It is difficult in summer to see the handsome Old Rectory because of the trees which have grown up on the boundary of the garden, but it is still possible to catch a glimpse. The Rectory was built for Revd Dr William Wotton between 1696 and 1711, replacing an earlier stone built house round a courtyard on the same site. It is the largest house in the village, and would be far too big for the present clergy to maintain. It was purchased from the Oxford Diocese by a private individual in the early 1960s, and was eventually acquired by the Milton Keynes Development Corporation and split into four separate apartments which were later sold on.
Dr William Wotton was an interesting character. He was a child prodigy and entered St
Catharine's College, Cambridge at the age of nine. His parents died of smallpox while he was at university (aged 13) and as a teenager he spent some time in the household of Gilbert Burnett (later Bishop of Salisbury). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1687 at the age of 21 and wrote many learned essays attracting the ire of Jonathan Swift along the way. He married in 1696, shortly after arriving at Milton Keynes. Unfortunately, despite his undoubted academic ability, he also also gained a reputation as a drunken lecher, and this caused Bishop Wake of Lincoln to withdraw his promise of the living at Sherington which would have helped to finance the building of the rectory at Milton Keynes. In 1714, as a result of the mounting debts incurred in the building work, Wotton was forced to retreat to Carmarthen where he worked initially as a supernumery preacher although he was allowed to retain the living at Milton Keynes. He only returned here in 1723 when his creditors had eventually been satisfied. He died in Buxted, Sussex where he had been able to obtain a living for his son-in-law William Clarke who married his daughter Ann in1723.
We are indebted to Dr David Stoker of the University of Aberystwyth for this information. For further reading see "William Wotton's exile and redemption" http://welshjournals.llgc.org.uk/browse/listarticles/llgc-id:1042330/llgc-id:1042921