The Monday Photo

This old farmhouse by the green at Woughton on the Green, appears to be either Georgian or 19th Century. But which is it?

Actually it’s neither. Behind the chequered brickwork is a timber framed 16th Century building; two hundred years older than it appears and one of the oldest domestic buildings in Milton Keynes. In the left hand front room there’s a fine, large, 16th Century fireplace.

The rear wing hasn’t been recased so still shows it’s massive timber framing; part of it can just be seen by walking round to the right from the camera position. The chimney to the right is in that wing.

The central gabled projection and ground floor bay windows were added to the Georgian front in the 19th Century. Imagine the house before it was updated, with no centre projection, timber framing (probably massive like the rear wing) and a thatched roof.

Every house has a story, if you know what to look for.

The Monday Photo

Wingrave’s church font was made in the 12th Century. It seems to have been made in sections; the bowl is all in one piece, but the carved cable moulding around the bottom looks like it was made in four equal pieces.

You can see a couple of the joins in the photo, where the moulding has vertical breaks.

The base, according to the 1925 A History of the County of Buckingham, “is supported on a modern stem and base”.

Take that how you like, but they might mean the font was put on that (somewhat wonky) base when the church was restored in 1887-88. But that font has been in use for a long time. How many babies has there been?

St Peter and St Paul’s church is open every day. The church has some fine stone and wooden carvings.

The Monday Photo

The churchyard of Holy Trinity Church is in the bailey of the 12th Century castle of Old Wolverton. In the background rises the castle motte, covered in trees and shrubs. There are no stone remains; this was, it’s thought, only ever a timber castle.

The end of the church is just visible at top left behind a yew tree. It also has 12th Century origins, but apart from the 14th Century tower it dates from 1809-1815.

It’s very likely that the old church, a bit more to the West of the 19th Century one, included parts of the original castle church. In that church the present tower was central, not on the West end as it is now.

In the fields around are earthworks from the long gone Medieval village, some of them on the far side of the Victorian canal. At the very edge of Buckinghamshire, the canal crosses the Great Ouse via the Iron Trunk aqueduct.

Lots to explore here, and there’s parking on the far side of the canal from the Galleon pub, not to be confused with the pub’s own car park, across the road from their front entrance.

The Monday Photo

This wall tie anchor plate tells us which company installed it, and in what year; this was an easy post to research. It was the Grand Junction Canal Co, and the anchor was installed or at least cast at the foundry, in 1913.

The company formed in 1793 and built the canal that runs through North Bucks and crosses the River Ouse over the Iron Trunk aqueduct at Wolverton. We know it as the Grand Union Canal; the name changed on January 1st 1929 when several canal companies merged.

These plates are used in pairs with an iron rod between them, and they stop the sides of the bridge from spreading; the rod has threaded ends and large nuts hold the anchors.

Hot Stuff
I think the rod is heated up when it goes in so that it expands. Then the nuts are done up nice and tight. When the rod cools it contracts; the anchor plates are pulled in even tighter.

This plate is on canal bridge number 123 which carries the B488 over the canal just North of Ivinghoe. Two pairs were installed here, and there’s another pair on the bridge at Simpson, Milton Keynes.

I expect there are plenty more but I haven’t spotted them yet. If you like canals there are more posts on the North Bucks Wanderer; just look at the categories list in the sidebar.

If canals aren’t really your thing there are over 400 other posts, here on the NBW.

The Monday Photo

This is Hartwell’s Egyptian Spring, but it’s not Egyptian. Some think it isn’t even a spring, but water runs through it which seems to feed a horse trough on the other side of the lane, just a little further down the slope.

The official listing describes Egyptian Spring as a seat, but the water enters it via a small channel and leads into a rectangular sump in the front middle of the floor. From there, another shallow channel takes the overflow to the front corner of the spring where it flows off and into a road drain. I think the water then goes into the horse trough across the lane.

You can see the sump and the drain in the photo. Water can be also be heard and sometimes seen a little further down the lane.

The seat is commonly thought to be Egyptian because of the frieze of hieroglyphics across the front, though it’s just made of brick and stone, covered in stucco.

Hieroglyphics
I can’t really translate hieroglyphics (though I tried) but the frieze is said to state that the seat was built in the 13th year of Victoria’s reign. The second cartouche or oval ring seems to hold characters that phonetically spell out “Victoria”, and I think the number 13 is on the far left hand end.

The Greek inscription above is said by some to say “Water is best”, but putting those letters into an online translator produced either “Left with two” or “Left-handed two.

Well, I can’t translate Greek either, but that didn’t seem right. A bit more digging found that the Greek text is a quote from Pindar, a poet in Ancient Greece who lived from around 518 to 438 BC. It actually says: "Greatest however (is) water”.

Victorian
The Egyptian Seat/Spring was erected in 1850 or 1851, and designed by Joseph Bonomi the Younger. He was one of those Victorian men who were good at many things; a polymath.

Bonomi was an artist, a sculptor, a draughtsman, a museum curator and an Egyptologist. He went to Egypt where he made drawings and watercolours of their pyramids and ancient temples, learning Arabic and wearing local dress. One sketch is labelled “Fragment of a red granite sarcophagus”. It’s drawn to  ¼ scale and the hieroglyphics are carefully drawn.

I didn’t think I’d ever mention Egypt or an Ancient Greek poet in a North Bucks Wanderer post, but it’s just another one of the rabbit holes I find myself in when doing research.

If you want to see the seat/spring yourself, it’s about a third of a mile down a narrow lane off the A418 in Hartwell. The lane is signposted “Hartwell House”, and “Lower Hartwell”; bear left after the bridge.

There’s a place to turn round a little further down the lane, which is a cul-de-sac. Other follies are available.

The Monday Photo

I thought this might have been just another milestone, but there’s something strange about it.

The nearest similar milestone, like most, is set at 45 degree angle to the highway. It says “London 39” twice, on both the faces that can be seen from the road. On one of those faces it also says “Missenden 8”, on the other, “Aylesbury 1”

But this milestone is square to the lane, and only engraved on the front face. It seems to say:

XLI  
Miles    
London

As it’s five miles from that other milestone, I think it once read:

XLIV
Miles to
London

If you don’t know Roman numerals, L = 50, X = 10, V = 5, and I = 1; there are other numerals. But the X is before the L, so that means 50 - 10; 40. The I before the V means 5 - 1; 4. So XLIV is 44 miles.

If instead the I was after the V to make VI, that would be 6;  so XLVI is 46. I’ll do a post another day fully explaining Roman numerals.

There seem to be no other markings anywhere on this milestone, and no local examples use Roman numerals or say “miles to”; they just give a place name and a number.

This stone is also on a back lane that doesn’t seem to have been a turnpike, though it goes between a couple of them. Other than that the lane just goes between two small villages. Why would it be placed here? Well, it’s a private lane now, though there’s public footpath access along it.

The lane is the drive to the late 19th Century Eythrope Pavilion; I believe the stone was placed by the lane as a curiosity. Like Dinton Castle, it’s a folly.