Patrick Comerford
In these weeks before Christmas, I have spent time strolling around Buckingham and neighbouring villages, mainly searching for the architectural work of Edward Swinfen Harris and members of the Scott family, including Sir George Gilbert Scott and John Oldrid Scott.
I have also spent time looking for the old coaching inns, including the former Cobham Arms on West Street, the White Hart in Market Square and the Swan and Castle, now the Villiers Hotel on Castle Street, and looking for the old pubs, including the Mitre, the Tudor house that is now Mey, the Whale, the King’s Head and the Grand Junction.
The great fire in 1725 explains why Buckingham has so few Tudor, Elizabethan or Jacobean buildings, and the arrival of the railways in 1838-1850 marked the death knell of coach travel and resulted in the closure of many of the coaching inns.
On the other hand, Buckingham has a rich collection of Georgian and early Victorian public buildings and houses, from the Old Town Hall in Market Square and White House on Market Hill to Chandos House on School Lane and Wharf House at the west end of the town, with a story intimately linked to the hey-day of canal traffic in Buckingham.
The Old Town Hall dominates the south-west end of Market Square in Buckingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
The Old Town Hall dominates the south-west end of Market Square and it is set back behind a broad area of paving. The first town hall in the town was built in the Market Place on the initiative of the local MP Sir Ralph Verney in 1685. It became dilapidated in the mid-18th century, and the town’s civic leaders decided to build a new town hall the south of the original building.
The new Town Hall was designed in the Georgian style, built in red brick and was completed in 1783. The roof is made from old oak timbers that are said to have been rescued from the old parish church that collapsed in 1776.
The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with five bays facing onto the Market Square. The central bay had a round headed doorway with a fanlight, sash windows that were recessed in blank arcading on the ground floor and plain sash windows on the first floor.
On the left hand side, there was a semi-circular projection. The roof has a dentilled cornice and a square clock turret with a finial surmounted by a copper weather wave in the form of a swan that recalls the swan of Buckingham on the town’s coat of arms. The clock dial was illuminated in 1882.
Inside, the assembly room on the first floor had a high ceiling and was reached by a fine staircase that had been recovered from the first town hall.
A court room on the first floor was used for sittings of the Quarter Sessions and the Petty Sessions, and for the summer Assizes until they were moved to Aylesbury in1848. The top floor was used by the local Literary and Scientific Institution, while the ground floor included the council chamber, and the borough offices.
Buckingham became a municipal borough in 1835, with its headquarters in the town hall. The town council acquired ownership of the building when the 2nd Duke of Buckingham was declared bankrupt in 1847. The suffragettes Lilias Ashworth, Lydia Becker and Helen Beedy spoke for women’s voting rights at a public meeting in the building chaired by a future MP Egerton Hubbard in 1875.
When the building was slightly shortened on the right-hand side in the early 20th century to facilitate widening Castle Street, a section of the cornice was left overhanging the street. The wide central round arch head doorway approached by stone steps. This doorway is beneath a semicircular 20th century iron and glass canopy.
The town hall continued to function as the headquarters of the borough council until 1965, when the council moved to Castle House on West Street. In recent years it has become part of the Villiers Hotel on Castle Street, with the Cellar Bar below.
The 18th century Golden Swan, the weather vane that crowns the Old Town Hall, has a long and chequered history and was lost for many years. Local lore says that when the swan turns its back on the town it is a bad omen – perhaps because it means the wind is blowing from the south.
The south-east side of Market Hill lacks the continuity seen found in other parts of Market Square, but it as an interesting assortment of buildings with diverse character creating an interesting and eclectic mix. The listed buildings on this stretch include the White House at 2 Market Hill and Christ Church Hospital.
The White House stands on a prominent corner at the junction of Market Hill and Verney Close, and seems to dwarf many of the neighbouring buildings. Its sheer size and handsome rendered elevation make it a focal building within the streetscape.
It is a three-storey, five-bay mid-18th century house. The central three bays of which break slightly forward of the elevation and support a pediment.
The Old School on the west side of School Lane dominates the north end of the street. The building is now private housing and is known as Old School Court. It has been extended north to create additional accommodation and at its south end to create a carriage entrance with views to the banks of the River Great Ouse. A number of dormers have been inserted along the length of the roof and break through the eaves line.
A wide dormer with three windows is in a central position in the elevation. It has a carved plaque with the date 1872 and the words Tu Rex Glorie Christe. To the right of the central dormer and forming a prominent feature in the roofscape is a small bell tower built of brick and stone.
The Old School House on the opposite side of School Lane, opened as a school in 1863 after the vicar and churchwardens of Buckingham bought a cottage and its grounds for £120 to create an infants’ school. During World War II, primary pupils evacuated from Marylebone School went to school there.
The school reverted to domestic use after the war and the Old School House was on the market in recent months as a five-bedroom house through Russell and Butler of West Street, Buckingham, with an asking price of £550,000.
The east side of School Lane has an eclectic collection of buildings, many set back from the road on raised ground. The most prominent building is Chandos House, which dates from the early 1800s. Its name, like Chandos Road and other places in Buckingham, recalls some of the many titles held by the Dukes of Buckingham until their line died out in 1889.
Chandos House is a Grade II listed two-storey house. It is built of imported yellow bricks rather than the local orange and red bricks found everywhere in Buckingham. The roof is hipped and covered with Welsh slate.
The open porch has fluted Roman Doric columns on rendered plinths, and matching pilasters, a triglyph frieze and deep cornice with mutules. Inside, the house is said to have a dog-leg stair with stick balusters and a ramped and wreathed mahogany handrail.
The house was bought by Buckingham Rural District Council in 1926 and was its headquarters until 1974. It is now private offices.
Wharf House is at the south-west end of Stratford Road at the junction with High Street and it forms a strong focal point for views from the High Street towards Stratford Road.
The street broadens out at this point to form an asymmetrical triangular area in front of Wharf House, Fern Cottage, Elmdale, Bromley and Stratford House, a row of attractive semi-detached brick cottages that still have many of their original features from the late 19th or early 20th century.
Wharf House is an attractive, symmetrical 19th century, red-brick, two-storey house with a hipped slate roof. It has a central doorway and an open porch supported on fluted pillars and pilasters. Flanking each side of the central porch are canted bay windows with pitched slate roofs.
This part of Buckingham around Stratford Road and to the rear of Wharf House is interesting because it is the site of the terminus of the Buckingham arm of the Grand Junction canal, later the Grand Union Canal. The canal opened in 1801, and 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 exporting agricultural produce to London and the Midlands. The heyday of the canal lasted into the 1850s. The arrival of the railway and the opening of the Bletchley to Banbury road caused trade to decline and the canal eventually closed in 1964. Memories of the canal continue to survive in the names of place such as Wharf House and the Grand Junction at 12 and 13 High Street.
