National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty
The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty known as the National Trust, is an independent charity and membership organisation for environmental and heritage conservation in England and Northern Ireland. It is the largest membership organisation in the United Kingdom; the trust describes itself as "a charity that works to preserve and protect historic places and spaces—for for everyone". The trust was founded in 1895 and given statutory powers, starting with the National Trust Act 1907; the trust tended to focus on English country houses, which still make up the largest part of its holdings, but it protects historic landscapes such as in the Lake District, historic urban properties, nature reserves. In Scotland, there is an independent National Trust for Scotland; the Trust has special powers to prevent land being sold off or mortgaged, although this can be over-ridden by Parliament. The National Trust has been the beneficiary of bequests, it owns over 350 heritage properties, which includes many historic houses and gardens, industrial monuments, social history sites.
Most of these are open to the public for a charge. Others are leased, on terms; the Trust is one of the largest landowners in the United Kingdom, owning over 247,000 hectares of land, including many characteristic sites of natural beauty, most of which are open to the public free of charge. The Trust, one of the largest UK charities financially, is funded by membership subscriptions, entrance fees and revenue from gift shops and restaurants within its properties, it has been accused of focusing too much on country estates, in recent years, the trust has sought to broaden its activities by acquiring historic properties such as former mills, early factories and the childhood homes of Paul McCartney and John Lennon. In 2015, the trust undertook a governance review to mark the 10th anniversary of the current governance structure; the review led to the downsizing of the limitation of tenure to two terms. The National Trust was incorporated in 1895 as an "association not for profit" under the Companies Acts 1862–90, in which the liability of its members was limited by guarantee.
It was incorporated by six separate Acts of Parliament: The National Trust Acts 1907, 1919, 1937, 1939, 1953, 1971. It is a charitable organisation registered under the Charities Act 2006, its formal purpose is: The trust was founded on 12 January 1895 by Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley, prompted in part by the earlier success of Charles Eliot and the Kyrle Society. In the early days, the trust was concerned with protecting open spaces and a variety of threatened buildings; the trust's first nature reserve was Wicken Fen, its first archaeological monument was White Barrow. The trust has been the beneficiary of numerous donations of money. From 1924 to 1931, the trust's chairman was John Bailey, of whom The Times said in 1931, "The strong position which the National Trust now occupies is due to him, it will never be known how many generous gifts of rural beauty and historic interest the nation owes, directly or indirectly, to his persuasive enthusiasm." At the same time, a group of anonymous philanthropists set up the Ferguson's Gang.
The focus on country houses and gardens, which now comprise the majority of its most visited properties, came about in the mid 20th century when the private owners of many of the properties were no longer able to afford to maintain them. Many were donated to the trust in lieu of death duties; the diarist James Lees-Milne is credited with playing a central role in the main phase of the trust's country house acquisition programme, though he was in fact an employee of the trust, was carrying through policies decided by its governing body. Sir Jack Boles, Director General of the Trust between 1975 and 1983, oversaw the acquisition of Wimpole Hall, Canons Ashby and Kingston Lacy; the last is a notable asset as it comprises an art collection, Corfe Castle, Studland Bay, Badbury Rings and a host of commercial and domestic buildings and land. One of the biggest crises in the trust's history erupted at the 1967 annual general meeting, when the leadership of the trust was accused of being out of touch and placing too much emphasis on conserving country houses.
In response, the council asked Sir Henry Benson to chair an advisory committee to review the structure of the trust. Following the publication of the Benson Report in 1968, much of the administration of the trust was devolved to the regions. In the 1990s, a dispute over whether deer hunting should be permitted on National Trust land caused bitter disputes within the organisation, was the subject of much debate at annual general meetings, but it did little to slow the growth in its membership numbers. In 2005, the trust moved to a new head office in Wiltshire; the building was constructed on an abandoned railway yard, is intended as a model of brownfield renewal. It is named Heelis, taken from the married name of children's author Beatrix Potter, a huge supporter of, donor to, the trust, which now owns the land she owned in Cumbria; the trust is an independent charity rather than a government institution. Historic England and
Ridge lift
Ridge lift is created when a wind strikes an obstacle a mountain ridge or cliff, large and steep enough to deflect the wind upward. If the wind is strong enough, the ridge lift provides enough upward force for gliders, hang gliders and birds to stay airborne for long periods or travel great distances by'slope soaring'. Although unpowered aircraft are descending through the air, they will climb if the surrounding air is rising faster than their sink rates. Model glider enthusiasts refer to this technique as "slope gliding" or "sloping". Orville Wright used ridge lift, setting a duration record of 11 minutes in 1911; however the sport of soaring started in Germany after the First World War. In 1921, Dr. Wolfgang Klemperer broke the Wright Brothers’ 1911 soaring duration record with a flight of 13 minutes. In 1922, Arthur Martens became the first glider pilot to use an updraft rising along a mountain slope to stay aloft for a lengthy period, with a flight over an hour. Ridge lift is generated when the wind blows against a hill, escarpment or ocean wave, causing the air to rise.
In meteorology this is known as orographic lift. The wind creates a region of rising air directly above the slope, which may extend some distance upwards and outwards from its face because the airflow follows the upward contour of the hill. However, at near vertical cliffs, there is an area of turbulence with descending air near the base of the cliff. Downwind of the hill, lee waves can form. Near slopes rather than vertical cliffs, the strongest lift is to be found in a flight path that intersects with an imaginary line emerging at right angles from the slope. Long mountain ranges such as those found in Ridge-and-valley Appalachians in the United States, New Zealand, Chile have been used by glider pilots to fly in excess of a thousand kilometers in a single flight. Birds, such as many seabirds and raptors use slopes in this way. Gliding Hang gliding Paragliding Radio-controlled glider Controllable slope soaring Orographic lift Dynamic soaring Thermals Lee waves Ridge flying the Mifflin task area flying the Kittatinny Ridge A New Pilot’s Primer To Flying At The Ridge
Model aircraft
A model aircraft is a small sized unmanned aircraft or, in the case of a scale model, a replica of an existing or imaginary aircraft. Model aircraft are divided into two basic groups: flying and non-flying. Non-flying models are termed static, display, or shelf models. Flying models range from simple toy gliders made of card stock or foam polystyrene to powered scale models made from materials such as balsa wood, plastic, carbon fiber, or fiberglass and are skinned with tissue paper or mylar covering; some can be large when used to research the flight properties of a proposed full scale design. Static models range from mass-produced toys in white metal or plastic to accurate and detailed models produced for museum display and requiring thousands of hours of work. Many models are available in kit form made of injection-moulded polystyrene. Aircraft manufacturers and researchers make wind tunnel models not capable of free flight, used for testing and development of new designs. Sometimes only part of the aircraft is modelled.
Static model aircraft are scale models built using plastic, metal, fiberglass or any other suitable material. Some static models are scaled for use in wind tunnels, where the data acquired is used to aid the design of full scale aircraft. Models are available that have been built and painted. Most of the world's airlines allow their fleet aircraft to be modelled as a form of publicity; these include Delta Air Lines, Air France, British Airways, Aerolíneas Argentinas, Aeroméxico, FedEx, Polar Air Cargo, Air New Zealand, China Airlines, Singapore Airlines, South African Airways, American Airlines, United Airlines, Japan Airlines, Royal Jordanian, Korean Airlines, Asiana Airlines. In the early days, airlines would order large models of their aircraft and supply them to travel agencies as a promotional item. In addition and airplane makers hand out desktop model airplanes to airport and government officials as a way of promoting their airline, celebrating a new route or an achievement. Former Puerto Rico governor Alejandro García Padilla, for example, has models of JetBlue, Lufthansa and Seaborne Airlines which were given to him by those airlines after starting or increasing flights to San Juan during his tenure.
Static model aircraft are available commercially in a variety of scales from as large as 1:18 scale to as small as 1:1250 scale. Plastic model kits requiring assembly and painting are available in 1:144, 1:72, 1:50, 1:48, 1:32, 1:24 scale depending on the size of the original subject. Die-cast metal models are available in 1:400, 1:200, 1:72, 1:600, 1:500, 1:300, 1:250, 1:48. A variety of odd scales are available, but less common. Scales are not random, but are based upon simple divisions of either the Imperial system, or the Metric system. For example, 1:48 scale is 1/4" to 1-foot and 1:72 is 1" to 6 feet, while metric scales are simpler, such as 1:100th, which equals 1 centimeter to 1 meter. 1:72 scale was first introduced in the Skybirds wood and metal model aircraft kits in 1932. Skybirds was followed by Frog which produced 1:72 scale aircraft in 1936 under the "Frog Penguin" name. According to Fine Scale Modeler magazine, 1:72 was popularized by the US War Department during the Second World War when it requested models of single engine aircraft at that scale.
The War Department requested models of multi-engine aircraft at a scale of 1:144. The War Department was hoping to educate Americans in the identification of aircraft; these scales provided the best compromise between detail. After WWII, manufacturers continued to favor these scales, however kits are available in 1:48, 1:35, 1:32, 1:24 scales; the French firm Heller SA is one of the few manufacturer to offer models in the scale of 1:125, while 1:50th and 1:100th are more common in Japan and France which both use Metric. Herpa and others produce promotional models for airlines in scales including 1:200, 1:400, 1:500, 1:600, 1:1000 and more. A few First World War aircraft were offered at 1:28 by Revell, such as the Fokker Dr. I and Sopwith Camel. A number of manufacturers have made 1:18th scale aircraft to go with cars of the same scale. Aircraft scales have been different from the scales used for military vehicles, figures and trains. For example, a common scale for early military models was 1:76, whereas companies such as Frog were producing aircraft with a scale of 1:72.
Military vehicles have adapted to the aircraft standards of 1:72. This has resulted in a substantial amount of duplication of the more famous subjects in a large variety of sizes, which while useful for forced perspective box dioramas has limited the number of possible subjects to those that are more well known. Less produced scales include 1:64, 1:96, 1:128. Many older plastic models do not conform to any established scale as they were sized to fit inside standard commercially available boxes, leading to the term "Box Scale" to describe them; when reissued, these kits retain their unusual scales. The most common form of manufacture for kits is injection molded polystyrene plastic, using carbon steel molds. Today, this takes place in China, the Philippines, South Korea, Eastern Europe. Injection molding allows a high degree of precision and automation not available in the other manufacturing processes used for models but the molds are expensive and require large production r
Ivinghoe
Ivinghoe is a village and civil parish within Aylesbury Vale district in Buckinghamshire, close to the border with Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire. It is 33 miles northwest of London, four miles north of Tring and six miles south of Leighton Buzzard, close to the village of Pitstone; the village name is Anglo-Saxon in origin, means'Ifa's hill-spur'. In the Domesday Book of 1086 it was recorded as Evinghehou. Ivinghoe is situated within the Chiltern Hills, on the edge of the Chilterns' Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Ivinghoe is an important point on the Icknield Way, joining the Upper Icknield and Lower Icknield together; the Icknield Way is claimed to be the oldest road in Britain, dating back to the Celtic period, though this has been disputed. Today the village is known as a starting point on The Ridgeway, a popular route for hikers and cyclists which uses part of the Icknield Way, running for 87 miles to Overton Hill in Wiltshire. Ivinghoe Aston is a hamlet within the parish of Ivinghoe.
Its name refers to a farm to the east of the main village. The hamlet has four farms, several houses and a public house, The Village Swan, bought by local residents in 1997. A small stream called Whistle Brook flows down through the hamlet, from the Chilterns above, to join the River Ouzel at nearby Slapton. Another hamlet in Ivinghoe is Great Gap; the large church dates from 1220 but was set on fire in 1234 in an act of spite against the local Bishop. The church was rebuilt in 1241. For a village Ivinghoe has an unusual feature: a town hall, rather than a village hall; the village has some fine examples of Tudor architecture around the village green, with 28 buildings marked as listed or significant. Ivinghoe Beacon, near the village, is an ancient beacon, or signal point, used in times of crisis to send messages across the country and is now popular with walkers who just want to get exercise and see the view, it used to be used as a site for flying model aeroplanes but this has been forbidden due to accidents.
The hill is the site of an early Iron age hill fort which, during excavations in the 1960s, was identified from bronzework finds to date back to the Bronze-Iron transition period between 800-700 BC. Like many other similar hill forts in the Chilterns it is thought to have been occupied for only a short period less than one generation. Nearby is Pitstone Windmill, the oldest windmill in Britain that can be dated, owned by the National Trust; the manor of Ivinghoe belonged before the Conquest to the demesne of the church of St. Peter of Winchester, at the time of the Domesday Survey of 1086 it was still held by the bishop, being assessed for 20 hides and valued at £18, it is listed in the Domesday Survey as “Evinghehou”. Succeeding bishops held the manor until the reign of Henry VIII. Lords included William Giffard, Henry of Blois, Godfrey de Luci, John Gervais, Nicholas of Ely, John of Pontoise, John de Stratford, Cardinal Henry Beaufort, William Waynflete, Richard Foxe. In 1531 William Cholmeley was appointed to be bailiff of Ivinghoe, which had come into the king's hands by the forfeiture of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Bishop of Winchester.
It was, restored to the bishopric at once to Bishop Stephen Gardiner, so remained until in 1551, when John Poynet, surrendered it to the King. In the following month Edward VI made a grant in fee of the manor to Sir John Mason, kt. and Elizabeth his wife. After the death of Edward VI and the flight of Poynet, with other episcopal manors, was regranted to the see of Winchester, but was again taken by the Crown at the accession of Elizabeth, the grant to Mason holding good, passing to his son Anthony; the Egerton Family and Ivinghoe Anthony Mason held the manor in 1582 and in 1586 alienated the manor to Charles Glenham who sold it in 1589 to Lady Jane Cheyne, widow of Henry Lord Cheyne. In 1603 she conveyed the manor to Ralph Crewe, Thomas Chamberlayn and Richard Cartwright, trustees for the Egertons, Sir Thomas Egerton, 1st Viscount Brackley, Sir John Egerton, 1st Earl of Bridgewater, his son and heir, received Ivinghoe from the trustees in 1604. Lord Ellesmere, who bore the title of Viscount Brackley, died seised of the manor in 1617.
In the same year his son was created Earl of Bridgewater and the manor descended with this title until the latter became extinct in 1829. By the will of the seventh earl, who died in 1823, the estates were held by his widow until her death in 1849, when they devolved upon his great-nephew John Egerton, Viscount Alford, father of the second Earl Brownlow, from whom the title and lands descended to the Barons Brownlow; the sixth Baron, notably served as a Lord-in-waiting to the Prince of Wales, as Mayor of Grantham, as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of Aircraft Production Lord Beaverbrook and as Lord Lieutenant of Lincolnshire. As of 2017 the titles are held by his son, the seventh Baron, who succeeded in 1978. Edward John Peregrine Cust, CStJ, seventh Baron Brownlow, is the immediate past Lord of the Manor of Ivinghoe, he married Shirlie Edith Yeomans, daughter of John Paske Yeomans and Marguerite Watkins, on 31 December 1964. The seventh Baron Brownlow passed the title by assignation to The Right Rev’d Robert Todd Giffin, OStJ, an American Anglican Bishop and Egerton descendant, in April 2019.
Scenes for feature films, such as Quatermass 2, Batman Begins, The Dirty Dozen, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, as well as the BBC America production Killing Eve, have been shot at Ivinghoe Beacon. Director Raymond Austin filmed the 1960s-1970's TV shows The Avengers, The New Avengers and The Saint in and around the village, which once served as a set for the children's TV series Chuck
Ashridge
Ashridge is a country estate and stately home in Hertfordshire, England in the United Kingdom. It is situated in the Chiltern Hills, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, about 2 miles north of Berkhamsted and 23 miles north west of London; the estate comprises 5,000 acres of woodlands and chalk downland which supports a rich variety of wildlife. Today, Ashridge is home to Hult International Business School's Ashridge Executive Education program, as it has been since 1959; the estate is owned by the National Trust. In mediæval times Ashridge was the location of Ashridge Priory, a college of the monastic order of Bonhommes founded in 1283 by Edmund, 2nd Earl of Cornwall, who had a palace here. During the Dissolution of the Monasteries the priory was surrendered to Henry VIII who bequeathed the property to his daughter, Elizabeth; the priory church was demolished during the reign of Elizabeth I. In 1604 the estate became the property of the Sir Thomas Egerton. Egerton's son, John Egerton, was created 1st Earl of Bridgewater on 27 May 1617.
The estate was redeveloped as the Bridgewater residence. The 3rd Duke of Bridgewater was buried in the Egerton family vault in Little Gaddesden Church, close to Ashridge. In 1848 the estate passed to the Earls Brownlow, another strand of the Egerton family, in 1921 it was split, with the land passing to the National Trust, while the house and garden was acquired by speculators. In 1928 Urban Hanlon Broughton purchased the house as a gift for the Conservative Party intended to commemorate Bonar Law. In July 1929 Ashridge opened by Stanley Baldwin as a College under the governance of the Bonar Law Memorial Trust; the BLMT was charged by its Founding Deed to pursue the following goals, namely honouring the memory of a great statesman, the preservation of the house and grounds as an historic building, to create an educational centre … to train lecturers and writers to further the study of the subjects outlined above … provide lectures and/or discussions on these subjects open to the public or for those who had paid fees to attend, … provide a supporting staff, to allow boarding by those attending the lectures and discussions.
For the next fifteen years the college, the full title of, the Bonar Law Memorial College, Ashridge was to act as a school for Conservative intellectuals creating, in their own words, ‘Conservative Fabians’, as a ‘College of Citizenship’ for ‘the general education of the electorate’. Associated with the College were regional or county circles or clubs, such the Ashridge Dining Club in London. In 1954 its Deed of Foundation was changed by Act of Parliament, Ashridge was ‘re-founded’ as an educational charity. In 1959 it became a Management College. In 1959 Ashridge College was re-launched to provide management training, was named Ashridge Business School. In 2015, Ashridge Business School operationally merged with Hult International Business School, an American business school with campuses in seven cities around the world; as part of the merger, Ashridge Business School changed its name to Ashridge Executive Education. The 7th Earl of Bridgewater commissioned the architect James Wyatt to build the neo-Gothic Ashridge House as his home.
Wyatt died in 1813 and the project was completed the following year by his nephew Jeffry Wyatt. The present house is regarded as one of the finest examples of early Gothic Revival architecture and is now a Grade I listed building. Ashridge house was built on the site of the 13th-Century priory building, demolished in 1800; some parts of the old priory were incorporated into the house by James Wyatt, including the undercroft of the monastic refectory, featuring two aisles, seven bays and a rib-vaulted ceiling, which he repurposed as a beer cellar below the dining room and drawing room. The mansion is built of ashlar faced with Totternhoe stone with a castellated parapet and low-pitched slate roofs, it features a variety of casement windows including pointed arch and ogee lights typical of the early Gothic Revival style. Before his untimely death, James Wyatt completed the north-facing front entrance and the central block, containing the state apartments and western courtyards. Jeffry Wyatt added private apartment blocks at an angle to the main building and an orangery with a turret in 1815–17.
The main entrance features a projecting porte-cochère and octagonal turrets, added by Jeffry Wyatt c.1814. Inside the mansion are a number of richly decorated state rooms; the high staircase hall features a stone stair with iron railing, surrounded by niches containing statues by Sir Richard Westmacott. At the centre of the fan-vaulted ceiling is a large dial connected to the weather vane on the roof which displays the current wind direction; the Brownlow Hall contains a giant frieze of the goddess Venus surrounded by putti with an armorial centrepiece and three early-Twentieth Century murals. Redecoration of the interiors was commissioned by Lady Marian Alford and executed in the neoclassical style in 1855–63 by Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt, including a replica of Guido Reni's Aurora ceiling and aedicular door surrounds. Among the alterations carried out after the conversion of the mansion into a college, the conservatory was altered by Clough Williams-Ellis in 1919 to form a dining-room; the boundary between Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire passed through the dining room, though the house is no
Aldbury
Aldbury is a village and civil parish in Hertfordshire, near the borders of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire in the Bulbourne valley close to Ashridge Park. The nearest town is Tring. Uphill in the narrow vale are the Ashridge estate, it is noted for its picturesque setting and has been referred to as a "chocolate-box" village due to its traditional appearance. Aldbury is a village retaining several archetypal historic features. In the centre is a green pond. In the days of Edward the Confessor the single manor was held by the king's thegn; the Valiant Trooper has served as an alehouse for several centuries, the first traceable evidence dates back to 1752. The ascent of the wooded slope towards the Bridgewater Monument is one of the steepest ascents crowned by a ridge with one of the five highest elevations in Hertfordshire. Monuments in the church prove and witness the importance of certain manorial families including the family of Sir Ralph Verney, 1546, who has the northern Verney chapel in the church and the landed family of Thomas Hyde, 1570, George his son 1580.
Aldbury was the home of Sir Guy de Gravade, known as the Wizard of Aldbury, reputed to be able to turn base metals into gold. To the northwest of Aldbury, Aldbury Nowers forms part of the Chiltern escarpment and is traversed by The Ridgeway, an ancient track, by two sections of Grim's Ditch, a linear earthwork thought to date from the Iron Age. Through most of the Norman period the manor was held in honour Berkhamsted manor. In the time of Edward the Confessor Aldbury Manor was held by Alwin, a thegn of the king and by 1086 was in the hands of Robert, Count of Mortain. Various lower nobles followed until held in the 1530s under a Dynham family trust by a wife of William Fitzwilliam and shares created became acquired by John Hyde of Hyde, Dorset, an officer of the Court of Exchequer who had a lease of the manor and died in 1545. In 1665 Sir Thomas Hyde, whose family had held the main manor for more than 100 years, died leaving only Bridget, his daughter with the estate, who married Peregrine Osborne, 2nd Duke of Leeds, whose family held the estate until Thomas Osborne, 4th Duke of Leeds sold it to Scroop Egerton, 1st Duke of Bridgewater, after further subdivision the remaining manor descended to Francis Henry and last earl of Bridgewater, whose widow held it for life, at her death it passed to John Hume Cust, Viscount Alford, son of the first Earl Brownlow, from him to the Earl as of 1908.
A few of the court rolls of the manor were at the 1908 predecessor to the National Archives. Landowner William de Mandeville held land at Stocks in Aldbury around 1176–7. Records exist of a Henry de Bohun, a knight in the service of King Henry III's son, Prince Edward, uncle of Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex. In 1277-8, the men of Stocks were ordered to come de Bohun's view of frankpledge at Amersham in Buckinghamshire. In 1278 de Bohun was granted the manors of Nuthampstead by his nephew Humphrey. Henry may be the same Sir Henry de Bohun, killed at the Battle of Bannockburn by the Scottish king Robert the Bruce in 1214; the land at Stocks belonged to a John de la Stock, who died in 1270. Records of feudal duties show that the land was held by a Master Henry Sampson in 1273; the last mention of Stocks until the 17th century appears when Philip de Aylesbury granted piece of land called Stockyngge to William de Dunhamstede in 1318. After a historical gap, references are noted from the 17th century of the land being in the possession of Robert Duncombe, an ancestor of the Lords Feversham.
In 1773, Arnold Duncombe built Stocks House. The estate passed successively to the Hayton and Gordon families. An heir to the Stocks estate, James Adam Gordon, was a friend of the Scottish author Sir Walter Scott, it is reputed that the writer visited Gordon at Stocks House. Gordon's widow, Emma Katherine, afterwards married the politician Richard Bright, who died at Stocks in 1878. Emma Katherine died in 1891, left the estate to Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, as descendant of Samuel Whitbread, he shortly afterwards sold the house, as all that remained, to the author Mary Augusta Ward, whose husband was a writer, Thomas Humphry Ward. While the Wards lived at Stocks, it became a bustling literary salon, welcoming leading intellectuals and writers of the day, including their nephews Aldous and Julian Huxley, their son-in-law George Macaulay Trevelyan, George Orwell. Mary Ward died in 1920 and Stocks was inherited by her son, politician Arnold Ward. In 1944, Stocks was turned into a girls' school.
Stocks House achieved some notoriety when in 1972 it was purchased by Victor Lownes, an owner of Playboy magazine, who hosted lavish, rowdy parties there, staffed by scantily-clad bunny girls. The parties were attended by a number of celebrities of the day including Peter Cook, John Cleese, Christopher Reeve, Jack Nicholson, Keith Moon and Tony Curtis; some shots in the music video for the 1982 song "Our House" by Madness were filmed at Stocks House. The house and swimming pool featured on the cover of the 1997 Oasis album, Be Here Now. After Lownes's death, the house became a hotel and golf course. Today it is the home of racehorse trainer Walter Swinburn; this consisting of 70 acres general land, 3 acres of meadow and 5s. Rent and was held in 1361 of the heir of Roger Launcelene in free socage for the service of one pair of white gauntlets. John son of William Aignel died seised of this ma
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire, abbreviated Bucks, is a ceremonial county in South East England which borders Greater London to the south east, Berkshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north east and Hertfordshire to the east. Buckinghamshire is one of the home counties and towns such as High Wycombe, Amersham and the Chalfonts in the east and southeast of the county are parts of the London commuter belt, forming some of the most densely populated parts of the county. Development in this region is restricted by the Metropolitan Green Belt. Other large settlements include the county town of Aylesbury, Marlow in the south near the Thames and Princes Risborough in the west near Oxford; some areas without direct rail links to London, such as around the old county town of Buckingham and near Olney in the northeast, are much less populous. The largest town is Milton Keynes in the northeast, which with the surrounding area is administered as a unitary authority separately to the rest of Buckinghamshire.
The remainder of the county is administered by Buckinghamshire County Council as a non-metropolitan county, four district councils. In national elections, Buckinghamshire is considered a reliable supporter of the Conservative Party. A large part of the Chiltern Hills, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, runs through the south of the county and attracts many walkers and cyclists from London. In this area older buildings are made from local flint and red brick. Many parts of the county are quite affluent and like many areas around London this has led to problems with housing costs: several reports have identified the market town of Beaconsfield as having among the highest property prices outside London. Chequers, a mansion estate owned by the government, is the country retreat of the incumbent Prime Minister. To the north of the county lies rolling countryside in the Vale of Aylesbury and around the Great Ouse; the Thames forms part of the county’s southwestern boundary. Notable service amenities in the county are Pinewood Film Studios, Dorney rowing lake and part of Silverstone race track on the Northamptonshire border.
Many national companies have offices in Milton Keynes. Heavy industry and quarrying is limited, with agriculture predominating after service industries; the name Buckinghamshire means The district of Bucca's home. Bucca's home refers to Buckingham in the north of the county, is named after an Anglo-Saxon landowner; the county has been so named since about the 12th century. The history of the area predates the Anglo-Saxon period and the county has a rich history starting from the Celtic and Roman periods, though the Anglo-Saxons had the greatest impact on Buckinghamshire: the geography of the rural county is as it was in the Anglo-Saxon period. Buckinghamshire became an important political arena, with King Henry VIII intervening in local politics in the 16th century and just a century the English Civil War was reputedly started by John Hampden in mid-Bucks; the biggest change to the county came in the 19th century, when a combination of cholera and famine hit the rural county, forcing many to migrate to larger towns to find work.
Not only did this alter the local economic situation, it meant a lot of land was going cheap at a time when the rich were more mobile and leafy Bucks became a popular rural idyll: an image it still has today. Buckinghamshire is a popular home for London commuters, leading to greater local affluence; the expansion of London and coming of the railways promoted the growth of towns in the south of the county such as Aylesbury and High Wycombe, leaving the town Buckingham itself to the north in a relative backwater. As a result, most county institutions are now based in the south of the county or Milton Keynes, rather than in Buckingham; the county can be split into two sections geographically. The south leads from the River Thames up the gentle slopes of the Chiltern Hills to the more abrupt slopes on the northern side leading to the Vale of Aylesbury, a large flat expanse of land, which includes the path of the River Great Ouse; the county includes parts of two of the four longest rivers in England.
The River Thames forms the southern boundary with Berkshire, which has crept over the border at Eton and Slough so that the river is no longer the sole boundary between the two counties. The River Great Ouse rises just outside the county in Northamptonshire and flows east through Buckingham, Milton Keynes and Olney; the main branch of the Grand Union Canal passes through the county as do its arms to Slough, Aylesbury and Buckingham. The canal has been incorporated into the landscaping of Milton Keynes; the southern part of the county is dominated by the Chiltern Hills. The two highest points in Buckinghamshire are Haddington Hill in Wendover Woods at 267 metres above sea level, Coombe Hill near Wendover at 260 metres. Quarrying has taken clay for brickmaking and gravel and sand in the river valleys. Flint extracted from quarries, was used to build older local buildings. Several former quarries, now flooded, have become nature reserves; as can be seen from the table, the Vale of Aylesbury and the Borough of Milton Keynes have been identified as growth areas, with a projected population surge of 40,000 in Aylesbury Vale between 2011 and 2026 and 75,000 in Milton Keynes within the same 15 years.
The population of the Borough of Milton Keynes is expected to reach 350,000 by 2031. Buckinghamshire is sub-divided into civil parishes. Today Bucking
