Place:Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

Newport Pagnell was part of the Newport Hundred and the Newport Pagnell Poor Law Union. The parish was located within the Newport Pagnell Rural District 1894-1897 when it was removed to form the Newport Pagnell Urban District. From 1897 until 1974 the civil parish of Newport Pagnell was the only parish in the urban district of that name.

Newport Pagnell is now a town in the Borough of Milton Keynes, in the ceremonial county of Buckinghamshire. It is the part of the unitary authority closest to the M1 motorway which is its modern civil parish boundary to the east.

The ecclesiastical parish extends across the M1 to include Broughton and Caldecote. (Caldecote should not be confused with Caldecott which is a district of Walton, also within Milton Keynes.)

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

The town was first mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Neuport, Old English for 'New Market Town', but by that time, the old Anglo-Saxon town was dominated by the Norman invaders. The suffix 'Pagnell' came later when the manor passed into the hands of the Pagnell (Paynel) family. It was the principal town of the "Three Hundreds of Newport", a district that had almost the same boundary as the modern Borough of Milton Keynes.

At one time, Newport Pagnell was one of the largest towns in the County of Buckinghamshire (the assizes of the County were occasionally held there). Today, despite its own substantial expansion, it has been completely dwarfed by the growth of Milton Keynes. There were also at one time two hospitals in Newport Pagnell, and six fairs were held for the townsfolk throughout the year.

The 1841 census gave the population as 3,569.

The Grade I listed Tickford Bridge, over the River Ouzel (or Lovat), was built in 1810. It is one of just a few cast iron bridges in Britain that still carry modern road traffic.^[1] Near the footbridge at the side, there is a plaque placed by Newport Pagnell Historical Society that gives details of its history and construction. The Ouzel joins the Great Ouse nearby, and a large set of sluice gates, used to control downstream flooding, is located near the bridge.

Between 1817 and 1864, the town was linked to the Grand Junction Canal at Great Linford via the Newport Pagnell Canal. In 1862, the canal owners sold the route to the London and North Western Railway. For a hundred years (1867 to 1967), Newport Pagnell was served by Newport Pagnell railway station, the terminus on the Wolverton to Newport Pagnell branch line.

From 1954 until 2007, the town was the home to the exclusive sports car manufacturer Aston Martin. The Newport Pagnell factory was considered outdated and a new production facility was built near Gaydon in Warwickshire. There is still a service facility in Newport Pagnell, but the factory on the north side of Tickford St has since been demolished apart from the engine shop, board room and offices that are listed buildings. The land behind these has been developed by a housing developer. The buildings at the front, including the house used as a board room, have been restored and will be used as commercial sites. In 2012, Aston Martin completely modernised the service facility and the site also houses a bespoke sales department.

Notable industries in the town include the only remaining vellum manufacturer in the United Kingdom, William Cowley, located at Parchment Works, 97 Caldecote Street.

Over the past 50 years, Newport Pagnell has attracted an increasing amount of investment and of economic growth, due to its fortunes being intertwined with the growth of Milton Keynes. This has led to a number of new housing developments in the area.

The modern civil parish of Newport Pagnell stops at the M1, but the ecclesiastical parish extends to include Broughton and Caldecote. The parish church is dedicated to St Peter and St Paul.

Modern Times

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Research Tips

Maps

• An outline map of the current civil parishes of Buckinghamshire (post 1974 and omitting Milton Keynes unitary authority) is provided by the Boundaries Commission.
• Another map which gives no source, appears to have been drawn to show the county in the late 19th century and labels the parishes directly. However, the map does not show towns and villages (unless they are parishes using the same name) and some parishes have been found to be missing from this map.
• A map provided by the Open University (a British university based in Milton Keynes) gives the locations of the old civil parishes and the new communities that make up Milton Keynes. It can be expanded to read the labels.

Registration Offices

Birth, marriage and death certificates can now be ordered online from Buckinghamshire County Council. The full postal address is Buckinghamshire Register Office, County Hall, Walton Street, Aylesbury, HP20 1YU.

The Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies (County Hall, Walton Street, Aylesbury, HP20 1UU) holds

• Church of England and Nonconformist churches including registers of baptism, marriage and burial.
• Around 35,000 wills proved by the Archdeaconry of Buckingham.
• County and District Councils (lists of councillors, minutes of meetings, etc).
• Quarter and Petty Session courts.
• Landed estates of families including the Aubrey-Fletchers, Hampdens, Carringtons and Fremantles.
• Historic maps including OS, tithe and inclosure maps
• A wide range of local history books, some for loan.
• Pamphlets and articles of local history interest.
• Local newspapers
• Computers for access to family history resources like Ancestry and FreeBMD.
• Published material is listed in the Library Catalogue.
• Catalogues to some of our manuscript material is available through Access to Archives, part of The National Archives (TNA). Their database contains catalogues describing archives held locally in England and Wales and dating from the eighth century to the present day.

In Buckinghamshire, as with other counties in England and Wales, the location of offices where Births, Marriages and Deaths were registered has altered with other changes in local government. A list of the location of Registration Offices since civil registration began in 1837 has been prepared by GENUKI (Genealogy: United Kingdom and Ireland). The table also gives details of when each Registration Office was in existence. In the case of Buckinghamshire, the same registration offices were used for the censuses since 1851. Buckinghamshire now only has a central registration office at County Hall in Aylesbury, but there are facilities for registering births, marriages and deaths in specific libraries around the county.

Nineteenth Century Local Administration

English Jurisdictions is a webpage provided by FamilySearch which analyses every ecclesiastical parish in England at the year 1851. It provides, with the aid of outline maps, the date at which parish records and bishops transcripts begin, non-conformist denominations with a chapel within the parish, the names of the jurisdictions in charge: county, civil registration district, probate court, diocese, rural deanery, poor law union, hundred, church province; and links to FamilySearch historical records, FamilySearch Catalog and the FamilySearch Wiki. Two limitations: only England, and at the year 1851.

During the 19th century two bodies, the Poor Law Union and the Sanitary District, had responsibility for governmental functions at a level immediately above that covered by the civil parish. In 1894 these were replace by Rural and Urban Districts. These were elected bodies, responsible for setting local property assessments and taxes as well as for carrying out their specified duties. Thses districts continued in operation until 1974. Urban districts for larger municipalities were called "Municipal Boroughs" and had additional powers and obligations.

Poor Law Unions, established nationally in 1834, combined parishes together for the purpose of providing relief for the needy who had no family support. This led to the building of '"union poorhouses" or "workhouses" funded by all the parishes in the union. The geographical boundaries established for the individual Poor Law Unions were employed again when Registration Districts were formed three years later. In 1875 Sanitary Districts were formed to provide services such as clean water supply, sewage systems, street cleaning, and the clearance of slum housing. These also tended to follow the same geographical boundaries, although there were local alterations caused by changes in population distribution.

Online Historical References

• The Buckinghamshire section of The Victoria History of the Counties of England, in four volumes, is online and provides an extensive history of the county, parish by parish, up to the end of the 19th century. Parishes are arranged in their original "hundreds", a fairly archaic scheme of dividing counties into reasonably sized sections.

• GENUKI for Buckinghamshire provides a lot of material on the county history from a variety of aspects. The maps of the hundreds are reproduced from 19th century publications and show the topology as well as the locations of the various parishes. There is also a schematic map covering the whole county. GENUKI does not contain much information about the 20th century and beyond.

• Local History Online provides a list of local historical organizations. Each of these societies and organizations has its own website.

• The FamilySearch Wiki on Buckinghamshire explains the jurisdictions relating to civil affairs, parishes and probate (wills and testaments) for each parish in the county and also outlines when these jurisdictions were in existence. The data does not cover the post-1974 period.