What is inside?

Republished here on full-searchable CD-Rom is Kelly's Directory of Buckinghamshire, which was published in 1903. Containing some 380 printed pages, Kelly's Directory, as the then editor, A. Lindsay Kelly correctly noted, was primarily a directory, but also served as the gazetteer for every county for which Kelly's Directory was published, and this Buckinghamshire edition is no exception. This directory, published with a coloured map of the county, includes every parish in the county and provides a thorough topographical description of every town, parish, village and township, describing the principal buildings and geographical objects of interest in each. Great care is also taken in Kelly's treatment of the ecclesiastical divisions of the county with descriptions of all the churches, cathedrals the value of the livings, parochial incumbents and patrons. The same level of detail is provided for the civil and local administration of the county with full information on county courts, districts fairs, markets, county hunts as well as communications such as rail and post throughout the county. Beginning with Ackhampstead and ending with Wyradisbury, for those who might be unfamiliar with a directory such as Kelly's the degree of information contained on each village can be gleaned from the description of just one of the places entered in the Towns and Villages section of the directory, the now very familiar Milton Keynes. In 1903 Kelly's Directory of Buckinghamshire is described as a parish and village separated from Great and Little Wolston by the river Ouzel and situated 3½ miles from the Newport Pagnell terminus of the London and North Western railway. The parish was situated in the Northern division of the county and within the county court district of Newport Pagnell, rural deanery of Bletchley, archdeaconry of Buckingham and diocese of Oxford. The parish church of All Saints is described in some detail as are some of the of the notable members of the parish buried within the precincts of the church, such as Louis Atterbury, D. D., buried in 1693, the father of the Bishop of Rochester. The parish registers for the church are recorded as dating from 1559 and the living a rectory with an annual value of £300 with 48 acres of glebe. Lord of the manor was The Rt. Hon. George Henry Finch, who was also the principal landlord. The soil of the parish was mainly clay, with subsoil of gravel and sand on which the crops of wheat, beans, barley and oats were the main crops. The parish contained 1,899 acres with a population in 1901 of 219, primarily situated in the village. The village itself contained a shop, post office and elementary school for 60 children, with 34 pupils in daily attendance. The entry for Milton Keynes is concluded by a list of the principal residents and commercial interests in the parish. While Milton Keynes was, in 1903, is a relatively small hamlet within the county of Buckinghamshire as a whole, the level of detail recorded here is typical throughout the directory. This edition of Kelly's Directory of Buckinghamshire is prefaced by a topographical and geological description of the county and is concluded with an extensive alphabetical list of the county's chief residents and commercial interests, which could be found across the length and breadth of the county in 1903. In addition to these expected but key features of any useful directory this edition also includes some 64 pages of full and half-page advertisements, many containing useful sketches and photographs from the period. For anyone with even the slightest interest in the residents, topography of descriptions of the county of Buckinghamshire this fully-searchable 1903 edition of Kelly's Directory of Oxfordshire is heartily recommended.

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