Weston Underwood, Buckinghamshire
Historical Description
Weston Underwood, a parish, with a village, in Bucks, 1½ mile WSW of Olney station on the Bedford and Northampton branch of the M.R., and 6½ miles N of Newport Pagnell. It has a post office under Newport Pagnell; money order and telegraph office, Olney. Acreage, 1873; population, 325. There is a parish council consisting of five members. The manor has belonged since the time of Henry VI. to the Throckmortons. Weston Park is about 30 acres in extent, and contains some beautiful timber. The poet Cowper resided for some years in a house still standing on the right of the village, and he described in his poems much of the surrounding scenery. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford. The church is an ancient building of stone in the Early Perpendicular style, consisting of chancel, nave, aisles, N porch, and a low embattled western tower. It was restored in 1892. It contains some ancient brasses and several memorials of the Throckmortons. There is a Roman Catholic chapel.
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 | Weston-Underwood St. Lawrence | |
| 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 1681.
Churches
Church of England
St. Lawrence (parish church)
The church of St. Lawrence is an ancient edifice of stone in the Early Perpendicular style, consisting of chancel, clerestoried nave, aisles, north porch, and low embattled western tower containing 6 bells: the whole exterior is Perpendicular: the piers and arches of the nave arcades are plain Early English, and the chancel and tower exhibit portions of the same style; the font is of the 15th century: the east window retains its original stained glass in the upper portion, and there is a piscina and sedilia: the church also contains some memorials of the Throckmortons, and a brass, with effigy, and those of five daughters to Elizabeth (Hussay), wife first of Sir Walter Hungerford and afterwards of Sir Robert Throckmorton; she died in 1571: there is also a tomb, with marginal inscription on brass, to John Olney, a former rector, and Dionisia, his wife, ob, 1405; his epitaph records that he converted the ancient and dilapidated chapel into a church: there is a black and white marble tablet erected in memory of the men of the parish who lost their lives in the Great War, 1914-18: the church was restored in 1891 by the Rev. Hugh Allan M.A. incumbent 1882-98: there are 200 sittings.
Civil Registration
Weston Underwood was in Newport Pagnell Registration District from 1837 to 1935
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Weston Underwood from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Weston-Underwood (St. Lawrence))
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Buckinghamshire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Weston Underwood 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