Beaconsfield: Guide

Beaconsfield is a market town in Buckinghamshire, England lying almost 25 miles NW of London. The town sits in the Chiltern Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and is part of the London commuter belt, thus the average cost of housing in the town is high. It is in the South Bucks local government district, which was known as the Beaconsfield district from 1974 to 1980. The population is around 11,000.

The parish is mainly given over arable land though some forest remains from that was planted to supply the furniture industry of High Wycombe. The parish church is dedicated to Mary, the mother of Jesus|St Mary.

The first written reference to Beaconsfield dates from 1185 where it is spelt Bekenesfeld, although this is mistakenly thought to mean the ¨field by the beacon¨ it may alternatively mean the ¨clearing in the beeches¨ (old Saxon) and the town's icon is indeed a beech tree. Although the name has been spelt with an ´A´ during modern times the name is prounounced as Beckonsfield.

An annual fair is traditionally held on May 10. Its charter originally allowed for a yearly market for the trading of goods and livestock, but it has now developed into a funfair. In recent years some residents have opposed the fair as a hindrance to the Old Town, and have called for it to be scrapped even though the fair has been going for over 735 years.

In the Victorian era the town was the home constituency of Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1868 and then again from 1874 until 1880. In 1876 he was made the 1st Earl of Beaconsfield by Victoria of the United Kingdom|Queen Victoria. It was due to this that Beaconsfield became a popular road name in industrial cities across the country in the late Victorian period.

Dominic Grieve is the Member of Parliament for Beaconsfield, first elected in 1997, and now the shadow Attorney-General. Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom famously contested the seat in a by-election in 1982 and lost.

Today the town is very prosperous and quite picturesque. It is the home of Bekonscot model village, the National Film and Television School, and it is the birthplace of Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series of fantasy novels. Some scenes in Brief Encounter, a classic film about a woman in a dull middle-class marriage who undertakes an affair, were filmed in the town.

It is the burial place of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Edmund Burke and Edmund Waller.

The town is served by a Beaconsfield railway station|railway station on the Chiltern Line out of Marylebone station|Marylebone towards High Wycombe and Birmingham Snow Hill station|Birmingham Snow Hill. Old Beaconsfield which grew up on the Oxford Road in part to serve the coach traffic, is now mirrored by New Beaconsfield which has grown up round the station to the north.

Famous residents