Stony Stratford

 ( Towns In Buckinghamshire ) 

The town name is Old English in origin, and means "stony ford on a Roman road". The road in this instance is Watling Street, which runs through the middle of the town and crosses the River Ouse just outside it (nowadays by bridge).

In 1789, at Windmill Field (probably) in the parish of Old Stratford near Stony Stratford, an urn was uncovered which contained three and two headdresses. Known as the Stony Stratford Hoard, it also contained around thirty fragments of silver plaques which were decorated with images of the Roman mythology Mars, Apollo and Victory. There were also inscriptions to Jupiter and Vulcan leading to theories that this was a votive hoard associated with a Roman temple. The hoard is now kept at the British Museum.

There has been a chartered market in Stony Stratford since 1194 (by royal charter of King Richard I).R. H. Britnell, 'The Origins of Stony Stratford', Records of Buckinghamshire, XX (1977), pp. 451–3 (Until the early 1900s, livestock marts were still held in the market square but in more recent times the square has become a car park, apart from a monthly farmers' market in one corner. The weekly market has moved to Timor Court, and of course no longer deals in livestock). Stony Stratford formally became a town when it received letters patent from King John in 1215.

Stony Stratford was the location where, in 1290, an Eleanor cross was built in memory of the recently deceased Queen Eleanor of Castile, as her funeral cortège had stopped overnight in the town en route to London. The cross was destroyed during the English Civil War.

The former Rose and Crown Inn at Stony Stratford was reputedly where, in 1483, the boy-king Edward V stayed the night before he was taken to London (to become one of the Princes in the Tower) by his uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who soon became King Richard III. Edward had been returning from Ludlow Castle in the Welsh Marches to London to claim his crown on the death of his father, Edward IV, when he was met in Stony Stratford by his uncle, who later deposed him. The inn is now a private house but a plaque on the front wall commemorates the event.

Catherine of Aragon rode from London to address her troops assembling here for the Battle of Flodden, and went on to stay at Woburn Abbey in September 1513.Thomas Deloney, The Pleasant Historie of Jack of Newbery, London (1626), chapter 2: Letters & Papers Henry VIII, vol. 1 (1920) no. 2278: Calendar State Papers Venice, vol.2, no. 340: Hall, Edward, Chronicle, (1809), 564: Ellis, Henry, ed., Original Letters Illustrative of English History, 1st Series, vol.1, Richard Bentley, London (1825), 82–84, 88–89.

The town has twice become almost completely consumed by fire, the first time in 1736 and the second in 1742. The only building to escape the second fire was the tower of the chapel of ease of Mary Magdalene, now a scheduled monument.

Since at least the 15th century, Stony Stratford was an important stop on the road to Ireland via Chester, becoming quite rich on the proceeds in the 16th century. In the stage coach era of the 17th and early 18th centuries, it was a major resting place and exchange point with the east–west route with to accommodate coach travellers. Traffic on Watling Street and the consequent wear and tear to it was such as to necessitate England's first turnpike trust, from Hockliffe to Stony Stratford, in 1707. In the early 19th century, over thirty and a day stopped here. That traffic came to an abrupt end in 1838 when the London to Birmingham Railway (now the West Coast Main Line) was opened at Wolverton – ironically, just three years after the bridge over the Ouse had been rebuilt. Wolverton railway works provided an important source of employment in the town, with the Wolverton and Stony Stratford Tramway being built to serve the workers. With the arrival of the motor car, the town's position on the original A5 road made it again an important stopping point for travellers.

The 1841 census lists the population as 1,757.