Hanslope, Buckinghamshire
Historical Description
Hanslope, a village and a parish in Bucks. The village stands near the L. & N.W.R and the boundary with Northampton, 4½ miles N by W of Wolverton station, and 4½ N by E from Stony Stratford, was once a market-town, and has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Stony Stratford. The parish comprises 6281 acres, of which 5801 are in Bucks and 480 in Northampton; population of the civil parish, 1489; of the ecclesiastical, with Castlethorpe, 1930. The manor belonged anciently to the Beauchamps, and belongs now to the Watts family; The living is a vicarage, united with the chapelry of Castlethorpe, in the diocese of Oxford; gross joint yearly value,' £127 with residence. Patron, the Bishop of Oxford. The church is Early English, and has a pinnacled tower, with octagonal spire, 186 feet high, rebuilt in 1804. There are Baptist and Wesleyan chapels, and charities worth nearly £200 a year. Hanslope Park is a chief residence.
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 | Hanslope St. James | |
| 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 1570.
Churches
Church of England
St. James the Great (parish church)
The parish church of St. James the Great is an ancient edifice of the Norman, Early English and Perpendicular periods, consisting of chancel with aisles, nave, clerestory, lighted by six windows on either side, aisles, north and south porches, and a lofty battlemented western tower, with octagonal panelled and crocketed pinnacles at the angles, and containing a clock and 6 fine bells, a sixth having been added in 1906; the spire, built of Ketton stone, A.D. 1391, by Thomas Knight, then rector, and reaching, together with the tower, a height of 200 feet, was struck by lightning June 23rd, 1804, and subsequently rebuilt, the total height now being 180 feet; flying buttresses, pierced with quatrefoils, support the spire, which has two tiers or windows and richly crocketed ribs; in the chancel are considerable remains of Norman work, including the chancel arch, above which there is a coat of arms of King Charles II. and a doorway in the north wall, with zigzag and other ornament; two 12th century stone coffins were found during the restoration of the side chapel: the nave is separated from the aisles by arcades of four arches; the chancel arch is plain Norman; only two Early English windows now remain, and part of the church, including the tower, is Perpendicular; in the Troughton chapel are some memorials to that family, including a brass to the parents of Richard Troughton, and a second to Maria, daughter of Thomas Birchmore, 1602, besides four stones from which the brasses have been removed: in March, 1884, a memorial window was placed in the chancel, and in 1893, another was presented by Lingard Monk esq. of Fulshaw Manor, Cheshire, in memory of his daughter: there is a stained glass window in the south aisle, below which is a stone tablet inscribed with the names of 20 men connected with the parish who fell in the Great War, 1914-18: there are 600 sittings.
Civil Registration
Hanslope was in Newport Pagnell Registration District from 1894 to 1935
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Hanslope from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Hanslope (St. James))
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Buckinghamshire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Hanslope 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