‘Sculpture is the art of silence’: works at Bradwell Abbey by Bernard Schottlander

‘Dancing’, ‘La Marseillaise’ and ‘Starbust’, sculptures in Painted Steel by Bernard Schottlander … three of the Nine Dancers at Bradwell Abbey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

We spent a recent summer afternoon in Bradwell Abey last week, where I took some time to admire the art, sculpture and work of Bernard Schottlander (1924-1999). Milton Keynes has many unique works by this important member of the post-war generation of sculptors and two collections of his work in painted steel are on public display at Bradwell Abbey.

Bernard Schottlander described himself as a designer for interiors and a sculptor for exteriors. He was born in Mainz, Germany in 1924 and came to Leeds as a Jewish refugee when he fled Nazi Germany and the Holocaust in 1939. He worked as a factory welder during World War II before studying welding and sculpture at Leeds College of Art.

Later, with the help of a bursary, he studied at the Anglo-French art centre in St John’s Wood, London. He studied sculpture for a year and industrial design at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London in London, and his training as a welder influenced his work heavily.

He made his first abstract sculpture in the early 1960s. He opened a studio in North London with his assistant George Nash, who had learned his craft in the Royal Air Force workshops. Their work at this stage was essentially artistic in nature, seeking to explore new forms, and each piece was handmade in strictly limited editions.

He decided to concentrate solely on sculpture in 1963, and from 1965 he taught metalwork at St Martin’s School. That year he was part of the group show Six Artists at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and he had his first solo show at the Hamilton Galleries, London, in the following year (1966).

Schottlander was both an industrial designer and a sculptor. He was well known as a designer of a new style of lighting that is still regarded as modern today. He once said, ‘Sculpture is the art of silence, of objects that must speak for themselves.’

When he exhibited at Park Royal in 1972, the Milton Keynes Development Corporation chose four of his most avante garde pieces and placed them like monumental markers in the landscape designated for the new city.

He died in 1999 and his archive is at the University of Brighton Design Archives.

Bernard was fond of Milton Keynes and bequeathed his Nine Dancers to permanently ‘dance’ in Milton Keynes. The Dancers have had a tumultuous time in Milton Keynes so far.

They were originally given to enhance the Stables Laine Dankworth Centre at Wavendon, but they have moved around, were damaged in storage and were eventually restored after funding was received from Grantscape and shown temporarily at the Centre MK.

Now the Dancers and other sculptures have found a new home at the City Discovery Centre at Bradwell Abbey.

At Bradwell Abey, the Dancers have been given names that are colloquial. The interpretation panels at Bradwell Abbey explain that there is no available record of their original names.

Alongside ‘Dancing’, ‘La Marseillaise’ and ‘Starbust’, they are:

‘White Rhino’ – Painted Steel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

‘Evenlode’ – Painted Steel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

‘Wolfie’ – Painted Steel, and ‘Somebody No. 1’ – Painted Steel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

‘Calypso’ – Painted Steel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The ninth dancer is ‘Father of Pearl’, also in Painted Steel
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The Architectural Sculptures form a second collection of eight works by Bernard Schottlander at Bradwell Abbey.

Once again, the names given to these sculptures are colloquial, and the interpretation panels explain that there is no available record of their original names:

‘Ever-Seeing Eye’ – Painted Steel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

‘Romanesque Pillar’ – Painted Steel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

‘Aztec Window’ – Painted Steel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

‘Phone Box’ – Painted steel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

‘No and No and No’ – Painted Steel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

‘Cubes’ – Painted Steel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

‘Maquette’ (of a larger sculpture) – Painted Steel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

‘Sun’ – Painted Steel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Milton Keynes is a new city with a soul still waiting to become a city

The ‘new city’ of Milton Keynes is marking a key anniversary this year (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Patrick Comerford

The ‘new city’ of Milton Keynes is marking a key anniversary this year. It is 30 years since an order was signed in June 1992, officially dissolving Milton Keynes Development Corporation (MKDC) and handing over the place to Buckinghamshire County Council and Milton Keynes Borough Council.

At the time, MKDC was congratulated for having achieved what it set out to do – create a ‘new city’ from scratch. MKDC was formed in 1967, and had built 44,000 houses, planted 14 million trees and shrubs, provided more than 100 km of new grid roads and built 230 km of unique cycling and walking routes known as Redways.

At its peak, it employed 1,700 people, including the most visionary architects in Britain. Their master plan had a vision for a ‘city in the trees,’ where no building should be higher than the tallest tree. Although things have changed since, it was radical thinking at a time when multi-storey flats and tower blocks were dominating other large towns, and it offered a model for solving the housing crisis in Britain.

A ‘soulless suburb’ in
a green and pleasant land

Milton Keynes, with a population of 260,000, is perfectly placed between London and Birmingham, between Oxford and Cambridge. It has been described as ‘an urban Eden’, with 22 million trees and shrubs, more waterfront than the island of Jersey, 200 public works of art, three ancient woodlands and a shopping centre praised widely as the most beautiful in Britain.

This is a low-density, low-rise city of trees, a place of light industry, high technology and ultra-convenience. It is home to Britain’s first multiplex cinema, first peace pagoda, and the Open University.

The Open University suggested the name of MK Dons, chaired by property developer Peter Winkelman, although football fans in parts of London still refuse to forgive him for relocating Wimbledon FC to Milton Keynes.

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The architects were influenced not only by Los Angeles and Chicago, but also by the grid cities of ancient Greece and China and the rebuilding of Paris in the 19th century by Georges-Eugène Haussmann (1809-1891), with new boulevards, parks and public works.

As Milton Keynes developed, press coverage claimed London was being ‘hollowed out’ by Milton Keynes, which was ‘engulfing’ a green and pleasant land.

Milton Keynes was said to be ‘lost between designers’ dreams and the creation of a liveable city.’ For more than half a century, it has been derided as a soulless suburb, a centrally-planned city in the heart of ‘olde worlde’ middle England, between the Home Counties and the South Midlands.

Watling Street crossed the Great Ouse between Old Stratford and Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Finding the soul of
suburban Milton Keynes

It is unfair, however, to say Milton Keynes is a suburb without a soul. The surrounding towns and villages have become virtual suburbs, but all have churches that date back to Anglo-Saxon churches or to mediaeval monastic foundations.

Watling Street was the old Roman road that crossed England from London to Viroconium Cornoviorum (Wroxeter) and the north-west, crossing the Great Ouse River between Old Stratford and Stony Stratford.

The Romans defeated Boudica at Watling Street. Later it marked the border of the Danelaw with Wessex and Mercia, and it became one of the major highways of mediaeval England.

Early Saxon hoards were unearthed in Old Stratford in the 18th century, and the ‘Stratford’ part of the village name is Anglo-Saxon in origin, meaning the ‘ford on the Roman road.’ The ford was later replaced by a causeway and stone bridge, marking the border between Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire.

Saint Guthlac’s Church, Passenham … past rectors include Francis Hutchinson (1660-1739), Bishop of Down and Connor (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

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Old Stratford had no church of its own, and the nearest one was in Passenham, where the dedication to Saint Guthlac (674-715) is rare.

About 1,000 years after Saint Guthlac, Francis Hutchinson was the Rector of Passenham in 1706-1727, and was also Bishop of Down and Connor from 1720 until his death in 1739. He was a key figure in the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) and was obsessed with witchcraft and with trying to convert Irish-speaking population of Rathlin Island.

Another Anglo-Saxon church foundation survives in Old Wolverton, where the Church of the Holy Trinity incorporates Saxon and mediaeval elements. The old mediaeval church was rebuilt in 1809-1815, but the new church incorporates a 14th-century central tower.

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Bradwell Abbey is a large commercial and industrial estate in Milton Keynes. But Bradwell Abbey or Bradwell Priory is also an urban studies centre and an historical monument with the remains of a mediaeval Benedictine priory, founded ca 1154.

Bradwell Abbey contains the greater part of the mediaeval precinct of a priory. The small 14th century chapel of Saint Mary – a dedicated pilgrimage chapel – is the only complete building of the original priory still standing and it contains unique mediaeval wall paintings.

Today, Bradwell Abbey is an urban studies centre, providing a workspace, library and guidance for visiting international town planners and students studying Milton Keynes. It also hosts school visits to see its mediaeval buildings, the chapel, the surviving farmhouse, its fish ponds and its physic garden, and how they have changed over time.

The small 14th century chapel of Saint Mary at Bradwell Abbey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

An Irish rector and
his benevolent sister

All Saints’ Church in Calverton, close to Stony Stratford and Passenham, is another early foundation near Milton Keynes. Saint Birinus came to this area as a missionary and became known as the ‘Apostle to the West Saxons.’ He lived in the area before becoming the first Bishop of Dorchester, and organised the parish system in the area before he died in 649.

Richard the clerk of Calverton is the first recorded priest or rector, and witnessed a deed with Robert de Whitfield, Sheriff of Oxfordshire, in 1182-1185.

The right to nominate the Rector of Calverton was sold with the manor in 1806 to Charles George Perceval (1756-1840), 2nd Lord Arden and an elder brother of the Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval (1762-1812). Spencer Perceval was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons, the only British Prime Minister to have been assassinated.

Lord Arden commissioned had All Saints’ Church rebuilt between 1818 and 1824, on the foundations of the earlier All Hallows’ Church.

Lord Arden’s son, the Revd the Hon Charles George Perceval (1796-1858), came to Calverton as Rector in 1821, at the age of 24. He was a devout High Churchman and a supporter of the Tractarians, and some of the Tracts for the Times were planned if not written at his rectory in Calverton.

All Saints’ Church, Calverton … Charles George Perceval, an Irish heir, invited the Tractarian writers to his rectory (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

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Perceval’s daughter, Lady Mary Perceval (1830-1891), married the Revd Richard Norris Russell, Rector of Beachampton, near Calverton. She was generous to the Church in Stony Stratford, donating towards building Saint Mary the Virgin Church, now the Greek Orthodox Church on London Road, and funding a new school.

Perceval’s eldest surviving son, Charles George Perceval (1845-1897), was born at Calverton Rectory. He succeeded as 7th Earl of Egmont, an Irish peerage title, in 1874 and inherited the family’s vast estates in Co Cork. However, Lord Egmont sold off many of his Irish estates, including Liscarroll Castle, near Buttevant, in 1889. Kanturk Castle was donated to the National Trust by his widow in 1900.

Newport Pagnell has two ancient church sites: the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul is cathedral-like in its location and dimensions, while Tickford Abbey, a residential and dementia care home, stands on the site of Tickford Priory established for the Cluniac Order.

The alignment of Midsummer Boulevard in Milton Keynes was inspired by discoveries at Stonehenge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Midsummer vision
shared by architects

When the architects were designing the centre of Milton Keynes in the early 1970s, they realised the planned main street almost followed Stonehenge in framing the rising sun on Midsummer Day.

They consulted Greenwich Observatory to obtain the exact angle required at their latitude in Buckinghamshire. The idealistic young architects then persuaded the engineers to shift the grid of roads a few degrees, to relate the new city to the cosmos.

One solstice, the architects lit an all-night bonfire and played Pink Floyd on the green fields they would soon pave with a paradise of parking lots, roundabouts and concrete cows. The midsummer sun would shine along the 2 km length of Midsummer Boulevard.

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The Master Plan for Milton Keynes hoped for a town centred around a grid of streets and boulevards about 2 km long by 1 km wide, and in their futuristic vision they imagined light-weight electric cars would become the mode of local traffic.

When the Development Corporation was wound up in 1992, the Parks Trust was created to look after the open spaces. By then, Milton Keynes had become an economic and popular success.

The bid by Milton Keynes to become European Capital of Culture in 2023 collapsed in the aftermath of Brexit. And, ironically, the one thing the ‘new city’ of Milton Keynes did not achieve was the right to actually call itself a city.

Buckinghamshire is an English county without a city. Now, 30 years after becoming a borough, Milton Keynes is hoping its fourth bid for city status will be successful during Queen Elizabeth’s platinum jubilee celebrations.

The Japanese peace pagoda at Willen Lake (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

This two-page feature was first published in the June 2022 edition of the Church Review (Dublin and Glendalough)

Note: Between writing this feature and its publication, Milton Keynees received city status to mark Queen Elizabeth’s platinum jubilee

Bradwell Abbey: from mediaeval priory to urban studies centre

Bradwell Abbey or Bradwell was founded as a Benedictine priory in 1154 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Patrick Comerford

I have been at church on two Sundays in the Church of Saint Mary and Saint Giles in Stony Stratford, and I have visited the Greek Orthodox parish church here too. But around Milton Keynes there are many churches to explore and to get to know.

Bradwell Abbey is a large commercial and industrial estate in Milton Keynes. But Bradwell Abbey or Bradwell Priory is also an urban studies centre and an historical monument with the remains of a mediaeval Benedictine priory, founded ca 1154.

All that remains of the abbey today is a small chapel and a farmhouse that is an urban studies centre and a centre for cultural activities. Many of the mediaeval trackways converging on the abbey have become rights of way and bridleways and are part of the Milton Keynes redway system.

Bradwell Abbey is significant nationally because it contains the greater part of the mediaeval precinct of a priory, and the small 14th century chapel of Saint Mary – a dedicated pilgrimage chapel – is the only complete building of the original priory still standing and it contains unique mediaeval wall paintings.

Stacey Brook and Loughton Brook provided the priory with a source of fresh water (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

The site is one of a number of historic sites that provide major insights into the mediaeval history in the Milton Keynes area. The whole site is a scheduled monument that includes the chapel, a Grade I listed building, and five further Grade II listed buildings or structures in the abbey grounds.

Several priory buildings survive, including a magnificent cruck barn, and these have been incorporated into later farm buildings. Around the chapel, some walls of the former church have been laid out in gravel. The grounds contain a herb garden, mediaeval fish pond, marsh, copse and several lawns.

The priory dates back to ca 1154, when 181 hectares of land were granted to Meinfelin, Lord of Wolverton, to establish a Benedictine priory to the west of Bradwell. The western boundary was marked by Watling Street.

The priory was a cell of Luffield Priory, near Silverstone in Northamptonshire, until it became independent in 1189. The earliest recorded monastic finds from Bradwell are pottery fragments from the 1th and 13th centuries.

The priory was built on cleared ground south of Stacey Brook and west of Loughton Brook, adapted as it flowed through the site to provide drinking water, a source of water for the fishponds and a source of running water for flushing out the monks’ reredorter.

The chapel of Saint Mary dedicated to ‘Our Ladie of Bradwell’ was built around 1330 against the west front of the church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Bradwell Priory had a chequered history, lurching from crisis to crisis throughout its 372-year life. The number of monks was always small, like many small priories, and famine in 1316 brought widespread deaths in Buckinghamshire.

The chapel of Saint Mary, dedicated to ‘Our Ladie of Bradwell,’ was built ca 1330 against the west front of the church. A statue of the Virgin Mary in a niche on the west front was said to have miraculous, healing properties.

The statue may have provided much needed revenue, reflected in the chapel’s wall paintings. These are unique in portraying a group of contemporary men and women kneeling at the end of their pilgrimage to offer gifts at the shrine. The monks probably sold pilgrim badges as souvenirs and holy charms.

Although the priory became an important local centre, it declined during the Black Death (1348-1350), and the Prior of Bradwell, William of Loughton, died of plague in 1349. The Black Death caused a high death rate among the monastic orders. When the Prior of Bradwell died leaving few potential successors, a special Papal dispensation was needed to allow a monk of illegitimate birth to be elected prior.

However, the community continued to struggle to maintain numbers. Because there was no elected prior, special commissions were set up in 1376 and 1381 to take charge of the priory’s affairs. In 1431, and again in 1436. There were not enough monks for to maintain regular worship, and a century later, at the dissolution of the priory, the dormitory could accommodate only five monks.

The name Bradwell Abbey is probably a 16th century convention, replacing Bradwell Priory, although the date of the change in name is not documented. By the 16th century, however, Bradwell was in a shocking state, with many semi-derelict buildings. The Priory was closed in 1524, 12 years before the dissolution of the monasterie, and the site and its scanty revenues were granted to Cardinal Wolsey to endow his new college in Oxford. Wolsey promised to find a chaplain to sing mass for the souls of the Lord of the Manor, Sir John Longville, and his ancestors in the priory church, or to have them prayed for in his new college, now Christ Church College in Oxford.

Wolsey sent his surveyor, William Brabazon, to record the assets of the Priory in 1526. Brabazon recorded the site as ‘The Manor of Bradwell’ and it is referred to as the Manor in all subsequent papers. King Henry VIII formally granted the site and its precincts to Cardinal Wolsey in 1528.

The Chapel of Saint Mary remained in use as a domestic, private chapel until at least the early 18th century. By 1798, it had become a farm building.

The Manor House was extensively remodelled in the late 17th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

The site changed hands many times from the mid-16th century to the early 20th century, with a large number of tenants and absentee landlords.

Bradwell was the residence of the Longville family for about 100 years. Many buildings on the site were demolished in the late 16th and early 17th century, and the ashlar sold or re-used on the site. The Manor House was extensively remodelled in the late 17th century but the north wing dates from ca 1600. It was owned by the Lawrence family in 1647, and was acquired by Sir Joseph Alston in 1666. Later, it was held by the Fuller and Owen. The Bradwell Abbey estate was bought ca 1730 by Sir Charles Gunter Nicholl, whose only daughter and heir married the Earl of Dartmouth.

The manor remained largely unchanged after 1700 until the development of Milton Keynes and the industrial estate in 1973, when the site became confined to the boundary of the Priory Precinct.

Today, Bradwell Abbey is an Urban Studies Centre, providing a workspace, library and guidance for visiting international town planners and students studying Milton Keynes. It also hosts school visits to see its mediaeval buildings, the chapel, its fish ponds and its physic garden, and how they have changed over time.

Bradwell Abbey is an Urban Studies Centre with its mediaeval buildings, chapel, fish ponds and physic garden (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)