Patrick Comerford
A devastating fire in Buckingham in 1725 destroyed 138 houses and left leaving 507 people homeless. The fire explains why Buckingham has a range of interesting Georgian architecture but few old pubs, and it explains too how the Mitre Inn, which I was writing about yesterday (25 November 2025), can claim to be the oldest pub in Buckingham.
Buckingham became an important coaching centre on the main routes from London to the Midlands and between Oxford and Cambridge in the 18th and 19th centuries. This encouraged the town development of at least four coaching inns in the town, including the George on the High Street, the Cobham Arms on West Street, the White Hart in Market Square and the White Swan, later the Swan and Castle and now the Villiers Hotel in Castle Street.
But the arrival of the railways between 1838 and 1850 marked the death knell of coach travel and the closure of many of the original coaching inns.
Despite the fire 300 years ago, much of the original mediaeval street patterns and burgage plots still survive in Buckingham, as well as a small number of the earlier buildings. The surviving timber-framed buildings include the Old Market House or former Tudor public house, now Mey restaurant, a Grade II listed building on the corner of High Street and Moreton Road, as well as the Manor House and Twisted Chimneys on Church Street.
The former Tudor public house at No 36 High Street at the corner with Moreton Road is on a prominent site diagonally opposite the Old Gaol. Once known as the Old Market House, it is a large Tudor-style building, first built in the 15th century as a large house, and it is a rare survivor of the fire in 1725.
It was altered in the 18th century, when it was sub-divided vertically, and again in the 20th century, when the front was heavily restored with the removal of plaster render and new Tudor-style windows were added.
A cottage beside the building was demolished for road-widening on Moreton Road in the 20th century, giving the house a prominent corner position. What remains is the present 2½-storey timber frame building with a jettied first floor and a massive stone stack to the rear.
The jettied timber-framed building has a tile roof, a brick interior and rear lateral stacks. It has a two-unit plan, with two storeys and an attic and a three-window range. The 20th century door on the far left has a 20th century Tudor-style arched head, there are leaded bay windows to the right of the door and on the far right of the ground floor and leaded wood mullion and transom windows, one of which replaced a door.
There are leaded casement windows, end posts with cusped ogee-arched sunk panels, a hipped roof with dormer windows and, on the façade, a surviving Sun fire insurance plaque.
An archaeological evaluation of the site was carried out in 2007 in advance of an extension to the Tudor Rock public house. It later became Prezzo, an Italian restaurant, and today it is Mey Mediterranean Bar and Grill, with Turkish cuisine and flavours. I have enjoyed coffee in Mey in recent days. Had it remained a pub it may not have qualified as Buckingham’s oldest pub, however, as it was not built as a pub or inn originally.
Inside, the building has a stone cellar. The ground-floor room has a Tudor-arched doorway with carved spandrels, a large stone fireplace with a chamfered, Tudor-arched head, a hollow-chamfered and moulded spine beam, stop-moulded joists and moulded cornices.
Heading west from High Street, the north-west side of Market Hill – between the junction with Moreton Road and the south-west end of the Bull Ring – looks ‘disappointing’, according to the architectural historian Sir Niklaus Pevsner. This is mainly because of the insensitive modern 1960s development that stretches from the Whale at 13 Market Hill to the King’s Head at 7 and 8 Market Hill, on the corner of Moreton Road.
These modern flat-roofed buildings replaced an attractive row of historic buildings. Although the modern buildings maintain the building line, they look out of keeping with their surroundings.
The King’s Head and the Whale, which bookend this unfortunate 1960s development on Market Hill, make positive contributions to the character of the Conservation Area in the heart of Buckingham.
The King’s Head is an early 19th century three-storey rendered building on a prominent site in front of the Old Gaol and at the corner of Market Hill and Moreton Road.
At the other end of the 1960s development, the Whale is not listed but is an attractive early 19th century building. It was once the Buckingham Inn and in the early 1900s it was used by Bostock and Wombwell’s Circus to set up pitches for the performers.
The building was known as the Whale for over 100 years, but its name was changed to Binns Smokehouse and then to the Buckingham Inn before a local campaign to restore the original name.
The Whale reopened earlier this year (13 February 2025) after it was refurbished by Proper Pubs, part of Admiral Taverns. Inside, the Whale has been transformed with new flooring, fixtures, fittings, furniture, lighting and signage.
The Villiers Hotel on Castle Street dates back 450 years ago to the Swanne upon the Hoppe, which later became the Swan and the White Swan in a short space of time. Sir Ralph Seyre left the property to his daughter Elizabeth in his will in 1577.
Local legend maintains that Oliver Cromwell billeted his troops in the cockloft of the inn when he was in Buckingham. visit to the town in 1643. A later record notes how troops were quartered at the Swan in 1712, and the sale of the White Swan was advertised in the Northampton Mercury in 1738, when it was bought by Michael Whitaker. It was sold again in 1801, and the name of the inn changed about 1813 from the White Swan to the Swan and Castle.
In the 19th century, local coaches ran from the inn three times a week to Wolverton Station and also to Banbury, Stony Stratford and Newport Pagnell.
The Swan and Castle was acquired by the Duke of Buckingham in the early 19th century, and – despite his eventual bankruptcy – the inn was still owned by his son, the third duke, in 1878, when it was leased to William Betts. The executors of the 3rd Duke of Buckingham sold the inn in 1894 to the Aylesbury Brewery Company, and it was renamed the Villiers Hotel after George Villiers (1592-1628), 1st Duke of Buckingham, one of the infatuations of James I.
Nearby, where Castle Street and West Street meet, the Cobham Arms was one of the premier coaching inns in Buckingham, and the London coaches stopped there. The inn was the property of the Temple-Greville family of Stowe and their descendants, the Dukes of Buckingham, and the Baxter family were tenants for more than 100 years.
The earliest the inn could have been known as the name Cobham Arms is 1714, the year in which Sir Richard Temple was given the title of Baron Cobham, although an earlier inn with another name may have stood on the site.
The Cobham Arms was eventually sold in 1856 and its demise was hastened by both the advent of the railway and the bankruptcy of the 2nd Duke of Buckingham. As well as being an inn, the building also served as a Post Office for several years.
The vista from the Villiers Hotel and the former Cobham Arms down Castle Street frames a view of another coaching inn, the White Hart Hotel on the corner of Market Square and Bridge Street.
The White Hart opened as a coaching inn in 1764. Although it has an early 19th century frontage, it is a much older building inside. The front coaching entrance was blocked up in 1875 when the present Italianate portico was built.
Above the porch canopy is a life-size statue of a reclining stag or white hart with a coronet around its neck. At one time, election results were announced from the balcony of the White Hart Hotel.
Returning back along Market Square, Market Hill and High Street, past Mey and the Old Market House, the Grand Junction at 12 and 13 High Street is an early 19th century house and inn, formerly known as the Ship.
This pub is Grade II building that was once an inn too. It takes its name from its links with the Buckingham arm of the Grand Junction or Grand Union Canal, which terminated nearby, behind Wharf House on Stratford Road.
The Buckingham arm of the Grand Junction or Grand Union canal opened in 1801. It roughly followed the course of the River Great Ouse from Cosgrove through Deanshanger, Thornton and Leckhampstead towards Buckingham, where it followed a course between lower Wharf Houses and Stratford Fields, turning to the left between Stratford Fields and Stratford Road, and entering Wharf Yard opposite what is now the road to the Page Hill Estate.
The canal was an important transport link, bringing cheap materials to Buckingham and from there taking agricultural produce to London and the Midlands. The heyday of the canal lasted into the 1850s when the arrival of the railway and the Bletchley to Banbury road caused trade to decline. The canal eventually closed in 1964.
The Grand Junction at 12 and 13 High Street closed for refurbishment two weeks ago (10 November). It has been one of my favourite ‘pit stops’ when I am changing buses in Buckingham for Stony Stratford, Aylesbury, Oxford, Bicester, Winslow and some of the neighbour villages. It has a good patio area, charming cozy corners, and offered a Mediterranean-themed menu. It is promising ‘something even better’ after ‘a thoughtful refurbishment’ when it reopens at the end of next week (6 December).
