Buckinghamshire

Situated in a well-watered gap in the Chilterns, and in the midst of the most heavily populated part of Buckinghamshire, Chipping Wycombe was one of the two most important towns in the county (the other being Aylesbury). It alone, however, returned burgesses to Parliament at this time. Also known as Great or High Wycombe, it was situated on an ancient road linking the Icknield Way with the Thames and, more significantly, stood on the road from London to Oxford, Woodstock and the Cotswold cloth towns, being conveniently placed half-way between London and Oxford.

Ludgershall lies on the principal road between Marlborough, Salisbury and Winchester. The Normans had constructed a castle on its northern edge by 1103, which later became a garrisoned provincial treasury. A planned town was laid out on a grid pattern focused upon a central market square, though economic growth was restricted by the larger markets at nearby Marlborough and Salisbury.VCH Wilts. xv. 119, 121, 124.

Wendover’s development as a market town during the early medieval period was assisted by its location on the high ground at the western edge of the Chilterns and the fact that the main road from Aylesbury to London passed through the parish. VCH Bucks. iii. 20-31. Under the Tudors and early Stuarts it increased in prosperity. By 1620 its houses were concentrated around West Street, with further dwellings in North Street and South Street; the church and former manor house lay half a mile to the west. M. Summerell, B. Samuels, A. Mead and P. Eckett, Bk.

Amersham, situated 26 miles from London on the road to Aylesbury, was well established by the time of the Domesday survey.W.H. Hastings Kelle, ‘Amersham’, Bucks. Recs. ii. 333-53. Although granted a fair and market by the Crown in 1200, it was never incorporated. The chief municipal officers were two constables, appointed by a borough court; however, no borough records survive that might shed further light on the town’s institutions and administration.VCH Bucks. iii.

Described by Camden as ‘a very fair market town, large and pretty populous, surrounded with a great number of pleasant meadows and pastures’,Bucks. Misc. ed. R. Gibbs, 145-6. Aylesbury, by the later Middle Ages, had usurped Buckingham as the centre of county administration in Buckinghamshire; the assizes, gaol, and county elections were all relocated to the town, which was conveniently situated in the middle of the county.Lipscomb, Bucks. ii. 27-8; VCH Bucks. iii. 1-11; iv.

The county town of Buckinghamshire from at least the time of the Conquest, Buckingham declined sharply during the medieval period, partly because of its inconvenient location to the north of the shire but also because of the decay of the Norman castle.D.J. Elliott, Buckingham, 4-14; VCH Bucks. iii.

Chipping Wycombe was a small town located in a sheltered, well-watered valley on the important route between Oxford and London, and was linked to Great Marlow.VCH Bucks. iii. 113. Its long-established market, particularly in corn, drew in traders from the capital, Berkshire, Hampshire and Oxfordshire, as well as from Buckinghamshire itself. Cloth-working and lace-making provided employment for a significant section of the population.L.J. Ashford, Hist. of Bor. of High Wycombe from its Origins to 1880, pp.

Situated close to the Buckinghamshire-Berkshire border ‘where the Thames winds itself round the bottom of the hills’, Great Marlow was characterized by Camden as ‘a pretty considerable town’, which owed its importance chiefly to the confluence of river traffic to London and good road connections to both Reading and Chipping Wycombe.W. Camden, Britannia (1722), i. 309; R. Gibbs, Bucks. Misc.

Wendover, an ‘inconsiderable place’ with only a remnant of its lace-making industry in this period, was an unincorporated borough picturesquely situated at the entrance of the Vale of Aylesbury. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 158; (1830), 93; VCH Bucks. iii. 22-23. It was the largely docile pocket borough of Robert Smith†,1st Baron Carrington, head of the Nottingham and London banking family, whose Buckinghamshire seat at Wycombe Abbey lay ten miles to the south. Oldfield, Key (1820), 43; Key to Both Houses (1832), 414; R.W.

Amersham, an unincorporated borough, was a thriving market town in the south-east of the county. There was a silk manufactory, chairs were made for export and lace and straw plait making employed mainly women and children. R.W. Davis, Political Change and Continuity, 25; Pigot’s Commercial Dir (1823-4), 147; (1830), 69-70. It remained entirely under the electoral control of the Tory Tyrwhitt Drake family of nearby Shardeloes, who owned most of the property in and around the borough.