Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for STRATFORD (Stony)

STRATFORD (Stony), a small town and a parish in the district of Potterspury and county of Buckingham. The town stands on Watling-street and the river Onse, 2 miles WSW of Wolverton r. station, and 7½ NE by E of Buckingham; is supposed, by some antiquaries, to occupy the site of the Roman Lactodorum; was Edward IV.'s starting-place to Grafton, to marry Elizabeth Woodville; was also the place where Richard III. seized Edward V.; had an Eleanor cross, put up by Edward I., and demolished in 1646; suffered much desolation by an accidental fire in 1742; lost then its later English church of St. Mary Magdalene, all except the tower, which still stands; is a seat of petty-sessions; publishes a weekly newspaper; communicates, by a three-arched bridge, with Old Stratford, on the Northampton side of the Ouse; consists chiefly of one long old street, a market place, and a new street; and has a head post-office,‡ three banking offices, a good hotel, a police station, reading rooms, a public hall, a church rebuilt in 1776, but retaining a tower of 1487, three dissenting chapels, a public cemetery of 1856 with two handsome chapels, an endowed grammar-school, national and British schools, charities £426, a weekly corn market on Friday, a monthly cattle market, and fairs on 2 Aug., the Friday after 10 Oct., and the first Friday of Nov.—The parish comprises two ancient parishes, St. Mary Magdalene and St. Giles; and is divided into East Side, which was St. Mary Magdalene, and West Side, which was St. Giles. Acres, 70. Real property of East Side, £2,148,-of which £120 are in gasworks; of West Side, £3,083. Pop. of the whole in 1851, 1,256; in 1861, 1,356. Houses, 263. The manor of East Side belongs to the Radcliffe trustees; and that of West Side, to W. S. Lowndes, Esq. The living is a p. curacy in the diocese of Oxford. Value, £185.* Patron, the Bishop of O.


(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a small town and a parish"   (ADL Feature Type: "cities")
Administrative units: Stony Stratford CP       Buckinghamshire AncC
Place names: STONY STRATFORD     |     STRATFORD     |     STRATFORD STONY
Place: Stony Stratford

Go to the linked place page for a location map, and for access to other historical writing about the place. Pages for linked administrative units may contain historical statistics and information on boundaries.