England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Princes Risborough St Mary

The Parish

The parish of Princes Risborough lies in the western part of southern Buckinghamshire about 7 miles south of the town of Aylesbury. Princes Risborough is a small market town which sits at the foot of the Chiltern Hills on the junction of the A4010 road from High Wycombe with the A4129 road from Thame. The town received the designation "Princes" as the residence of Prince Edward, history's "Black Prince" who had a palace here. The town was granted its market by Henry III and as recent as 1824 a market house was built to administer the same. Once two discrete settlements Princes Risborough has expanded greatly in recent times to become contiguous with its neighbour Monks Risborough. Much of this growth resulted through the completion of the rail line to Marylebone Station in London, taking advantage of a gap in the Chiltern range, enabling great growth in commuter traffic. At the time of this transcript the parish was largely arable, the rural portions remain so, whilst only 40% of the population of the parish lived in the town engaged in normal market town business such as agricultural support trades. Today Princes Risborough has a small trade in hikers using the Ridgeway trail which follows the southern edge of the town allowing some accommodation providers a steady trade. Princes Risborough sits on the spring line for the chalk hills of the Chiltern's its drainage heading north as small tributaries of the Thame which in turn meets the Thames near to Wallingford and thence through the capital to the North Sea. Princes Risborough is sited at around 110 metres above the sea but land rises steeply to the southeast onto the Chiltern Hills with local heights, topped by the classic beech woods of the area, reaching almost 250 metres with a mile or two. Princes Risborough parish, like many Chiltern parishes, is not only extensive but also elongated on a northwest to southeast axis, to take advantage of a share of the differing land types; the parish covered almost 4,700 acres and would have supported a population of around 2,200 parishioners. In Domesday times Princes Risborough was held directly by King William as a royal manor, the parish could offer an impressive 31 ploughs, extensive meadows and woodlands, inhabited by 1,000 pigs plus 2 mills and a salthouse putting it amongst the top 20% of manors in the country.

The Church

St Mary's church sits at the heart of the town, appropriately enough on the junction of Church Street with Church Lane. The church has major work from recent and Victorian times which does somewhat inhibit Pevsner in dating the original construction. He does find evidence of the late 13th & early 14th centuries within the bays of the church whilst the sedile and piscina are in the Decorated style fashionable during the latter period too. Much else was changed, initially by an extensive restoration in the late 1860s at an estimated cost of £2,200, the northern aisle and clerestory received much attention as well as adding a vestry and renewing most of the roofs. The most recent change was the construction of the tower, in a sympathetic Decorated style, between 1907 & 1908. The church sits behind a chest-height brick & flint wall with a broad driveway leading to the church from the junction of the two roads. The churchyard is slightly crowded with many mature trees making for a challenging piece to adequately photograph.