre.

Windsor has been a garrison town for three hundred years with two regiments based there - one foot and one cavalry.

Considerable prosperity derived from their presence.

Today Clewer still retains its character as a separate village but Windsor is the dominant town and residents work as far afield as Central London; Heathrow Airport provides much local employment.

Clewer was a small riverside settlement with its church, its mill (mentioned in Domesday Book) and its fisheries. The mill stream provided a safe harbour with access to the Thames. Writing in the 1920s, Rector William Elwell records as fact the local tradition that William "was accustomed to hear Mass in Clewer Church." Certainly there would have been no Chapel in the simple wooden fortification which he built on Castle Hill. Reconstructions of William’s "castle" which were made in 1986 for the 900th anniversary of Domesday Book showed Clewer Church enclosed in the Castle's outer palisade. The name Clewer appears in various forms (such as, for example, Clyfware, Clyvore).

It is said to mean "people of the cliff" which is another reference to Castle Hill. We know that for many years the Castle stood within the parish boundary and until the reign of Henry VIII the church received an annual rental from the monarch. Castle Hill consists mainly of chalk, and this provided the principal building material for the church. Some chalk slabs may still be seen in the surround of the sealed-up door leading to the Brocas Chapel. The chalk walls are, of course, surfaced with flint.

There seems no doubt that the Norman church, which still stands today, was built on the site of a Saxon church, probably of wood and thatch. The font is said to be Saxon, and must, therefore, have stood in the earlier church. (Of much interest to visiting schoolchildren is a fossilised cockle shell in the stonework of the font, on the south side.) Rector Elwell thought that the Saxon church probably stood on the site of the present south aisle. There are grounds for supposing that he was wrong. Until the 1850s the font stood in a most improbable place, as an old print shows, at the west end of the north aisle surrounded by pews.

This is a most improbable siting for a font in an old church. In old churches the fonts are invariably by the door to symbolise the "entering" of the Church by persons being baptised. It seems likely, therefore, that the Saxon church stood on the site of the present north aisle and that when the larger church was built the font was simply left where it was. From time to time enthusiastic visitors have insisted that Clewer Church is built on a ley line and two men from London "proved" this to their own satisfaction by carrying out a pendulum test.

Their pendulum was a large, heavy bead suspended on a thread. The bead revolved quite violently at a point at the west end. The present writer has no views on ley lines - some allege that they do not exist. Those who believe in them allege that they are lines of cosmic energy connecting ancient sites. Whatever the truth, there is something which is a matter of fact. If one draws a north/south line on an Ordnance Survey map, the line goes through a tumulus to the north, west of Beaconsfield, and through another to the south, by Chobham Common. The suggestion is that the church stands on a third tumulus.

There is some circumstantial evidence to support this. Firstly, in an area of near-total flatness, by the river, the church stands on a rise in the ground. This is scarcely discernible, but it was enough, in 1947, when most of Clewer was flooded, to keep the church dry. Secondly, when churches were first being built in England, orders came from Rome that, wherever possible, they should be built on pagan sites. This was in order that the sites should be, as it were, "disinfected" and not be available for their former use.Clewer churchyard contains many graves of great interest and some of them feature in this book.

The earliest grave-markers, however, consisted of a narrow plank with a painted, or carved, inscription, erected between two simply carved posts. These may be seen in an old oil painting of the church. Two of the carved posts have survived and may be seen in the Museum.

The stone cross in the middle of the path leading from the church to the Lodge, marks the 19th century extension of the churchyard, though people had already been buried in the unconsecrated ground, part of which was the village pound.

There was also a small extension of a few yards, on the south side into what is now Clewer Court Road. Some years ago, when an apparently "unused" plot in the churchyard was being used for a burial, the spade revealed the two parts of a skull which had been trepanned.

On the Maidenhead Road, to the west of the entrance to Mill Lane, can be seen the gateposts and gatehouse of the drive down to Clewer Park; it went down the back of the houses in Mill Lane and remains intact as a narrow lane to the back entrance to the houses.

These cottages were built as labourers’ cottages for the Clewer Park Estate; they would have had outside lavatories and the remains of the communal wash-house can still be seen.

Built by Sir Daniel Gooch for some of his employees - see the Gooch coat of arms above the door.

Records show that a hostelry existed here in mediaeval times - selling ale and food, providing simple accommodation and a coaching service - new horses for travellers. The current building dates from the 18C although parts are much older.

As recently as the 18th century the pub was the meeting place for the Coroners Court with a makeshift mortuary at the rear.

A tunnel ran from the back of the pub to the Church - little is known of its origins but it might date from the 16th century. It was filled in 1989.

There are stories of ghosts in the pub particularly the publican who was part time Coroner’s assistant and mortician.

A row of eleven cottages built in the 1870s to accommodate the growing population of the area.

In the 1950’s only 5 or 6 years after W.W.2. the housing shortage was not getting better.

In many towns up and down the country groups of people were forming Self Build Groups to supply their family with a home of their own.

The so called Southall group was formed at this time. The next thing was to find land to build on at a price they could afford.

To find the land took about eighteen months. It was in Windsor down Mill Lane and 24 houses could be built.

At this point a group in Uxbridge contacted the Southall group with the suggestion that we join forces and build in Mill Lane and on land adjacent known as Clewer Park.

The council said ‘you build the road in Clewer Park’. That plan was dropped. And the Southall group settled for 24 houses in Mill Lane.

The money to build was to be raised with a council loan in four stages on each property.

1 Completion to damp course

2 up to first floor

3 up to roof

4 completion to occupation.

On completion of each house the loan from the council was to be transferred to the occupant

The membership was of 24, each with an ability within the building trade. Each man was expected to work 24 hours each week and was allowed off one weeks holiday - Christmas & Boxing day only.

A builder was subcontracted to build the shells and the Group were to do all Plastering, Plumbing, Ceilings, Carpentry, Electrical, Painting, Paths and Boundary walls.

After all the financial arrangements for the land and loan for building were settled, work started in 1953

Decisions of who was housed first and last was on a points allocation of the family size and accommodation (ie) husband & wife + two children in two rooms top of the list, husband & wife in rented half house, bottom of the list.

The project had been going for two years and we had arrived at the opening which is now Clewer Park Road up to then we had been working on Three Months Credit. When this was reduced to one month because of a credit squeeze, all those who could, were ask to put all the moneys they could find into the group to save it and complete the last houses. We only just saved the project.

It took approximately another fourteen months to finish.

At the time of writing, despite people moving and dying, there are still 12 of the original 24 living in Mill Lane in March 1996.

Originally a mediaeval house but much changed over the years. It was purchased by Sir Daniel Gooch who lived there for many years.

The remains of the formal gardens can be seen in the Clewer Park open area including the artificial pool and the walkway along the Mill Stream.

The house stood on the site of Number 59, Clewer Park - one of the estate of houses built on the site in 1955.

Mentioned in the Domesday Book - the Mill is supplied by a Mill Stream - an artificial tributary of the river built to provide the right head of water..

This seventeenth century building is the most recent of a number of buildings on the site

The mill was operational until the early 1950s for grinding wheat.

See separate leaflet.

This is located in the Lodge to St Andrew’s Church in Mill Lane.

Founded and built up by Rev Denis Shaw between 1972 and 1993; unique collection of memorabilia - books, pictures and artifacts.

Limited opening hours - more information from the Visitors’ Centre, High Street, Windsor.

Dependent on donations - admission 50p.

The Limes in Mill Lane must surely be Windsor's oldest house. Some writers have claimed that it must be almost a thousand years old.

Some of the rooms have Queen Anne panelling with Elizabethan hearths. One room retains a tiny corner fireplace such as are reputed to be at Holyrood Palace.The house is said to have been the home of the priest appointed to Clewer Church's Brocas Chantry which was founded in the 14th century. From earliest times it was said to have an underground passage leading to the church, but Olwen Hedley (in "Round and About Windsor") states that it is blocked up. She also writes of "some egg-shaped pillars with deep mouldings which are now hidden by a panelled wall." She adds: "The house bears signs of having been enlarged at some time not long after the Reformation when the chaplain was evicted as a result of the Act for the suppression of chantries."

In the 19th Century Mariquita Tennant lived at The Limes. She it was who started rescuing the "fallen women" of Windsor. She was the Spanish widow of an English clergyman, and a portrait of her (looking very much like George Eliot) may be seen in the Convent. A photograph of the painting is in Clewer's Museum. When Mrs.Tennant, with only one maid servant, had eighteen "rescued" women in her house she decided that she could no longer cope, and thus it was that Rector T.T. Carter came to build "the House of Mercy" in Hatch Lane.

Mariquita Tennant is buried in Clewer Churchyard but there is a mystery about her grave. Writing about it in the 1920s, Rector Elwell described it as a marble coffin with the lid slightly out of place, and the inscription "Not here, but risen." Now, her last resting place is marked by a plain stone cross. What happened to the original memorial? We shall probably never know.

This is the name of the handsome building in Mill Lane, Clewer Village, which is now the Youth Hostel. Tradition has it that the novelist Maria Edgeworth (1767 - 1849) bought the house for her scapegrace brother. It is known that Maria’s father lived, for some time, at Hare Marsh, near Maidenhead. Maria Edgeworth was an extremely successful novelist whose books were much in demand. When she died she had eighteen novels to her credit, plus a number of books for children.