Place:Wolverton, Buckinghamshire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

Wolverton was part of the Newport Hundred and the Potterspury Poor Law Union. The parish was located in the Stratford and Wolverton Rural until 1919, and in the Wolverton Urban District from 1920 until 1974. It is now in the Milton Keynes unitary authority.

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Wolverton is at the northern edge of Milton Keynes, between Stony Stratford and Newport Pagnell. It is the administrative seat of the modern Wolverton and Greenleys civil parish within Milton Keynes.

Wolverton was recorded in Domesday in 1086, and suffered badly in the Enclosures at the turn of the 18th-19th century, before reinventing itself as a railway town in the industrial revolution.

Civil Parish

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

Wolverton formed a civil parish within the Stratford and Wolverton Rural District from 1894 to 1919, that also contained the parishes of Calverton, Stony Stratford East and Stony Stratford West. The parishes had previously been part of the Potterspury Rural Sanitary District until it was disbanded in 1894. In 1919 these parishes, combined with New Bradwell, became part of the 'Stratford and Wolverton Urban District' (renamed the 'Wolverton Urban District' in 1920). This urban district would remain in existence until 1974 when it became part of the Borough of Milton Keynes.

Today, Wolverton is the larger element of the modern parish of Wolverton and Greenleys.

In 1919 New Bradwell parish was added to the urban district. In 1927 Calverton, Stony Stratford East and Stony Stratford West parishes were abolished as part of the Wolverton (Union of Parishes) Confirmation Order and the Wolverton parish was extended to cover these areas. New Bradwell was abolished as part of a County Review Order in 1934 and the area of the urban district and civil parish of Wolverton became coterminous.

Following the Local Government Act 1972, the district was abolished in 1974. Its former area became part of the new district of Milton Keynes.

History

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

Old Wolverton

The town name is an Old English language word, and means 'Wulfhere's settlement'. It was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Wluerintone. The original Wolverton was a medieval settlement just north and west of today's town. This site is now known as Old Wolverton, although the medieval village is all but gone. The ridge and furrow pattern of agriculture can still be seen in the nearby fields.

The Saxon Church of the Holy Trinity (rebuilt in 1819) still sits next to the Norman Motte and Bailey site. Only the earth mound remains of the Norman castle, though the Saxon tower still stands as central to the rebuilt church, clad in the early 19th century 'Anglo-Norman' style. Next door to the church is a house built in 1729 which later became the vicarage; the front door has stonework from the nearby, demolished manor house of the 16th century including the de Longueville family coat of arms, and pieces from the earlier church building. A talbot (dog), another symbol of the family, once graced the side-entrance which now marks the boundary between the ground floor of the house and its downstairs toilet.

The manor of Wolverton was held by the de Wolverton family until the mid-fourteenth century.^[1] Sir John de Wolverton died in 1349 leaving an infant son, Ralph, who died in 1351, and two daughters. The elder daughter Margaret or Margery, married John le Hunt, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, and had in turn one daughter, Joan le Hunt, who married John Longueville of Billing, Northamptonshire. They had at least one son, George, through whom Wolverton passed by inheritance to the Longueville/Longville family.^[1]

Of the historic village itself, only field patterns marking a deserted village remain, along with two village ponds. The desertion of Old Wolverton was due to enclosure of the large strip cultivation fields into small "closes" by the local landlords, the Longville family, who turned arable land over to pasture. By 1654, the family had completely enclosed the parish. With the end of the feudal system, the peasants had lost their land and tillage/grazing rights and were forced to find other work or starve. Thus Old Wolverton was reduced from about thirty peasant families in the mid 16th century to almost none, within the space of a century.^[1]

The newer area, built about to the south-east for the railways in the 19th century, assumed the Wolverton name.

Canal village

The Grand Union Canal passes around the northern and eastern edge of the modern town. The canal originally crossed the River Great Ouse by descending 10 metres to the river by nine locks, crossing the river on the level and ascended by eight locks on the other side. This was time consuming for navigators and subject to disruption in time of flood.

Railway town

In 1838, Wolverton was established as the site of the locomotive repair shop at the midpoint of the London and Birmingham Railway then under construction. In 1846 the became part of the London and North Western Railway, who subsequently decided that locomotives would be built and repaired at Crewe. The last locomotives at Wolverton were built in 1863 and repaired until 1877, after which it concentrated on carriages including railway owned road vehicles. The Works has been the home of the Royal Train fleet. During the Second World War, the Works built parts for Lee–Enfield rifles, bomber plane timber frames, Hawker Typhoon wings, Horsa Gliders, and ambulances. Like many older industrial sites, camouflage paint from the period can still be seen on the factory buildings. A pillbox remains opposite the Works Wall.

The railway company built some 200 houses for its workers by 1844 along with schools, a church and a market. L&NW also invited George McCorquodale to establish what became a substantial printing works in the town.

Church of St George the Martyr

A new Anglican parish church was built in 1843 to serve the new town centre: like the Church of the Holy Trinity in Old Wolverton, it is a listed building rated a II*.^[2]

Historic football ground

The football ground beside the railway works and the station was home to the works team and subsequently to Wolverton Town football club. The stand, built in 1899, is believed to be the oldest covered football stand in the world. It was set to be demolished by September 2006 because its owners wish to redevelop the site for housing and a community park. The development went ahead and a replica stand now sits on the original site to mark the significance of the original construction, painted green as it used to be.

Listed buildings and structures

, Wolverton and Greenleys civil parish has two scheduled monuments,^[3] two 'grade II*' listed buildings,^[2] and there are a further 38 Grade II listed buildings or objects in the parish.

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.