Aylesbury, or Ailesbury, a market and union town and a parish in Bucks. It is also the county town of Bucks. The town stands on a rising-ground, and on a small affluent of the river Tame, in the rich Vale of Aylesbury, at railway termini, 17 miles SSE of Buckingham, and 38 by road, or 43 1/2 by railway, NW of London. One railway goes from it into junction with the L. & N.W., another with the G.W., and another, the Aylesbury and Buckingham, goes north-north-westward. The Aylesbury and Buckingham line has been taken over by the Metropolitan, by which line the town has also direct communication with London to Baker Street. A canal also, 6 miles long, rising 95 feet, with 16 locks, goes eastward to the Grand Junction Canal at Marsworth. Aylesbury was a strongly-fortified seat of the ancient Britons, and was maintained by them in independence till captured, in 572, by Cuthwolf, brother of Ceadwin, king of the West Saxons, and it was then called Æglesberg or Elisberie. It became a royal manor at the Conquest; was subsequently given to one of the followers of King John's court; belonged for ages to the Packingtons; passed, in the time of Henry VIII., to Sir John Baldwin, chief-justice of the Common Pleas, and was an important post of the Parliamentarian forces in 1644 and 1645.
The town is irregularly built, and consists of a spacious central, rectangular market-place, and diverging streets and thoroughfares. The corn-exchange and market-house were built in 1865, at a cost of £10,000, and are in the Tudor style. The county-hall is a large, handsome edifice of red brick. The workhouse was built in 1844, and is an edifice of red brick, in Tudor architecture. The parish church is a cruciform structure, of successive ages, from Early English to the latest Perpendicular; is surmounted at the centre by successively a low embattled tower, a square turret, a short spire, and a cross 9 feet high; was restored under the direction of Sir G. Gilbert Scott, R.A., the work being completed in 1869; contains beautifully stained windows, and two canopied decorated tombs; and is so situated as to command a fine view, and be seen for many miles round. The churchyard is extensive, and planted with trees. The prebendal house, adjoining the churchyard, occupies the site of an ancient monastery, was formerly the residence of the prebendaries of Aylesbury, and became the private property of Archdeacon Bickersteth when vicar of the parish. The Church of St John is a chapel of ease to the parish church. Walton, formerly a hamlet in the parish, now forms part of the town. It was made an ecclesiastical parish in 1846, and has a church erected about 1845. There are also Baptist, Congregational, Primitive Methodist, and Wesleyan chapels. The Roman Catholic church and presbytery of St Joseph were erected in 1893. There are also places of meeting for Christadelphians and Christians.
The town has a head post and telegraph office, three banks, an endowed grammar school, a Literary Institute, with a reading room and library, a Working Men's Club, and a Masonic Hall. There is also a county infirmary, erected at a cost of upwards of £11,000 in 1862, and which has since been enlarged. The town publishes three weekly newspapers, and has a well-attended market every Saturday. Sales of fat stock are also held on Wednesdays, and fairs on the third Saturday in Jan., Saturday next before Palm Sunday, second Saturday in May, third Saturday in June, fourth Saturday in Sept., and second Saturday in Oct. There is a wool fair on the second Wednesday in July, a fair for the sale of rams on the first Saturday in August, and a fair for fat cattle on the second Wednesday in December. Lace-making once flourished, but has greatly declined; straw-plait making is still carried on in the neighbourhood, but is practically a decayed industry. There are large printing works, a condensed milk factory, and immense numbers of ducks are reared and fattened for the London market. Aylesbury is the seat of the assizes for the county, and the seat of the county quarter sessions and county council. It was a borough, governed by a corporation, under a charter of Mary, dated 1554; but, from neglect and disuse of its privileges, it forfeited the charter in the time of Elizabeth. It is now governed by a Local Board of Health of nine members. It has a good water supply, is well drained, paved, and lighted, and possessing, as it now does, exceptional railway facilities, its rapid development is anticipated. It formerly sent two members to Parliament, but was disfranchised in 1885 under the provisions of the Redistribution of Seats Act. The town gives the titles of Earl and Marquis to the family of Bruce. The Vale of Aylesbury is a fertile tract, described by Drayton as lusty, firm, and fat, affording pasturage to an extraordinary number of sheep, interesting to geologists for abundance of ammonites and other fossils, and bounded along the S and the N by chalk hills. Population of the town, 8680. The area of the parish is 3288 acres; population of the civil parish, 8922; of the ecclesiastical, 6642. The living is a vicarage ; gross yearly value, £300, including 85 acres of glebe, in the gift of the Bishop of Oxford. The living of Walton is a vicarage; gross yearly value, £290 with residence, in the gift of trustees.
Aylesbury Parliamentary Division, or Mid Bucks, was formed under the Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885, and returns one member to the House of Commons. Population, 55,826. The division includes the following:‹Winslow (part of)‹Creslow, Oving, Pitchcott, Qnainton, Shipton Lee, Whitchurch; Aylesbury (Three Hundreds of)‹Aston Clinton - with - St Leonards, Aston Sandford, Aylesbury-with-Walton, Bierton-with-Broughton, Buckland, Cudding-ton, Dinton, Drayton Beauchamp, Ellesborough, Fleet Marston, Haddenham, Halton, Hampden (Great), Hampden (Little), Hardwick, Hartwell, Horsendon, Hulcott, Illmire, Kimble (Great), Kimble (Little), Kingsey, Lee, Missende (Great), Missenden (Little), Monks Risborough, Princes Risborongh, Quarrendon, Stoke Mandeville, Stone- with - Bishopstone, Towersey, Waddesden, Weedon, Wendover, Westcott, Weston Turville, Winchendon (Lower), Winchendon (Upper); Chesham‹Chenies, Chesham, Chesham Bois, Cholesbury, Hawridge; Linslade‹Aston Abbotts, Cheddington, Cublington, Ediesborough, Grove, Ivinghoe, Linslade, Marsworth, Mentmore, Nettleden, Pitstone, Slapton, Soulbury, Stewkley, Wing, Wingrave; Desborough (Second Division, part of)‹Bledlow with Bledlow Ridge, Bradenham, Hughenden, Eadnage, Saunderton.
