Prestwood, Buckinghamshire
Historical Description
Prestwood, a hamlet in Great Missenden parish, and an ecclesiastical parish partly also in Hughendon, Great Missenden, and Stoke Mandeville parishes, Bucks. The hamlet lies 2 miles W by N of Great Missenden, 4½ NE of Wycombe station on the Wycombe, Thame, and Oxford section of the G.W.R., and 1¼ mile of Great Missenden station on the Metropolitan, railway. It has a post office under Great Missenden (R.S.O.); money order and telegraph office, Great Missenden. The ecclesiastical parish was constituted in 1849. Population, 958. The industries include chair-turning and lace-making. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford; net value, £70 with residence. The church, erected in 1849, is a building of flint and stone in the Decorated style, consisting of chancel, nave, aisles, vestry, S porch, and western bell-turret. There are Baptist and Wesleyan chapels. A memorial to John Hampden was erected here in 1863 on the land in Stoke Mandeville for which he was unlawfully assessed 20s ship money in 1635.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
| Ancient County | Buckinghamshire | |
| Civil parish | Stoke Mandeville | |
| Hundred | Aylesbury | |
| Poor Law union | Wycombe |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
The parish register dates from the year 1850.
Churches
Church of England
The Holy Trinity (parish church)
The church of the Holy Trinity, erected in 1849, is an edifice of flint with stone dressings in the Decorated style, and consists of chancel, clerestoried nave of three bays, aisles, two vestries, south porch and an open western turret containing one bell; the chancel was raised and enlarged in 1885: the east window is stained, and there are two others, one in the chancel and another in the north aisle, erected to the memory of his mother (d. 1857) by the Rev. Thomas Evetts, first incumbent of this church, 1849-63; the chancel rail originally belonged to the church of Little Gidding, Hunts: there are 200 sittings.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Prestwood from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Prestwood)
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Buckinghamshire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Prestwood 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)