Aylesbury
Aylesbury is the county town of Buckinghamshire, England. It is home to the Roald Dahl Children's Gallery and the Waterside Theatre. There is also one of the largest independent Arts Centre in the UK, the Queens Park Arts Centre which recently received the King's Award for Voluntary Service. It is located in central Buckinghamshire, midway between High Wycombe and Milton Keynes.
In 2011 its urban area had a population of 94,238 The housing target for the town is set to grow with 16,000 homes set to be built by 2033.
Etymology
The town name is of Old English origin. It is first recorded in the form Æglesburg in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a text which took its present form in the later ninth century. The word Ægles is a personal name in the genitive case, meaning "Ægel's" and burg means "fortification". Thus the name once meant "Fort of Ægel" — though who Ægel was is not recorded. Nineteenth-century speculation that the name contained the Welsh word eglwys meaning "a church" has been discredited.History
Excavations in the town centre in 1985 found an Iron Age hill fort dating from the early 4th century BCE.The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle portrays Aylesbury as being captured from the Britons by one Cuthwulf following the Battle of Bedcanford; the historicity of this event is doubtful, but the portrayal at least indicates that in the early Middle Ages the settlement was thought to be of some strategic importance. During the early medieval period, Aylesbury became a major market town, the burial place of Saint Osgyth, whose shrine attracted pilgrims. Aylesbury was a royal manor with eight attached hundreds in 1086, and some historians have supposed that it was already a royal manor before the Norman conquest. Some lands here were granted by William the Conqueror to citizens upon the tenure that the owners should provide straw for the monarch's bed, sweet herbs for his chamber and two green geese and three eels for his table, whenever he should visit Aylesbury.
The town includes an Early English parish church, St. Mary the Virgin's.
In 1450, a religious institution called the Guild of St Mary was founded in Aylesbury by John Kemp, Archbishop of York. Known popularly as the Guild of Our Lady it became a meeting place for local dignitaries and a hotbed of political intrigue. The guild was influential in the outcome of the Wars of the Roses. Its premises at the Chantry in Church Street, Aylesbury, are still there, though today the site is used mainly for retail.
Aylesbury was declared the new county town of Buckinghamshire in 1529 by King Henry VIII: Aylesbury Manor was among the many properties belonging to Thomas Boleyn, the father of Anne Boleyn, and it is rumoured that the change was made by the King to curry favour with the family. The plague decimated the population in 1603/4.
The town played a large part in the English Civil War when it became a stronghold for the Parliamentarian forces, like many market towns a nursing-ground of Puritan sentiment and in 1642 the Battle of Aylesbury was fought and won by the Parliamentarians. Its proximity to Great Hampden, home of John Hampden has made of Hampden a local hero: his silhouette was used on the emblem of Aylesbury Vale District Council and his statue stands prominently in the town centre. Aylesbury-born composer, Rutland Boughton, possibly inspired by the statue of John Hampden, created a symphony based on Oliver Cromwell.
On 18 March 1664, Robert Bruce, 2nd Earl of Elgin in the Peerage of Scotland was created 1st Earl of Ailesbury.
The grade II* listed Jacobean mansion of Hartwell adjoining the southwest of the town was the residence of French king Louis XVIII during his exile. Bourbon Street in Aylesbury is named after the king. Louis's wife, Marie Joséphine of Savoy died at Hartwell in 1810 and is the only French queen to have died on English soil. After her death, her body was carried first to Westminster Abbey, and one year later to Sardinia, where the Savoy King of Sardinia had withdrawn during Napoleonic occupation of Turin and Piedmont; she is buried in the Cathedral of Cagliari.
Aylesbury's heraldic crest displays the Aylesbury duck, which has been bred here since the birth of the Industrial Revolution, although only one breeder of true Aylesbury ducks, Richard Waller, remains today.
The town also received international publicity in 1963 when the culprits responsible for the Great Train Robbery were tried at Aylesbury Rural District Council Offices in Walton Street and sentenced at Aylesbury Crown Court. The robbery took place at Bridego Bridge, a railway bridge at Ledburn, about from the town.
A notable institution is Aylesbury Grammar School which was founded in 1598. The original building is now part of the County Museum buildings in Church Street and has grade II* architecture; other grammar schools now include Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School and Aylesbury High School. Other notable buildings are the King's Head Inn, and the Queens Park Centre.
James Henry Govier, the British painter and etcher, lived at Aylesbury and produced a number of works relating to the town including the church, canal, Walton, Aylesbury Gaol, the King's Head Inn and views of the town during the 1940s and 1950s, examples of which can be seen in the Buckinghamshire County Museum in Aylesbury.
The town is the birthplace of the Paralympic Games. During the 1948 Olympics in London, German-British neurologist Sir Ludwig Guttmann, set up a small sporting event for World War II veterans known as the World Wheelchair and Amputee Games at Stoke Mandeville Hospital Rehabilitation Facility in Aylesbury. This eventually led to the growth of the phenomenon of the modern Paralympic Games that has been held immediately after every Summer Olympic Games since 1988, and the WWAG was held most years at Stoke Mandeville until 1997, when it has been held in other countries and cities ever since. During the 2012 Paralympics, the official mascot was called 'Mandeville' after Stoke Mandeville Hospital.
The Rothschild Family acquired many large country estates and stately homes around and near the town, including Waddesdon Manor in nearby Waddesdon Village, Halton House near Wendover and Tring Park in Tring across the border in Hertfordshire, although today most of these properties belong to the National Trust. They have brought in increased tourism to the town and the surrounding areas.
The Aylesbury duck
In the 18th century, selective breeding of white common ducks led to a white domestic duck, generally known as the English White. Since at least the 1690s ducks had been farmed in Aylesbury, and made Aylesbury known throughout England and beyond. They were bred and brought up by poor people, and sent to London by the weekly carriers. They went on to be known as the Aylesbury duck.The duck business in Aylesbury went into decline in the 19th century. By the time Beatrix Potter's 1908 The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck—about an Aylesbury duck although set in Cumbria—caused renewed interest in the breed, the Aylesbury duck was in steep decline. The duckers of Buckinghamshire had generally failed to introduce technological improvements such as the incubator, and inbreeding had dangerously weakened the breed. Meanwhile, the cost of duck food had risen fourfold over the 19th century, and from 1873 onwards competition from Pekin and Pekin cross ducks was undercutting Aylesbury ducks at the marketplace. The First World War devastated the remaining duckers of Buckinghamshire. By the end of the war small-scale duck rearing in the Aylesbury Vale had vanished, with duck raising dominated by a few large duck farms. Shortages of duck food in the Second World War caused further disruption to the industry, and almost all duck farming in the Aylesbury Vale ended. A 1950 "Aylesbury Duckling Day" campaign to boost the reputation of the Aylesbury duck had little effect; by the end of the 1950s the last significant farms had closed, other than a single flock in Chesham owned by Mr L. T. Waller, and by 1966 there were no duck breeders remaining in Aylesbury. As of 2021 the Waller family's farm in Chesham remains in business, the last surviving flock of pure Aylesbury meat ducks in the country. Although, there are still many hobbyists who keep the breed.
The Aylesbury duck remains a symbol of the town of Aylesbury. Aylesbury United F.C. are nicknamed "The Ducks" and include an Aylesbury duck on their club badge, and the town's coat of arms includes an Aylesbury duck and plaited straw, representing the two historic industries of the town. The Aylesbury Brewery Company, now defunct, featured the Aylesbury duck as its logo, an example of which can still be seen at the Britannia pub. Duck Farm Court is a shopping area of modern Aylesbury located near the historic hamlet of California, close to one of the main breeding grounds for ducks in the town, and there have been two pubs in the town with the name "The Duck" in recent years; one in Bedgrove that has since been demolished and one in Jackson Road that has recently been renamed.File:Jemima5.jpg|thumb|An illustration of Jemima Puddle-Duck from The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck by Beatrix Potter.|left
Demography
The town's population has grown from 28,000 in the 1960s to almost 72,000 in 2011 due in the main to new housing developments, including many London overspill housing estates, built to ease pressure on the capital. Indeed, Aylesbury, to a greater extent than many English market towns, saw substantial areas of its own heart demolished in the 1950s/1960s as 16th–18th century houses were demolished to make way for new, particularly retail, development.Aylesbury's population in the ten-year period since 2001 has grown by two thousand primarily related to the development of new housing estates which will eventually cater for eight thousand people on the north side, between the A41 and the A413 and the expansion of Fairford Leys estate.
According to the 2011 Census, the religious groupings in Aylesbury were: Christianity, no religion, Islam, Hinduism, other. 6.7% of respondents did not state their religion.