The Morning Star and Temple Cottages
The Green, south side

by Janet Kennish

The Morning Star and house adjacent, c1890	Modern view from similar point, photo Rob Gordon

Introduction

The Morning Star has only been a pub since the 1850s, when Charles and Mary Brightwell opened it as a working class beer-shop. Before then it was a private house. In the 1770s and 80s the house was owned by the publican of the old White Hart, an ancient inn next door on the High Street corner, where the off licence is now. It was perhaps around this time that the house was rebuilt as we see it now, in three stories of brick with a fashionable symmetrical facade. However, a much smaller house had already existed on the site and was incorporated into the eighteenth century rebuilding. The panelled room to the right of the entrance, is part of this old house and may date from around 1700.  Very little has changed since although there have been many interior re-modellings.

The building adjacent on its west, 1 and 2 Temple Cottages (now estate agent's and dentist's surgery) can be traced back to a house called Temples which was the name of its owner who was recorded in the village in 1681. The building was altered in the early 20th century, raising the roof and adding shop fronts, but was probably not rebuilt; compare the images above, especially the five first floor windows. In the first half of the 20th century Miss Bugby, the village school's long serving infants' teacher, lived in 2 Temple Cottages with her brother who was the station master.

Also included with Temple Cottages from the 1850s was the blacksmith shop (later Boots hardware store) next along to the west, although as a separate outbuilding until it was rebuilt sometime after the c.1890 view above was drawn. Beyond that was another cottage dwelling, replaced by the present Silver Cottage shops.

A wartime memory

Among the many Datchet people who remembered the pub from the past was Queenie Sams, whose father bought it in 1933. Queenie and her husband took over in 1949 and she continued to run it until 1962. (photo Rob Gordon 1999)   In 1941 Queenie was entrusted with a national secret which she kept faithfully for fifty years. One day in that year she served a glass of bitter to a stranger, a middle aged lady, who was then collected from the pub by Commander Thomas Holden of the Admiralty Compass Observatory at Ditton Park. They left, as Holden later told Queenie, for Heathrow airport where the lady was to be dropped by parachute over France to meet the resistance movement. In 1991 the stranger was identified as Josephine Butler, the only woman member of Churchill's secret circle of spies and who won the George Cross for her wartime exploits.

Morning Star and Temples in the 19th century

		It is clear from the photo here that the Morning Star and Temples buildings here are very closely adjacent, but they are in different ownership and there is a narrow slip of land which forms a passageway between them.    The Temples house (or cottages) includes the single storey forge plus a ramshackle house next to its west which contained several more cottage dwellings. ('Cottage' implying a low status dwelling, not a picturesque one.) These have been rebuilt in the late 19th or early 20th century but their origins are identifiable in the present shops.    The listings in the table below suggest that the blacksmith's forge and cottages beyond were built between 1851 and 1857, when occupiers are first listed.
Detail from first known photo of Datchet, mid 1870s

The ten-yearly censuses (1841-1901) list who was living at each each building on census night, but Bucks County rate valuation surveys in 1857-59 and 1866 provide more information, giving the names of owners separately from the occupants. A parish rating valuation in 1839 listed just one name but each property was also given a plot number corresponding to that on an accompanying map for identification.

The Hammerson family of blacksmiths and farriers were until recently well remembered in the village for their forge at what became Boots Hardware, and their descendants lived here until recently. Richard James Hammerson (c1840-1917), who was also a churchwarden, made the mechanism by which the church bells were rung in the new tower from the 1860s and wound the church clock.
 

Earlier history of the Morning Star

Mary Wilson acquired this house in 1808 at the death of its previous owner, William Batchelor.  He had bought it from Richard and Elizabeth Grace of Windsor in 1785, when it was described as having been in the occupation of Robert Miller. From 1754 Miller was the licensed victualler at a very old inn called the White Hart, next to the Star and on the opposite corner to the Manor Hotel; it is seen as a white house in the Corden painting above, and is now an off licence in a modern building. Since there is no record of the Morning Star house being licensed at this date, Miller was probably using it as a dwelling or sub-letting as lodgings.

Elizabeth Grace, wife of Richard, was heir to George Bryer and inherited the house on his death in 1777; Bryer had received a few years previously it from Mary the widow of John Williams.

In 1755 Edward Dearle had sold this house to John Williams, when it was in the occupation of Sarah Peerman and Mary Atlee. It is not clear when the Dearle family first bought the house, partly because its history is related to (and confused with) the Dearle's house called Temples next door.

The Morning Star is a late 18th century building from the exterior, but inside an earlier house forms the core of its western half and causes floor levels to vary each side of the central staircase. It is possible that the rebuilding was carried out by William Batchelor who owned it from 1785 to 1808.

Earlier history of the Temples house

The Dearle family owned Temples from 1721 when Henry Temple passed the use of it by his will to William Dearle. Temple is associated with property in the village from 1681 though it is not clear whether it is this house or not. Temples is named in the will of William Dearle as exempted from the rest of his property in Datchet which was to be inherited by his seven younger children but to pass, after his wife's death, to his eldest son Edward. Temples remained in the same family at least until 1866 when the county rate survey recorded a Dearle as owner, though by that time it was occupied by labourers as very low status cottage tenements.

The first Edward Dearle moved to Datchet with his wife Avis from Stoke Poges in 1682 and the eldest son in subsequent generations was also named Edward.  They seem to have been a family of some substance, including schoolmasters in several generations, but the most interesting of all is John Henry Dearle (1859-1932) who was a designer and later Art Director for the company William Morris & Co. Some of the many familiar Morris designs are actually those of John Henry Dearle.

Listed Building information from local authority

Windsor & Maidenhead, 40663, Morning Star Public House, The Green, Grade II, 5130, SU 9877 5/7, 13.2.81

Late C18 red brick cement plinth. Hansard slate roof, two storeys. Three double-hung sashes with glazing bars in reveals with cills & flat arches, first floor central dummy. C19 central gable hood over entrance. Brick cornice, central pediment with lunette. Two box dormers.

Sources & references

Censuses 1841-1901: available online
Bucks County Rate Surveys, 1939, 1857/9, 1866: Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, Aylesbury
Dearle family wills: The National Archive (PRO), online
Datchet Manor Court Rolls: Northamptonshire Record Office & Beaulieu Archives, Hampshire (for details of the inheritance & sale of copyhold property)

Researcher: janetkennish@tesco.net