Muselai or Mureslai, (-lai or -ley meaning meadow) with the hamlet of Salden is mentioned in the Domesday book of 1086. Until the 20th century it consisted of one long, broad street and was a thriving market town, lying on the principal road from Buckingham via Dunstable to London.
This market was stopped as the Prior of Grovebury complained that it reduced the usual attendance at the market in Leighton Buzzard. In 1242 Warren Fitzgerald was granted a charter from Henry III for a market on Wednesdays and a yearly Fair to last three days on the Vigil, Feast and Morrow of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary (7th, 8th and 9th September). This is one of the oldest Market and Fair Charters in the country and made Mursley a place of note.
He built a large house or palace at a cost of £33,000. According to descriptions given, this was a magnificent place which entertained Royalty and nobles of the realm. After 150 years of wealth and splendour the property was divided and the noble seat was entirely demolished, except for a small portion which served as a passage from the kitchen and Great Parlours which is now a family home.
Photo: B Strange
As a hilltop village, Mursley is surrounded by springs, which are the highest permanent springs feeding the Great Ouse, East Anglia’s major river, the fifth longest in Britain. Spring water from Mursley flows through Milton Keynes, Bedford, Ely and King’s Lynn to the Wash and the North Sea, a journey of around 140 miles, taking nearly three weeks. Mursley water tower is a well-known Bucks landmark. It was built in 1939 -1940 at a cost of £23,995. It stands 150 metres above sea level, is just under 30 metres tall and provides a gravity fed water supply to a large area of north and central Bucks. The tower contains nearly 2,300 cubic metres of water, pumped overnight from Rutland Water, Britain’s largest man-made lake, through more than 80 miles of pipes. Across the road from the tower are two more reservoirs holding nearly 23,000 cubic metres between them.
A major renovation of the tower was carried out in 1968 and this removed all scars from the wartime crash, which although dramatic, had caused no serious structural damage.In 1995 Anglian Water opened the tower to the public for half a day and provided a memorial plaque to honour the 4 airmen who were killed. Two families and ten relatives of the aircrew joined a large gathering of locals for a memorial service and unveiling of the plaque.
Prior to this, the Nonconformists met in an old cottage long since pulled down, near the Village Hall. A Chapel was built opposite the junction of Whaddon Road in 1846 and replaced with what is now the Old Baptist Chapel in 1883. Following the conversion of the Chapel into a private house in 1997, services were held in the wooden Baptist Chapel opposite, donated by Mr Tweedale and erected in 1923. Part of the building housed Kingfishers, a Pre-School Nursery. The Chapel held its last service in 2018, the site was sold for a housing development. Kingfishers Pre-School moved to purpose-built accommodation in the school grounds.
The Village Hall was opened in March 1962. It was funded by many events including the revival of the Charter Fair. For four successive years a Fair was held in September for one day in the wide village street. Most of the village people dressed in C13th period costumes. The various sideshows and stalls were decorated, a pageant was staged for the opening ceremony, and a religious play enacted. A deer was roasted, and archery and stocks were features of the Fair. A Charter Fair was last held in 1999 to raise funds for Millennium projects.
The cottage formed the north-west corner of the square of buildings attached to The Grange. There were barns on either end of the cottage and a line of stables formed the fourth side of the square.
This shape remained for the best part of 200 years. To the south of the cottage, where the front door now is was an old barn called the Malting Barn where the beer for the village was brewed.
Opposite The Grange is a thatched house, originally an inn named The Wrestlers, closed by Aylesbury Brewery Co. in 1922. It was converted into a village shop in the 1936, finally closing in October 1993.
The Green Man Public House is now a modern building. It was formerly an old thatched and tiled house with a large bay window standing in the widest part of Main Street, on the right behind the picket fence Photo: C P Dobbs
In the centre of the village a school was built in about 1865 to accommodate 100 children. Next-door was the house for the teacher. The school has been enlarged over the years, most recently in 2018 when a Pre-School was constructed in the grounds. Before the present Village Hall was built the School Room was used as assembly hall for the village. Thatched Candlewick Cottage was originally the farmhouse to Mount Pleasant Farm, more recently it was a florist.
Photo: S Brunton
Dedicated to St Mary the Virgin, the church was originally granted before 1100. The C15th west tower gleams white above the C14th church, which is built of limestone. The chancel, the arcades of the nave and the two side aisles were built in C14th. The 6 bells were recast in C19th. The clerestory and south porch were added when the church was restored between 1865 –70. There are two fine C16th and C17th monuments dedicated to the Fortescue family; a Jacobean carved oak pulpit and two C14th piscinae. The lych-gate was erected in 1909. The Millennium East window commemorates life in the year 2000 as well as the history of the village.
Photo: H & M Hollis
The Beechams, running down the side of the church is named after the owners of Mursley Hall, a country house built at the end of the lane in 1885 by Thomas Beecham, inventor of Beecham’s Pills. Thomas or members of his family lived there for about 50 years. Thomas bequeathed the house to his grandson, Sir Thomas Beecham, the founder and conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He decamped here during WWII. His connection with Mursley is commemorated in the Millennium window in the church. The house was demolished in the 1960s.
Opposite the church is Manor House Farm. The core of the farmhouse dates from 16th century, it has unusual chimneys. The farm was tenanted, it was sold for development by Buckinghamshire County Council in 2001 and is now Manor Close. Initials can be seen carved into the brickwork of the wall curving round into Cooks Lane.
Chase House on the corner of Cooks Lane was originally flat roofed. It was known as Groom’s Folly, as it was assumed Joseph Groom the owner had run out of money and couldn’t afford a pitched roof. He was a Zoological wireworker. Finished pieces were taken down to London from Mursley in a pony and trap. With surplus pieces of wire Mr Groom made the porch and fence. Later residents included Mr Mrs Bozman, the retired School headmaster and his wife. It is now known as Chase House because a fox, pursued by hounds, went through the dining room window; the hounds killed the beast in Mr Bozman’s study.
Photo: M Taylor
Old Timbers, Cooks Lane is a C17th timber framed building with brick infill. In living memory, it was a bakery. WJ Roads, a photographer responsible for recording many of the early photographs of Mursley, lived here. Will’s daughter, Margaret, recalled the workshop at the end of the house; if her brothers broke a windowpane, they would scrape the emulsion off one of the photographic plates belonging to their father to re-glaze the window.
The Forge was run by the Ward family – Photo: J & V Ward
The Forge was run by the Ward family. During army manoeuvres in World War I the troops passed by and would stop outside to have their horses’ shoes checked. Horses waiting to be shod were tied up on the opposite side of the road on the Rectory wall. One old tie iron can still be seen there today. The annex which was the forge was rebuilt in 2019.
Below the Rectory garden is a new graveyard. Near this is a piece of ground, known locally as ‘The Pits’, named Homestead Moat. It is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, probably a medieval moat, now dry and under pasture. There was a windmill on the Swanbourne Road near the former inn of the same name. The mill was pulled down towards the end of the C19th.
Spring Cottage, previously known as ‘Bubble Ouse’ because of the numerous springs, which feed the Ouse, is perhaps one of the oldest thatched cottages in the village. Its origins are said to date to 1523 although it bears the date of 1693.
Timber and brick Cedars Farm was once faced in pebble dashing. In early 1960’s the cladding was crumbling on the front of the house so builders were asked to remedy it – they found evidence of the beams and brickwork so cladding was removed from most of the house – resulting in it becoming a Grade 2 listed building. Evidence of the pebble dashing can still to be seen on the side wall today.
John Wright and Fred North were butchers in London. They frequently came to the area to purchase good quality fatstock that would be despatched by rail from Swanbourne and Winslow. Fred North purchased Spring Cottage, John Wright bought the fields on Pease Hill, which were allotments and built a five bedroomed house to accommodate him in retirement. He came from Richmond, London hence the name Richmond Lodge. A two-storey wing was added to the house, it became a seventeen-room nursing and maternity home run by his daughter Miss Alice Wright and Miss Page. It reverted back to being a private residence in the early fifties when the hospital wing was closed and converted into flats.
Travelling towards Little Horwood from the Whaddon Road junction is Beecham’s Row, the left-hand side of Station Road, 12 cottages built by Thomas Beecham for his employees.
Tweedale Close houses were built in 1993 on ground that was originally allotments; the estate was named after a Mr Tweedale, who lived at Spring Grove Farm, vacating it in 1938.
Mursley has an exceptionally fine Sports Ground of about four and a half acres. It has a Pavilion and part of it is a children’s playground. An annual feature of village life is the Coronation Sports Day held on the first Saturday in June on the Sports Ground. This was instituted at the Coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953. A surplus of funds raised for Coronation festivities was used to buy two silver cups, one for boys and one for girls. These are competed for annually, on a points basis, the winners ‘holding the cups’ for the following year and receiving miniature replicas. Stalls and sideshows at the Sports provide the funds for the next year’s event, so the event can go on indefinitely.
