Wolverton (Buckinghamshire)

Wolverton is a constituent town of Milton Keynes, England. It is located in north-west Milton Keynes, beside the West Coast Main Line, the Grand Union Canal and the river Great Ouse. It is the administrative seat of Wolverton and Greenleys civil parish. It is one of the places in historic Buckinghamshire that went into the foundation of Milton Keynes in 1967. The village recorded in Domesday is known today as Old Wolverton but, because of peasant clearances in the early 17th century, only field markings remain of the medieval settlement. Modern Wolverton is a new settlement founded in the early 19th century as a railway town, with its centre relocated about to the southeast. The town name is an Old English language word, and means 'Wulfhere's settlement'. It was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Wluerintone. The original Wolverton was a medieval settlement just north and west of today's town. This site is now known as Old Wolverton, although the medieval village is all but gone. The ridge and furrow pattern of agriculture can still be seen in the nearby fields. The site of an Anglo-Saxon building has been dated to the 400s at Wolverton Mill, with further buildings coming into use in the 600s and early 700s. An Anglo-Saxon cemetery dated to the 600s was discovered in Wolverton and is the largest discovered in Buckinghamshire containing 83 people. The Saxon Church of the Holy Trinity (rebuilt in 1819) still sits next to the Norman Motte and Bailey site. Only the earth mound remains of the Norman castle, though the Saxon tower still stands as central to the rebuilt church, clad in the early 19th century 'Anglo-Norman' style. Next door to the church is a house built in 1729 which later became the vicarage; the front door has stonework from the nearby, demolished manor house of the 16th century including the de Longueville family coat of arms, and pieces from the earlier church building. A talbot (dog), another symbol of the family, once graced the side entrance which now marks the boundary between the ground floor of the house and its downstairs toilet.