Woolstone, Milton Keynes

Great Woolstone and Little Woolstone are two historic villages in modern Milton Keynes, ceremonial Buckinghamshire now called jointly Woolstone or The Woolstones and forming the heart of a new district of that name.[1][2] At the 2011 Census the population of the villages was included in the civil parish of Campbell Park.

The name 'Woolstone' is an Old English language word, and means 'Wulfsige's farm'. In the Domesday Book of 1086, Great Woolstone was recorded as Ulsiestone.[3] and Little Woolstone as Wlsiestone.[4] Little Woolstone was enclosed by Act of Parliament in 1791, [4] and Great Woolstone in 1796.[3]

Until shortly after the turn of the 19th century, Little Woolstone was named Parva Woolstone.[4] The area is now collectively known simply as "Woolstone" or "The Woolstones" and it forms part of the Campbell Park Civil Parish of Milton Keynes and comes under the control of Campbell Park Parish Council. The land between the two villages is now occupied by the village cricket green. Detail from genealogical records can be found on the UK and Ireland Genealogy site.[5]

They are both linear villages, being hemmed in by and along the north-south line of both the River Ouzel (to the east of the villages) and of the Grand Union Canal to the west. They form part of a chain of three villages along this line, the next about a mile further south being Woughton-on-the-Green.

Today, Great Woolstone still has its own village pub, the thatched roof "Cross Keys", which can trace its history back to 1560. Little Woolstone is the larger of the two Woolstones, having benefited from the building of the canal. Its village pub, "The Barge Inn", dates from this time, being opened to meet the needs of the canal labourers, but is now mainly a restaurant.[6] The Church of England Church in Little Woolstone is still open and serves both villages, whilst the church in Great Woolstone closed in the 1970s and has served various purposes since then including being used as a music rehearsal room.

The old village centre seems only a little changed from its description in Buckinghamshire Footpaths in 1949:

Pass through Woughton-on-the-Green, bearing slightly rightward, towards a trio of delightful hamlets, each “a one-eyed, blinking sort of place”, Great Woolstone, Little Woolstone, and Willen. ....

Great Woolstone, or Vlieston as it was called at the time of Domesday, was held, under Walter Giffard, of the foreign monks of Saint Peter de Culture, and is now in the possession of the Selby-Lowndes, one of the oldest families in the Kingdom, lords also of Whaddon away to the south-west.
“The Barge Inn”, along this lane, bears testimony to the hey-day of canal transport. I suppose that I have entered this place not less than fifty times, yet I have never seen a man there who did not carry a scythe, or wear leggings, or smoke a clay pipe, or talk of London as though it were a distant phantom thousands of miles away upon a faint horizon. Little Woolstone has an unexpected claim to fame, for it was a Woolstone man, one Smith, who invented and (wisely) patented the once-famous steam cultivator that ousted ox and horse, and was itself dethroned by the infernal combustion engine. In 1861 Mr. Smith’s steam cultivator ploughed up a crop of coins bearing as motto the words Regus et Regulus.

— J.H.B Peel[7]

People
  • Dorothy Wyndlow Pattison ("Sister Dora"), after whom the main road through Woolstone, Pattison Lane, is named.


References
  1. A Vision of Great Woolstone - Vision of Britain
  2. A Vision of Little Woolstone - Vision of Britain
  3. "Parishes : Great Woolstone". A History of the County of Buckingham: Volume 4. Victoria History of the Counties of England. 1927. p. 509–511. Retrieved 11 June 2020.
  4. "Parishes : Little Woolstone". A History of the County of Buckingham: Volume 4. Victoria History of the Counties of England. 1927. p. 512–515. Retrieved 11 June 2020.
  5. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 5 August 2010. Retrieved 8 December 2008.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  6. [Source: Historic documents displayed in the pub]
  7. Buckinghamshire Footpaths (first ed.). Chatterson Ltd. 1949.

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