Exploring north Buckinghamshire- part 1 (From Bucks Free Press)

Exploring north Buckinghamshire- part 1

12:11am Sunday 25th July 2010

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What’s the difference between Buckinghamshire and Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Bedfordshire. Amongst other things; their county towns are all huge sprawling towns, Nottingham the largest, then Oxford, then Bedford. But Buckingham is different. It’s not even the county town. And it is home to only 12,000 people. Yet the county it names has territory which today would encompass nearly a million.

We started our journey to north Bucks as we would towards Aylesbury, but after Winslow, we detoured off the A413. I had planned to fit as much in to this one day as possible, so to start I thought it would be nice to visit something well off the beaten track- railway track in this case. Head west and soon you come to Verney Junction, a tiny hamlet. But if you head down a hidden drive, there’s quite a surprise at the end.

A railway station! A very old and overgrown station. For this station last saw passengers in 1968, although for many years it was the terminus of London Underground’s Metropolitan Line! 50 miles from Baker Street! There was more- at one time from here you could catch trains to Buckingham, Banbury, Oxford, Reading, Bletchley, Bedford, Aylesbury, High Wycombe, London... it was a four way junction. The Met left in 1936, and the others by 1968. Since then the station has been allowed to rot- and it’s very difficult to spot the platforms. If you have any interest in our lost railways or just fancy standing somewhere where 80 years ago you’d have been run over by a 50 ton train, check it out.

Our time was pressing, so we headed back to the main road for the short ride to Buckingham. We parked near Waitrose (free) and headed to the main attraction, which is of course: the Old Gaol. This magnificent building dates from 1748 after the town was devastated by fire in 1725- a fire so terrible that any hopes of regaining the county town crown from Aylesbury were severely dashed. Nowadays the old gaol is a museum, and contains the town’s tourist information centre- and I do recommend it. It explores Buckingham’s history right back to the Iron Age- with several archaeological findings on display, including a spear dating back several thousand years. All periods are covered- from the ninth century, when Buckingham was proclaimed county town through to the present day.

Buckingham as I said is very unusual in that it names a county stretching over 40 miles to the south and 20 miles to the north, from just west of Staines to a point halfway between Bedford and Northampton, yet is no significant population centre itself. Of course it’s not even county town anymore; Aylesbury took that title in the 1500s, apparently because Thomas Boleyn owned land there- and a certain monarch was trying to impress his daughter...

The town lies in a loop in the River Great Ouse- here it’s just a baby but in 150 miles it has become the fourth largest river in the UK at King’s Lynn. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to explore the old town- the area at the centre of the loop. That was a real shame, but we had to press on. And so to our next destination did we depart.

TO BE CONTINUED