By Gillian Ashley-Smith
One of the early churchwardens of St Peter’s, John Venour, donor to the church in the eighteenth century, almost certainly lived at Dene House, in Bridge Street. Amazingly, just over 150 years later, another churchwarden was living in Dene House. He, too, is recorded by church brass, and he, too, gave a notable memorial to the church.
The churchwarden of whom I write is John Griffin, who ran a grocer’s shop in Bridge Street for much of his long life. He was born at Tub’s End, Butlers Marston in 1828, and certainly by the early 1850s was living in Bridge Street with his young wife, Martha, as a grocer and wine merchant. There are photographs of him standing outside his imposing shop. Although Dene House has not for many years been used as a shop, its decorated wooden shop-front still stands in Kineton today, round the entrance to Country Pursuits. It was moved there between the wars, after his death. He was well known in Kineton, and at the age of 34 was elected churchwarden, a post he was to hold for 54 years – a record for Kineton. It was said he seldom missed morning or evening services in all those years.
As one of the most respected businessmen of Kineton, while still busy with the Bridge Street shop, John Griffin became a founding director of the Gas Company (one of the earliest registered companies in the country), and would have overseen the building of the gas works on the Warwick Road. He became Managing Director in 1888, in time to lead his company away from involvement with an expensive scheme to develop clean water for the village. It was another matter when they were asked to lend their support to the provision of street lighting (by gaslight!). As chairman of the school attendance board, he was also much involved with the school.
John Griffin, of course, was churchwarden throughout the amazing transformation of the church between the mid 1870s and 1882, when the vicar, Francis Miller, decided to do away with the ‘old-fashioned’ Gothick church that his grandfather had designed for Kineton little more than 100 years before. Francis Miller virtually rebuilt the church, replacing the windows, adding pinnacles outside, and galleries and new pews within. Somehow the churchwardens managed to accommodate all the building work without cancelling any services. When the work was nearly complete, to add ‘the finishing touch’, John Griffin led a small group to London to choose a new clock, and to raise money for it. When it was installed in 1885, he was heard to joke that he hoped a good clock that told the time loudly would make trade a little less quiet! It may have been the concern with church fabric that gave him the idea of erecting the large stained glass window in the south transept when his wife died in 1894 on their 42nd wedding anniversary.
John himself lived on to the age of eighty-seven. The parishioners subscribed for a memorial for him, and in his memory bought the large brass candlesticks and the bronze and silver altar cross, which is inscribed:-“A.M.D.G., and in memory of John Griffin, churchwarden of St Peter’s, Kineton, 53 years.” The mysterious letters AMDG ( Ad Maiorum Dei Gloriam, for the greater glory of God) often appear on items donated to the church.
© Gillian Ashley-Smith 2008