The manor of Bletchley was owned by the de Grey family, who lived in a house at Saffron Gardens, at Water Eaton. At first they were knights and later they became lords and ladies: one time they became so grand that one of them was proclaimed Queen of England. However, in the days when Rectory Cottages was built, the Greys were in trouble because of their family connections. The lord of the manor, Richard Lord Grey de Wilton, had died in 1442: his effigy is on his tomb in the church. His son Reynold succeeded him, and married well, his wife being Iacina, the daughter of Owen Tudor and Queen Katherine de Valois, the widow of King Henry V. But Owen Tudor had his head chopped off in 1460 during the Wars of the Roses, so Reynold de Grey had every reason to keep his head well down.

Iacina may be a Latin version of the French Jacinthe, meaning Hyacinth. When we look at the carved heads in the roof of the hall in Rectory Cottage, we often wonder who they may have been - and if you were to guess that two of the heads might be Reynold de Grey and Hyacinth Tudor, your guess may be as good as anybody's.

We do not know why Rectory Cottages was built; we don't even know its original name. But we have been able to find out from tree-ring dating of the timbers from which the house was built, that the trees used to build it were felled in 1475, so the house would have been erected that year or the next. It must have been a rather grand house for those days; instead of having thatch, it had a tiled roof. The tiles may have been made locally, or they may have come from elsewhere: a house built in 1355 at Salden near Newton Longville had the tiles brought from Penn near Beaconsfield.