New home is 'no palace'

The issue of Episcopal housing has vexed many a diocese and commissioner, not to mention the helpless tenant.

It was reported in the Diocesan Magazine (March 1960) that the Church Commissioners would build a new house for the Bishop of Oxford at Cuddesdon.

The suggestion that the bishop should continue to live in Oxford was dismissed since it had been impossible to find a suitable house in the city.

The then bishop, Harry Carpenter, argued that Cuddesdon was the ideal location since it was the traditional home of the bishop. Indeed, the new house would be constructed on the site of the old Bishop's palace and would incorporate its chapel which had been preserved when the old house was demolished.

[Cuddesdon] ‘is easily accessible from all parts of the diocese and will be even more so when the ring of by-pass roads round Oxford is completed, as it will be in the near future. Equally important is the fact that the bishop will not have to make a slow and tedious journey through the crowded streets of the city when he goes out to parishes in the different parts of the diocese.’

The house would be ‘modest in scale… specially designed to enable the bishop to fulfil his official responsibilities with the greatest convenience and the least expense.’ He was pleased by the prospect of ‘a proper study, office and chapel for my work... for the first time since I became Bishop’; however ‘The new house is not and will not be called a palace.’

Not all shared the bishop's enthusiasm.  Some ‘lamented bitterly the necessity of living at Cuddesdon’:

‘I am Bishop of all I survey,
Dean or Chapter don't matter a fig,
In the central demesne of the see
I am master of peacock and pig.
O Cuddesdon, where can be the charms
The Commissioners see in thy face?
Kettel Hall had been better by far
Than this most inaccessible place.
I am out of the reach of the rail,
I must take all my journeys alone,
There isn't a horse within hail,
I'm obliged to keep four of my own.
The lads who look after each beast
My hat with indifference see,
They don't seem to care in the least
For my Gaiter, or Apron, or me!
How slow is the Great Western train
As it crawls up by Wycombe to town!
It is hard work enough to get up,
It is harder work still to get down.
When the milk cans are fairly on board,
For a moment I seem to be there,
But they only are shunting the train
And I find that we are where we were !
But to cry over milk that is spilt
Is a weakness I cannot endure,
We must e'en make the best of a lot
Which only Translation can cure !’

    Bishop Stubbs (1889-1901)

Bishop Harry looked forward to moving in sometime in 1961 but, as with most building projects, the schedule overran and he eventually moved on 30th October 1962.

Successors shared Stubbs' view.  In 1978 the house was abandoned; Cuddesdon deemed inaccessible.  Bishops of Oxford would henceforth live in Oxford.

Phil Hind is the diocesan web master