Wooburn, Buckinghamshire
Historical Description
Wooburn or Woburn, a village and a parish in Bucks. The village stands adjacent to the Wycombe, Thame, and Oxford branch of the G.W.R., on which it has two stations (Bourne End and Woburn Green), about 2¾ miles SW of Beaconsfield, and 4 SW of Wycombe. It has a post, money order, and telegraph office. The parish is large and scattered, and consists of Wooburn Town, Woburn Green, Cores End, Bourne End, The Common, The Moor, Havenslea, and Northend Woods. Acreage, 3139; population, 2727. There is a parish council consisting of eleven members. The manor belonged to Earl Harold; went to the Bishops of Lincoln, who had a palace here; passed to the Lovells, the Comptons, the Goodwins, the Whartons, and the Berties; and belongs now to the Du Pre family, who are also chief landowners. Fairs are held on 4 May and 12 Nov. Wooburn House was the death-place of Bishop Smith, the founder of Brasenose College, was visited in the time of the first Lord Wharton by William III., was rebuilt in 1750, and is now the seat of the Gilbey family. There are extensive paper and millboard mills. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford; net value, £110. The church, which was restored in 1857 and 1870, is an ancient building in the Decorated and Perpendicular styles, consisting of chancel with N aisle, nave, aisles, and a massive western embattled tower. It has some ancient brasses, some good stained windows, and a carved stone pulpit. St Mark's Church, at Bourne End, erected in 1889, is a building in the Early English style. There are Baptist, Congregational, Primitive Methodist, and Wesleyan chapels, a working-men's institute, and several small charities.
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 | Wooburn St. Paul | |
| Hundred | Desborough | |
| Poor Law union | Wycombe |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
The parish register dates from the year 1653.
Churches
Church of England
St. Paul (parish church)
The church of St. Paul is an ancient edifice in the Late Norman, Decorated and Perpendicular styles, consisting of chancel with north aisle, clerestoried nave of four bays, aisles and massive embattled western tower with turret containing a clock, erected in 1870, and 8 bells rehung, and the 9th bell recast in 1901, in commemoration of the coronation of King Edward VII.; the pulpit of carved stone, is adorned with representative heads of the four Evangelists: the east window is stained, and there are several other stained windows: in the church are brasses to John Goodwin and Pernell, his wife, who built the church tower, A.D. 1488; Christopher Askowe, 1500, and his wife; to Thomas Swaine S.T.P. prebendary of Aylesbury, 1519, and to Arthur, infant son of Philip, 4th Baron Wharton, 1642: one other brass, with a single figure in shroud, surrounded by shields and scrolls, has a rhyming inscription of eleven lines, but no name or date, probably c. 1520: there are memorials to the families of Bertie and Wharton, including a monument to Philip, 4th Baron Wharton, who died 5th Feb. 1695: in 1899 a chancel screen was presented by Miss Emily Du Pre, in memory of her father, James Du Pre esq. a former lord of the manor and patron of the living: the organ was erected as a memorial to Alfred Gilbey esq, of Woodburn House, d. 28 Nov. 1879, and in 1901 a reredos was presented by Mrs. Gilbey, of the Kennels, Wooburn, and her daughter: the church was completely restored internally in 1857 and externally in 1869, when the nave was heightened by the erection of a clerestory and the substitution of an open-timbered roof for the flat plastered ceiling: the church has since been entirely reseated and affords 500 sittings.
St. Mark's church at Bourne End, a chapel of ease to Wooburn parish church, was built in 1914 at a cost of £1,900 to replace an older edifice which had been pulled down; it is of red brick in the Gothic style and consists of chancel, nave, south porch and a turret containing one tubular bell: in the south side of the chancel is a stained window in memory of the Rev. E. Sladen, first priest in charge of St. Mark's church, 1890-1905: the sanctuary was erected by Mrs. Radcliffe-Crocker in 1914 to the memory of her husband, H. Radcliffe-Crocker M.D.: there are 250 sittings.
There is a small Mission chuch in Wycombe road, the gift of an anonymous donor in 1903, seating 100 persons.
The Congregational chapel, founded in 1768 and rebuilt in 1804, was enlarged and reseated in 1881, and will seat about 400 persons.
the Baptist chapel at Wooburn Green was erected in 1836.
Civil Registration
Wooburn was in Wycombe Registration District from 1837 to 1974
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Wooburn from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Wooburn (St. Paul))
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Buckinghamshire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Wooburn 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