Stewkley

Stewkley

St Michael & All Angels parish church
Stewkley
Stewkley shown within Buckinghamshire
Population 1,840 (2011 Census)[1]
OS grid reference SP853261
Civil parish
  • Stewkley
District
Shire county
Region
Country England
Sovereign state United Kingdom
Post town Leighton Buzzard
Postcode district LU7
Dialling code 01525
Police Thames Valley
Fire Buckinghamshire
Ambulance South Central
EU Parliament South East England
UK Parliament
Website Stewkley Parish Council

Stewkley is a village and civil parish in the Aylesbury Vale district of Buckinghamshire, England. The village is about 5 miles (8 km) east of Winslow and about 4 miles (6 km) west of Leighton Buzzard. The civil parish includes the hamlets of North End and Stewkley Dean.

The toponym Stewkley is derived from the Old English for woodland clearing with tree stumps. The Domesday Book of 1086 records it as Stiuclai.

History

The principal manor in Stewkley was once held by the son of Geoffrey Chaucer, who was an occasional visitor to the village. The Church of England parish church of St Michael and All Angels is one of the least-altered of England's 6,000 Norman churches. There is a Methodist chapel in High Street South. St Michael's Church of England Combined School teaches children aged 4–11.

Stewkley has one of the longest village high streets in Britain, a title also claimed by Combe Martin in Devon, whose 2 miles (3 km) high street is not as continuously populated as Stewkley's 1.7 miles (2.7 km) high street. Southeast of the village is Aylesbury Vale Golf Club.

Campaign against London's third airport

In 1968 the Roskill Commission was charged with looking into finding a site for London's third airport. The report was published in 1970, with the proposal that Stewkley would be destroyed along with some other nearby villages. However two local residents, Desmond Fennell and Bill Manning, set up the Wing Airport Resistance Association (WARA), which successfully campaigned against the proposal.[2]

Notable people

References

  1. ↑ "Area: Stewkley (Parish), Key Figures for 2011 Census: Key Statistics". Neighbourhood Statistics. Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 3 February 2013.
  2. ↑ "DVD Tells the Story of Campaign That Made National Headlines". The Stewkley Film Archive. Retrieved 30 October 2014.
  3. ↑ "Alastair Cook: Recipe For Success". Yahoo!. 31 December 2011.

Further reading

  • Page, W.H., ed. (1925). A History of the County of Buckingham, Volume 3. Victoria County History. pp. 420–426.
  • Pevsner, Nikolaus (1960). Buckinghamshire. The Buildings of England. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. pp. 242–243. ISBN 0-14-071019-1.
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