1. The Ballad of Joey Guest Words and music by Paul Clark
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The Jovial Priest, a Living Archive documentary community musical play of 1982, celebrated the life of New Bradwell’s most eccentric priest - Father Newman ‘Joey’ Guest. Known as ‘an Irishman with a keen sense of the dramatic’, he presided over St James Church for nearly four decades (1908 - 1946) despite inciting the vestry members to quarrel, the choir to go on strike, and the congregation to leave in droves!
Father Guest was unapologetic in alienating his ‘flock’. Soon after arriving in New Bradwell in 1908, he discovered that the marriage register at his Church was actually the one for old St Peter’s Church at Stanton Low. His church of St James was not licensed for the solemnization of marriages. He made a startling announcement from the pulpit that 400 couples in the parish were living in sin because they were not legally married! Even in 1968 the story endured, as reported by The Wolverton Express: ‘An Act of Parliament was hurriedly passed declaring all the marriages at the church legal. That was 60 years ago and yesterday, Mr and Mrs Elliott of 49 Anson Road, Wolverton celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary.’ ‘Joey’ Guest was also famous for athletic feats – such as engaging in public sports: ‘Bradwell Public Bathing Place will be opened on Saturday and the challenge race between the Reverend Guest and Mr Sid Cook of Newport Pagnell has so boomed the occasion that, given a fine day, a tremendous crowd is expected.’[1] He would invariably race his bike down New Bradwell’s Canal Hill with his feet aloft, although this sometimes had a more confrontational intent: ‘He’d turn around and come in the High Street. The Salvation Army always used to have a service Sunday evening - they’d play and sing, in between where the barber and Muscutt’s shop is. Well Joey Guest would come in on his bike - straight through them! They had to slip out the way sharp. He didn’t like their Salvation Army!’[2] Once, the confrontation ended up in court: ‘A D----- slacker! The repeated use of this term to Mr Percy Sykes, shopkeeper of Stantonbury by the Reverend Guest, Vicar of Stantonbury, formed the principal bill of fare before the Newport Pagnell Bench. The reverend gentleman was summoned for a breach of the peace. It appears there was ‘bad blood’ between them which both denied… Mr Sykes had called the Vicar ‘a cur’ and ‘a traitor to his Church’… The Bench decided the defendant must pay a £1 fine… There appeared a very unpleasant state of affairs in Church matters at Stantonbury.’[3] Paul Clark’s lyric[4] certainly illustrates a scene primed for religious tension: Now we see the conflict set of vicar with community… They don’t want services adorned with catholic mystery… Such treatment leaves them so annoyed, their fighting spirits rise. But as J Cunningham’s song Stantonbury Village[5] had warned, God was on Father Guest’s side: Oh no, how could we forget him - The Reverend Newman ‘Joey’ Guest! Vicar of St. James’s - and don’t you ever let him get you in an argument, God knows best! [1] From The Bucks Advertiser and Aylesbury News August 26th 1916 [2] A local’s memory recorded at Living Archive MK [3] From The Bucks Advertiser and Aylesbury News March 11th 1916 [4] Hear Paul Clark’s song, performed in 1982 by the composer in the second and newest part of the Milton Keynes Song Book website : THE MILTON KEYNES SONG BOOK - Home (mksongbook.org) [5] See MK Songbook Vol 1 Sect 4 Living & Loving: Page 118; available as a hard copy or in the first and earliest part of the MK Song Book website, as above. |
The Rev A Newman Guest M.A.
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