Patrick Comerford
I regularly change buses or stop briefly in Buckingham on my way from Stony Stratford to Oxford and other towns and villages in Buckinghamshire and neighbouring Oxfordshire.
The open space on High Street, east of the Old Gaol that now serves as the town’s bus station and market square was once the site of the cattle market in Buckingham but now has the function of a market square and bus stop. This area was once known as Cow Fair, North-East End and Hubbard Boulevard, and was only properly laid out in the late 19th century after Buckingham Hospital was built in 1886.
With the decline in importance of Buckingham Castle in the 12th and 13th centuries, the economic centre of the town moved eastwards to the present site of Market Square, Market Hill and High Street.
The rectangular open area of High Street between the Old Gaol and the bus stop forms a square that is divided into two islands. It has benefited from an environmental enhancement scheme in the 1990s, and one report declared ‘the former Cow Fair has a rather continental feel.’
Buckingham Hospital was built as Buckingham Nursing Home in 1886, with its entrance on the north-west side of the former Cattle Market, between No 19 and No 21 High Street. The entrance, across the street from the bus stop, has attractive curved metal railings atop a low brick boundary wall and metal gates.
The line of the this wall runs around the north-east and north-west boundaries of the hospital, and was built originally to enclose the Buckingham Union Workhouse. The workhouse was built in the late 1830s to a design by the architect Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811-1878), who was born in Gawcott, a village about 2.4 km (1.5 miles) south-west of Buckingham where his father where his father, the Revd Thomas Scott (1780-1835), was the perpetual curate or vicar.
Scott began his career as a leading designer of workhouses and became a prolific Gothic Revival architect, working on the design, building and renovation of churches and cathedrals. He designed or altered over 800 buildings and his other workhouses in Buckinghamshire included Winslow and Amersham. His workhouse in Buckingham was demolished in the 1960s.
Buckingham Hospital was built in 1886 to designs by Scott’s son, the architect John Oldrid Scott (1841-1913). He was a son of Sir George Gilbert Scott and Caroline (Oldrid) Scott; his brother George Gilbert Scott junior and nephew Sir Giles Gilbert Scott were also prominent architects.
John Oldrid Scott was responsible for many significant churches, and his works in this area include Saint George the Martyr Church, Wolverton (transepts, 1894) and Saint George’s Sunday School and Church Institute, Wolverton (1907-1908).
The Royal Buckinghamshire Hospital is in Aylesbury, but Buckingham Hospital is in Buckingham.
Buckingham Hospital was given to the town in 1886 by John Gellibrand Hubbard (1805-1889), 1st Baron Addington, a City of London financier and a Conservative politician. He gave his name to Addington Road in Buckingham, behind the hospital, and to the former Hubbard Boulevard.
Hubbard was the MP for Buckingham from 1859 until he lost the seat in the 1868 general election, and then for the City of London from 1874 until 1887, when he was made a peer with the title of Lord Addington.
Hubbard bought the Addington estate near Buckingham in 1854, demolished Addington House which had fallen into disrepair, and commissioned the architect Philip Charles Hardwick (1822-1892) to design Addington Manor in 1856-1857.
Buckingham Hospital stands on raised ground and Scott’s main building is largely obscured from view from the High Street and the bus stop, tucked away in the west corner of the site to the rear of 21 to 23 High Street and Toombs Yard.
It is a substantial, handsome building, built with vitrified bricks laid in a header bond with red bricks that emphasise its architectural details. The principal elevation is symmetrical with a central bay and two shallow gable wings to each end of the façade. A flight of stone steps leads up to the central doorway, which has a stone surround and pediment above. Each floor of the gable wings has canted sash bay windows.
The roof is tiled and elegant banded brick and stone ridge stacks punctuate the ridgeline.
The hospital has been greatly extended in more recent years with a substantial addition to the rear and a number of other buildings in the grounds. None of these additions contribute to the character or setting of the Victorian building or the Conservation Area.
The hospital first appeared on official maps as the ‘Nursing Home’, but it was known as Buckingham Hospital on maps from as early as the 1930s. It was privately financed until 1948, when it became part of the National Health Service.
GG Scott’s workhouse was demolished in the 1960s, and his son’s hospital was threatened with closure in the decade from 1966 to 1977 because of its small size. But local funds were raised to provide staff wages and to expand facilities in 1970s and 1980s and the hospital was kept open. The hospital buildings were extended in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Between Moreton Road and the entrance to the hospital, along the north-west side of High Street and the former cattle market, Nos 21 to 37 High Street include a picturesque mixture of two-storey and three-storey cottages, many built in brick and stone and with timber framing. They range in date from the 15th and 16th centuries through to the 17th, 18th and 19th century, and some of them have earlier origins than their appearances suggest.
Most of these cottages open onto the very edge of the footpath and they form an almost unbroken row that gives them a prominence in the streetscape of Buckingham and that helps to define and enclose the north-west side of the former Cattle Market in front of the hospital.
