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Wycombe, West (St. Lawrence)

WYCOMBE, WEST (St. Lawrence), a parish, in the union of Wycombe, hundred of Desborough, county of Buckingham, 2½ miles (N. W. by W.) from Wycombe; containing 2002 inhabitants, many of whom are employed in lace-making and the manufacture of chairs. The parish comprises by measurement 6356 acres, of which 4285 are arable, 441 meadow and pasture, 1048 woodland, and 582 common. The living is a discharged vicarage, valued in the king's books at £11. 9. 7.; net income, £250; patron and impropriator, Sir J. Dashwood King, Bart. The church, which is surrounded by an ancient intrenchment, was erected in 1763, at the expense of Lord le Despenser, and is an elegant structure in the Grecian style, with a profusion of Mosaic work, and some handsome monuments. In an adjoining mausoleum is a monument of considerable beauty to the memory of Sarah, Baroness le Despenser, with many memorials of the Dashwood family and others: within one of its recesses was deposited, in 1775, an urn inclosing the heart of Paul Whitehead, the poet, which he had bequeathed to Lord le Despenser. The church occupies an eminence finely clothed with woods, emerging from which the tower and the mausoleum form objects strikingly picturesque. There are places of worship for Independents and Wesleyans. In the neighbourhood is an ancient camp, doubly intrenched, called Desborough Castle, which gives name to the hundred; vestiges of buildings, together with stone windowframes similar to those of a church, have been discovered on its site.

Transcribed from A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858.

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