Wing
| Wing | |
| Buckinghamshire | |
|---|---|
 All Saints' Church, Wing | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SP882229 |
| Location: | 51°53’53"N, -0°43’1"W |
| Data | |
| Population: | 2,897 (2001) |
| Post town: | Leighton Buzzard |
| Postcode: | LU7 |
| Dialling code: | 01296 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Buckinghamshire |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Buckingham |
Wing is a large village in Buckinghamshire. It stands on the main A418 road between Aylesbury and Leighton Buzzard, 8 miles north-east of Aylesbury and 3 miles west of Leighton Buzzard. The village is famous for its remarkable Anglo-Saxon churches, one of the best in Britain, and one of the oldest churches in the country.
One feature of Wing is its surprising number of public houses. For a village of under 5,000 people, there are three pubs and a social club. Perhaps not unrelated is the fact that Wing is one of the few villages in Buckinghamshire to have its own police station.
Ascott House, a home of the Rothschild family, is situated in the parish.
All Saints
All Saints' Church stands in the heart of the village as it has done for over a thousand years. Much of the church form the outside looks gothic, but these are mediaeval extensions to an Anglo-Saxon structure. The visitor is first greeted on approach by the church's oldest part; at the eastern end of the church stands a polygonal sanctuary, suggesting a ninth century date. Beneath, and still visible is an undercroft which may have served as an ambulatory like the similar partially subterranean ambulatory at Brixworth in Northamptonshire.[1]. The nave is essentially Anglo-Saxon, punched through with round Norman arches when aisles were added at each side, and extended upward later.
It is unusual among religious buildings of this age for the church and abbey to be built apart: if they were built at the same time it was normal for them to be constructed within the same complex of buildings. One possible explanation for this is that the church was built on a pre-existing religious site, which the evidence in the village's name and in the aforementioned archaeological finds appears to suggest.
The church contains a number of particularly fine monuments, including the "purest Renaissance monument of the mid-16th century" to Sir Robert Dormer (d.1552) and a wall monument by Louis-François Roubiliac. A traditional lych gate stands at the entrance to the churchyard.
The BBC television programme Meet the Ancestors came to Wing in 2000 and recreated the face of an Anglo-Saxon girl found buried in the old graveyard.
History
The village appears in Old English around 966–975 as Weowungum (in the dative plural case, which would be Weowungas in the nominative). The name’s menaing is uncertain but has been suggested as "Wiwa's folk", or "dwellers at a temple" or it could even be "fields of woe".[2] The nearby villages of Wingrave and Wingbury appear to have the same etymology or to derive from the name if Wing. Wing is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Witehunge. If the name does refer to a heathen temple, its remains are unknown but might lie beneath the church.
An ancient track, part of the prehistoric Icknield Way once passed through the village. This was still the main route from east to west in use in the Middle Ages and led to an increase in the village's size.
As early as the 7th century, there was an abbey near the village at Ascott, Buckinghamshire|Ascott, that had been built by an unknown royal from the Kingdom of Wessex and given to a Benedictine convent in Angers. The Anglo-Saxon church in Wing, dedicated to All Saints, was also built at about this time by St Birinus, however evidence found in the 15th century during extensive renovations on the church suggest a Roman structure had stood on this site beforehand. Roman tiles may also be found in the ceiling of the crypt of the church.[3]
"Wings Off Wing"
Wing leapt to fame in the 20th century when the location of a new London airport was being discussed and Wing was one of the prime locations proposed for it. A community campaign was organised, called the 'Wings Off Wing Campaign', and was successful: the airport at Heathrow was expanded instead. A World War II-vintage RAF airfield at Wing is now a chicken farm, though the layout of the runways can still be discerned from the air.
References
- ↑ Early English Art and Architecture, Lloyd and Jennifer Laing
- ↑ The Oxford Dictionary of Place Names by A D Mills 1991
- ↑ All Saints Church history