Stowe, Buckinghamshire
Historical Description
Stowe, a parish, with three hamlets, in Bucks, 2¾ miles NNW of Buckingham railway station. Post town and telegraph office, Dadford, under Buckingham; money order office, Shalstone. Acreage, 3045 of land and 43 of water; population, 311. The manor, with Stowe House, belongs to the Kinloss family. Stowe House is in the Grecian style, of centre and wings, with a frontage of 916 feet; is a magnificent structure, internally as well as externally; contains many fine apartments, an armoury with a valuable collection of arms and armour, a library with about 20,000 volumes, and many valuable portraits by Rubens, Vandyck, Lely, Kneller, Gainsborough, and others. It is distinguished both by its own architecture and by the decorations of its ornamental gardens, which extend to about 500 acres, and were laid out by the celebrated " Capability " Brown. The park extends to about 800 acres. The mansion was occupied for some years by the Comte de Paris, head of the royal house of France, and he died there in 1894. Boycott Manor House, a modern erection in the Tudor style, is the seat of the Higgins family. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford; net value, £122 with residence. Patron, the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos. The church, which stands in the grounds of Stowe House, is a building of stone in mixed Gothic styles.
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 | Stowe St. Mary | |
| Hundred | Buckingham | |
| Poor Law union | Buckingham |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
The parish register dates from the year 1568.
Churches
Church of England
St. Mary (parish church)
The church of St. Mary, surrounded by the private grounds of Stowe House, is a building of stone in mixed styles, with some Decorated windows, consisting of chancel, nave, aisles, north or Penyston chapel, south porch and a western tower containing 5 bells: a stained window was inserted in 1890 by the Baroness Kinloss C.I. as a memorial to her parents the 3rd and last Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, d. 26 March, 1889, and Caroline (Harvey) his 1st wife, d. 28 Feb. 1874, and there are memorials to previous Dukes and other owners of the estate, and in the chancel brasses to Alice Saunders, c. 1479, and John Temple, 1592, and Hester, his wife: in the chapel are memorials of the Penystons, including a figure of Hester Penyston, 1617: the church alfords 250 sittings.
Civil Registration
Stowe was in Buckingham Registration District from 1844 to 1935
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Stowe from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Stowe (St. Mary))
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Buckinghamshire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Stowe 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
BoycottDadford
Lamport
Visitations Heraldic
A full transcript of the Visitation of Buckinghamshire, 1634 is online