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Beaconsfield
By admin | May 19, 2008
Beaconsfield is a market town in Buckinghamshire, England lying almost 25 miles NW of London. The town sits in the Chiltern Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and is part of the London commuter belt, thus the average cost of housing in the town is high. It is in the South Bucks local government district, which was known as the Beaconsfield district from 1974 to 1980.
An annual fair is traditionally held on May 10. Its charter originally allowed for a yearly market for the trading of goods and livestock, but it has now developed into a funfair, erected for one day only on the main roads of the “Old Town”. In recent years some residents have opposed the fair as a hindrance to the Old Town, and have called for it to be scrapped even though the fair has been going for over 735 years.
In the Victorian era the town was the home constituency of Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1868 and then again from 1874 until 1880 (in fact his home, Hughenden Manor is in the nearby town of High Wycombe). In 1876 he was made the 1st Earl of Beaconsfield by Queen Victoria with whom he was very popular. It was due to this, that Beaconsfield became a popular road name in industrial cities across the country in the late Victorian period.
It is the burial place of the author Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Edmund Burke and the poet Edmund Waller, for whom a tall stone obelisk was erected over the tomb chest in St Mary and All Saints churchyard.
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Topics: Buckinghamshire |