|
Wendover, Buckinghamshire |
|||||||||||
Wendover (Metropolitan), formerly Wendour, is an attractive little town (431 ft.) in the Chiltern Hills, and an excellent centre for excursions, either E. by Boddington Hill and Halton Wood to Tring and the Herts border, or W. along the summit of Coombe Hill to Chequers Court and Ellesborough. The centuries have not changed Wendover, and Leland's description of it as "a pretty thoroughfare town, having two streets well builded with tymbre" is as appropriate now as it was three-and-a-half centuries ago. In the High Street are many half-timbered houses, mostly of the 16th and 17th centuries, and in the Tring Road is a line of heavily-thatched small-windowed cottages, built 1600 to 1620. The town nestles in a gap in the Chiltern range, and when viewed from above is almost lost in the dip of the land. The Manor of Wendover, among the various changes of owners, once formed part of the dowry of Katherine of Arragon, and the borough, like Amersham and Marlow, having lost its Parliamentary representation for many years, obtained it again in 1623 through the exertions of John Hampden, who then became one of its members, which he remained till 1640. Wendover continued to return two members till the Reform Act of 1832, when it was disfranchised. Among these members occurs, in 1768, the name of Burke. Wendover was for years the pocket borough of the Earls Verney, and it is said that at the election of 1784 there first appeared an individual who became notorious in sequent elections in corrupt boroughs - The Man in the Moon, who brought £6000 to distribute among the voters.
The church is reached by the London road, and then by a footpath (left), or a little further on by a lane, or by going down the High Street and taking the path by the schools. The church, with the Manor House behind it, and the picturesqueness of the surroundings, forms a delightful rural scene. Externally it is flint with a West tower; internally it is spacious and lofty, with two aisles, a triforium and chancel, and is distinctly Decorated in style. Note the somewhat unusual piers, very early Decorated, showing characteristics of much earlier work, and the capitals - South with quaint animals, North with flowers. The South door has good ball-flower ornament. The brass to William Bradschawe, wife and children (1539), South wall of nave, is an interesting example of 16th-century work. Buckinghamshire 1918
|
External Links |
|||||||||||
|
Linked Pages |
||||||||||||
|
Some Modern Views of Wendover by Chris Reynolds on Geograph
|
||||||||||||
 |
The Clock Tower, Wendover Raphael Tuck Oilette 7421
|