Soulbury, Buckinghamshire
Historical Description
Soulbury, a parish, with Soulbury village and Hollingdon hamlet in Bucks, on the river Ousel, the Grand Junction Canal, and the L. & N.W.R., 2½ miles NW of Leighton Junction station. It has a post office under Leighton Buzzard; money order office, Linslade; telegraph office, Leighton Buzzard. Acreage, 4226; population, 510. There is a parish council consisting of seven members. Liscombe Park, which has belonged to the Lovett family for more than 500 years, is a quadrangular Tudor mansion, very pleasantly situated in a park of about 200 acres. It contains some ancient and valuable portraits. Stockgrove is a fine modern mansion of brick, standing amidst beautiful grounds, and commanding fine views of the surrounding country. The living is a perpetual curacy in the diocese of Oxford; gross value, £110, in the gift of the Lovett family. The church is a building of stone, chiefly in the Decorated and Perpendicular styles, consisting of chancel, nave, aisles, S porch, and an embattled western tower. It contains many interesting ancient architectural features and some tombs and memorials of the Lovetts. There is a Wesleyan chapel, and there are a few small charities and an endowed school.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
Ancient County | Buckinghamshire | |
Ecclesiastical parish | Soulbury All Saints | |
Hundred | Cottesloe | |
Poor Law union | Leighton-Buzzard |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
The Phillimore transcript of Marriages at Soulbury 1575-1812, Buckinghamshire is available to browse online.
The parish register dates from the year 1595.
Churches
Church of England
All Saints (parish church)
The church of All Saints is an edifice of stone, chiefly of the Decorated period, with Perpendicular alterations and additions, and consists of a chancel, clerestoried nave, aisles, south porch and an embattled western tower containing a clock and 6 bells and an ancient sanctus bell: the whole of the fabric was restored in 1863: in the chancel is a vault of the Loyett family, and there are three brasses, one recording the name of Thomas Lovett, 1491; one, with kneeling effigies of himself and his wife, to Robert Lovett, and another, with effigies, to John Turnay, 1512; and a figure of Alice, wife of . . . Mallet, the male effigy being lost: there is also a brass to Col. John Lovett M.P. 1710, his wife, the Hon. Mary Verney, 1769, and their son Verney M.P. 1771, and John, 1758, all of whom are buried here: there is also a brass (1921) to E. W. Robinson: there is a piscina and a hagioscope in the south aisle, a low-side window, two pisciniae and double sedilia in the chancel, and a piscina in the north aisle: the ancient rood stairs remain: there are 220 sittings. In the churchyard is a stone cross erected in 1920 in memory of the 13 men of the parish who fell in the Great War, 1914-18.
Civil Registration
Soulbury was in Leighton Buzzard Registration District from 1837 to 1935 and Aylesbury Registration District from 1935 to 1974
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Soulbury from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Soulbury (All Saints))
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Buckinghamshire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Soulbury are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Buckinghamshire papers online:
Villages, Hamlets, &c
HollingdonVisitations Heraldic
A full transcript of the Visitation of Buckinghamshire, 1634 is online