Gayhurst, Buckinghamshire
Historical Description
Gayhurst or Gothurst, a village and a parish in Bucks,. on the river Ouse, 2½ miles NW of Newport-Pagnall station on the L. & N.W.R., and 4½ NE of Wolverton. Post town, money order and telegraph office, Newport-Pagnall. Acreage,, 1351; population of the civil parish, 97; of the ecclesiastical, 858. Gayhurst House is a Tudor mansion of the time of Elizabeth, but has been much altered; was the residence of Sir Everard Digby, and the place of some of his meetings with the gunpowder plotters; has association with the poet Cowper, who expressed high admiration of its situation and gardens, and is now the seat of the Carlile family. The living is a rectory, united with the rectory of Stoke-Goldington, in the diocese of Oxford; joint net yearly value, £230. The church, a small building of stone in the Italian style, was. built from designs by Sir Christopher Wren.
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 | Gayhurst St. Peter | |
| Hundred | Newport | |
| Poor Law union | Newport-Pagnell |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
The parish register dates from the year 1728.
Churches
Church of England
St. Peter (parish church)
The parish church of St. Peter is a small edifice of stone in the Italian style, by Wren, and finished in 1728, at the expense of George Wrighte esq, who purchased the estate in 1704: it consists of chancel and nave, with a low square western tower surmounted by a capola and containing one bell: in the church is a monument by Roubiliac, to Sir Nathan Wrighte, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, 1721, with effigy in robes, and his son George: there is also a stone tablet bearing the names of the men connected with the parish who lost their lives in the Great War, 1914-18: the church was restored in 1883 by J. W. Carlile esq. of Gayhurst House, and now affords 100 sittings.
Civil Registration
Gayhurst was in Newport Pagnell Registration District from 1837 to 1935
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Gayhurst from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Gayhurst (St. Peter))
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Buckinghamshire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Gayhurst 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:
Visitations Heraldic
A full transcript of the Visitation of Buckinghamshire, 1634 is online