John Newton was curate at St Peter and St Paul when he wrote Amazing Grace, first sung in the town on New Year’s Day 1773; he and the poet William Cowper put together the Olney Hymns here. The big spired church rises over the Great Ouse at the edge of town, near the Cowper and Newton Museum. Olney’s Shrove Tuesday pancake race down the High Street has run, on and off, since the fifteenth century.
