Waddesdon, Buckinghamshire
Historical Description
Waddesdon, a township and a parish in Bucks. The township lies on the Roman way, Akeman Street, 2 miles from Quainton Road station on the Metropolitan railway, and 5¼ NW from Aylesbury. The Wotton tramway passes through this parish. Area of the township, 5003 acres; population, 1610. The parish includes also the townships of Woodham and Westcott, and the hamlet of Wormstone. Acreage, 7252; population, 1953. There is a parish council consisting of nine members. There is a good hotel, and a parish club and reading-room. Waddesdon manor, a seat of the Rothschild family, is a fine mansion in the French chateau style, very pleasantly situated on an eminence in a park of about 800 acres. The living is a rectory, united with Westcott, in the diocese of Oxford; net value, £660 with residence, in the gift of the Duke of Marlborough. The church is an ancient building of stone in mixed styles, consisting of chancel, nave, aisles, S porch, and an embattled western tower. It has some ancient and interesting tombs and monuments, and an octagonal Decorated font. The church at Westcott was erected in 1867 at the expense of the last Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, from the designs of the late G. E. Street, R.A. There are Baptist chapels at Waddesdon village and Waddesdon Hill, and Primitive Methodist and Wesleyan chapels at Waddesdon, almshouses for six aged women, and charities worth about £130 a year.
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 | Waddesdon St. Michael | |
Hundred | Ashendon | |
Poor Law union | Aylesbury |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
The parish register of baptisms dates from the year 1541; marriages and burials, 1538.
Churches
Church of England
St. Michael and All Angels (parish church)
The church of St. Michael and All Angels is an ancient building of stone in mixed styles, consisting of chancel, clerestoried nave, aisles, south porch, and an embattled western tower (rebuilt in 1891-2) containing a clock and 6 bells: the earliest portion of the structure, comprising the south piers of the nave, and the inner doorway, is Norman; the tower, south porch, and piers and arches on the north side of the nave are generally good plain Early English, and some parts of the chancel are Decorated: the clerestory is entirely Perpendicular, and windows of that date have been inserted in other parts of the church: there are three piscinae, one in each aisle and one in the nave: the font is Decorated, octagonal in shape and panelled: in the chancel are brasses to Robert Pygott and Mary, his wife; another with effigy in armour, upon a raised table tomb at the south-east corner of the nave to Sir Roger Denham, or Dynham, d. 1490; this brass was discovered in 1887 at Eythrope, and the coffin containing the remains of the knight, found on the site of a destroyed chapel, was removed to Waddesdon churchyard and re-interred on the east side of the south porch by Miss Alice de Rothschild: there is also a monument to Guy Carleton, a veteran soldier, ob. June 1, 1608; a brass with effigy in shroud to Hugh Bristow, rector of the first portion, to which he was elected in 1548, and another, with vested effigy, to Richard Huntingdon, a priest, 1543: affixed to the wall is a brass to William Turner, who left £3,625 to the poor of the parish: in the north chapel is a stained glass window erected as a memorial to the men of the parish who fell in the Great War, 1914-18, and there is another in the south chapel to Henry C. M. Farmer, son of the Rev. J. E. G. Farmer M.A. rector 1905-21, who was killed in action: in 1935 a tablet was placed on the north wall of the north aisle to commemorate the Delafield family, who lived in the parish for about 300 years; this was erected by the late Richard Delafield, of New York: the children's window was inserted in the south wall, near the font, in 1927, by the children of Waddesdon, 1917 to 1927; the chancel was restored in 1877, the rest of the fabric having previously been restored; the church was further restored in 1891-2 and in 1902 the whole exterior was thoroughly repaired: new oak choir stalls, with miserere seats and a screen were fitted in the chancel and a new organ added: the marble and alabaster pulpit, formerly in Blenheim Palace Chapel, was the gift of the ninth Duke of Marlborough K.G., P.C.: there are 589 sittings.
Civil Registration
For general information about Civil Registration (births, marriages and deaths) see the Civil Registration page.
Waddesdon was in Aylesbury Registration District from 1837 to 1974
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Waddesdon from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Waddesdon (St. Michael))
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Buckinghamshire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Waddesdon 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
WestcottWoodham
Visitations Heraldic
A full transcript of the Visitation of Buckinghamshire, 1634 is online