Woburn, Bedfordshire

Description
Woburn, a market-town and parish, the head of a union and petty sessional division, Beds. The town stands 2 1/2 miles SE of Woburn Sands station on the Bedford and Bletchley branch of the L. & N.W.R., and 14 SW of Bedford. It grew adjacent to a Cistercian abbey founded in 1145 by Hugh de Bolebec; was visited in 1572 by Queen Elizabeth, and in 1595 was almost wholly destroyed by fire. It is now a clean well-built town, consisting of good streets intersecting one another at right angles. Lace-making and the manufacture of straw-plait are carried on, but not to any great extent. There is a weekly market held on Friday, and fairs on 1 Jan., 23 March, 13 July, and 6 Oct. The town-hall, which stands near the centre of the town, was erected in 1830 and is used for the petty sessions, and also for concerts and entertainments. There is an institute and reading-room with a library, and there is a county police station. The workhouse is a plain building with capacity for 240 inmates. Acreage of parish, 3446; population, 1193. There is a parish council of thirteen members and a chairman. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Ely; net value, £304 with residence, in the gift of the Duke of Bedford. The church, erected on a different site in 1868 at a cost of £35,000, defrayed by the then Duke of Bedford, is a fine building in the Continental Gothic style of the 13th century, consisting of chancel, nave, aisles, vestry, organ loft, and a tower 110 feet high. The old church was pulled down in 1868, except the tower, which contains a peal of eight bells, and from which the spire was removed as unsafe in 1893. A mortuary chapel has been built adjoining the tower. There are Congregational and Wesleyan chapels, and almshouses for twenty poor persons.