Buckingham was a small market town on the River Ouse in the north-west of the county. Lace making had been ‘carried on to a great extent’, but was in decline in this period. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 150; (1830), 75-76. The borough remained under the control of the 2nd marquess of Buckingham, the high steward, whose principal residence at Stowe lay three miles away.
Great Marlow was ‘a respectable and well-built’ unincorporated borough on the southern border of Buckinghamshire, situated on the north bank of the Thames opposite the Berkshire parish of Bisham, which contained the Temple House home and copper mills of Owen Williams, Member since 1796 and possessor of the dominant electoral interest. There was some paper and lace making in the town. Municipal government was in the parish, which extended beyond the parliamentary borough; the two constables were the returning officers. Pigot’s Commercial Dir.
Aylesbury, the county town, was a market centre in the Vale of Aylesbury, whose once flourishing lace manufacture had ‘fallen into decay’ by the end of this period. An unincorporated borough, its local government was in the hands of the vestry and four constables, chosen at the court leet of the lords of the manor, the 1st (d. 1813) and 2nd marquesses of Buckingham, heads of the Grenville family of Stowe, in the north-west of the county, and Wotton Underwood, six miles west of Aylesbury. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 148; (1830), 71-72; R.W.
Wycombe, the ‘handsomest’ town in Buckinghamshire, was situated in the south of the county, 29 miles from London on one of the main roads to the west. It had some cotton lace manufacturing, but was notably a centre of paper making, with several mills operating in and around it. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 159-60; (1830), 95-96. Dissent was well established, and the Quaker families of Edmonds, Lucas, Wheeler and others were prominent. R.W.
A small, impoverished town in Amesbury hundred, Ludgershall was ‘in appearance a mere village’ and had ‘nothing but its situation, which is truly delightful, to excite the attention of the stranger’.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1830), 803; Devizes Gazette, 8 Apr. 1830; PP (1833), xxxvii. 690, 691. On a visit in 1826, William Cobbett† wrote that it
