Westcott, Buckinghamshire

Westcott railway station was a small station built to serve the village of Westcott, Buckinghamshire, and nearby buildings attached to Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild's estate at Waddesdon Manor. It was built by the Duke of Buckingham in 1871 as part of a short horse-drawn tramway to allow for the transport of goods from and around his extensive estates in Buckinghamshire and to connect the Duke's estates to the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway at Quainton Road. A lobbying campaign by residents of the town of Brill led to the tramway being converted for passenger use and extended to Brill railway station in 1872, becoming known as the Brill Tramway. Cheaply built and ungraded, and using poor quality locomotives, services on the line were very slow, initially limited to 5 miles per hour (8 km/h). In the 1890s it was planned to extend the tramway to Oxford, but the scheme was abandoned. Instead, the operation of the line was taken over by the Metropolitan Railway in 1899. Following the 1933 transfer of the Metropolitan Railway to public ownership to become the Metropolitan line of London Transport, Westcott station became a part of the London Underground, despite being over 40 miles (64 km) from central London. The management of London Transport believed it very unlikely that the line could ever be made viable, and Westcott station was closed, along with the rest of the line, from 30 November 1935. The station building and its associated house are the only significant buildings from the Brill Tramway to survive other than the former junction station at Quainton Road.

Waddesdon Road railway station, called Waddesdon railway station before 1922, was a small halt in open countryside in Buckinghamshire, England. It was opened in 1871 as part of a short horse-drawn tramway to assist with the transport of goods from and around the Duke of Buckingham's extensive estates in Buckinghamshire and to connect the Duke's estates to the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway at Quainton Road. In 1872 the line was expanded and converted for passenger use, becoming known as the Brill Tramway. In 1899 the operation of the line was taken over by the London-based Metropolitan Railway. In 1933 the Metropolitan Railway was taken into public ownership to become the Metropolitan line of the London Underground, and despite its rural setting Waddesdon Road station became a part of the London Transport system. The new management could not see a future for the line as a financially viable passenger route, and Waddesdon Road, along with the rest of the former Brill Tramway, was closed in late 1935. The station was heavily used for the transport of construction materials during the building of Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild's estate at Waddesdon Manor in the 1870s and 1880s, but aside from that it saw little use. The station was inconveniently sited and served by few passenger trains, and other more frequently served stations were in easy walking distance. In 1932, the last full year of operations prior to the Metropolitan Railway being taken into public ownership, the station was used for only 281 passenger journeys and generated just £4 of passenger revenue.

The Rocket Propulsion Establishment at Westcott, Buckinghamshire on the site of the former RAF Westcott has made a number of notable contributions in the field of rocket propulsion, including input on the rocket design for the Blue Streak missile and the propulsion systems on Chevaline. It was also known as the Guided Projectiles Establishment and PERME Westcott (Propellants, Explosives and Rocket Motor Establishment, Westcott). For many years this establishment was regarded as so secret that it was not marked on Ordnance Survey maps, although it was present, from necessity, on maps for the use of pilots.

Waddesdon Manor is a country house in the village of Waddesdon, in Buckinghamshire, England. Owned by the National Trust and managed by the Rothschild Foundation, it is one of the National Trust's most visited properties, with over 463,000 visitors in 2019.The Grade I listed house was built in a mostly Neo-Renaissance style, copying individual features of several French châteaux, between 1874 and 1889 for Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild (1839–1898) as a weekend residence for entertaining and to house his collection of arts and antiquities. As the manor and estate have passed through three generations of the Rothschild family, the contents of the house have expanded to become one of the most rare and valuable collections in the world. In 1957, James de Rothschild bequeathed the house and its contents to the National Trust, opening the house and gardens for the benefit of the general public. Unusually for a National Trust property, the family of James Rothschild, the donor, manage the house. The Rothschild Foundation, chaired by Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild, acts as custodian and continues to invest in the property.

MAD About Waddesdon is an annual festival of Music, Art, Drama and Dance, involving young people from local schools and community groups. It is held in the grounds of Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire over a weekend at the end of June, beginning of July. It was first held in 2006 and attracted over 10,000 visitors, with over 3,000 young people performing across four stages. Headline acts have included Katherine Jenkins, Russell Watson and Jools Holland. The festival ran every year until 2014, when it took a year off.

Flint House is a domestic dwelling on the Waddesdon Estate, Buckinghamshire, England. It was commissioned by Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild, and completed in 2015, winning that year's RIBA House of the Year Award. The architect was Charlotte Skene Catling, a partner of Skene Catling de la Peña. The stones for the exterior were hand-knapped by master flint knappers John Lord and Simon Williams in Norfolk. The interiors were decorated and furnished by David Mlinaric, using an eclectic mix of modern contemporary pieces and older items from the Rothschild collection. The ethos of the house is that it blends and harmonises with the surrounding landscape and environment. The site chosen for the house, is an isolated spot at the heart of the Waddesdon estate in open countryside surrounded by grass pastures and arable fields. It can be accessed only by a narrow unmetalled track. While it is only a few hundred metres from its nearest neighbours, the new Rothschild Archive building and a farm cottage, a fold in the landscape prevents the sight of buildings from the house and enhances its senses of isolation and being in nature. Its architect has described the house as "jutting from the ground like a collision of tectonic plates".The house was given to the Rothschild Foundation, and is used to accommodate visitors including academics and artists working on projects at Waddesdon Manor, and the Rothschild Getty Fellow when at Waddesdon. It can be visited by arrangement at certain times.

Akeman Street was a railway station at Woodham, Buckinghamshire, where the railway linking Ashendon Junction and Grendon Underwood Junction crossed the Akeman Street Roman road (now the A41 road).

St Michael and All Angels’ Church, Waddesdon is a Grade II* listed parish church in the Church of England in Waddesdon, Buckinghamshire.

Woodham is a hamlet and civil parish about 7.5 miles (12.1 km) west of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. At the 2011 Census the population of the hamlet was included in the civil parish of Kingswood. The toponym is derived from the Old English for "home near a wood", referring to its proximity to the ancient Bernwood Forest. Woodham is on the ancient Akeman Street Roman road, which since the 1920s has been classified as the A41. In 1906 the Great Central Railway built a line through the parish and opened Akeman Street railway station where it crossed the main road at Woodham. The station had a short working life, being closed by the GCR's successor the London and North Eastern Railway in 1930.

Quainton Road railway station was opened in 1868 in under-developed countryside near Quainton, in the English county of Buckinghamshire, 44 miles (71 km) from London. Built by the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway, it was the result of pressure from the 3rd Duke of Buckingham to route the railway near his home at Wotton House and to open a railway station at the nearest point to it. Serving a relatively underpopulated area, Quainton Road was a crude railway station, described as "extremely primitive". The Duke of Buckingham built a short horse-drawn tramway to transport goods between his estates at Wotton and a terminus adjacent to the station. He extended it soon afterwards to provide a passenger service to the town of Brill, and the tramway was converted to locomotive operation, known as the Brill Tramway. All goods to and from the Brill Tramway passed through Quainton Road, making it relatively heavily used despite its geographical isolation, and traffic increased further when construction began on Ferdinand de Rothschild's mansion of Waddesdon Manor. The plan of extending the Brill Tramway to Oxford, which would have made Quainton Road a major junction station, was abandoned. Instead, the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway and the Brill Tramway were absorbed by London's Metropolitan Railway (MR), which already operated the line from Aylesbury to London. The MR rebuilt Quainton Road and re-sited it to a more convenient location, allowing through running between the Brill Tramway and the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway. When the Great Central Railway (GCR) from the north of England opened, Quainton Road became a significant junction at which trains from four directions met, and by far the busiest of the MR's rural stations. In 1933 the Metropolitan Railway was taken into public ownership to become the Metropolitan line of the London Passenger Transport Board's London Underground, including Quainton Road. The LPTB aimed to move away from freight operations, and saw no way in which the rural parts of the MR could be made into viable passenger routes. In 1935 the Brill Tramway was closed. From 1936 Underground trains were withdrawn north of Aylesbury, leaving the London and North Eastern Railway (successor to the GCR) as the only operator using the station, although Underground services were restored for a short period in the 1940s. In 1963 stopping passenger services were withdrawn but fast passenger trains continued to pass through. In 1966 the line was closed to passenger traffic and local goods trains ceased using the station. The line through the station was singled and used by occasional freight trains only. In 1969 the Quainton Road Society was formed with the aim of preserving the station. In 1971, it absorbed the London Railway Preservation Society, taking over its collection of historic railway equipment including many locomotives, and passenger and non-passenger rolling stock. The station was fully restored and reopened as a museum, the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre. In addition to the locomotives, stock, and original station buildings, the museum has also acquired the former Oxford Rewley Road railway station and a London Transport building from Wembley Park, both of which have been reassembled on the site. Although no scheduled trains pass through Quainton Road, the station remains connected to the railway network. Freight trains still use this line, and passenger trains still call at the station for special events at the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre.

Buckinghamshire Railway Centre is a railway museum operated by the Quainton Railway Society Ltd. at Quainton Road railway station, about 5 miles (8.0 km) west of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, England. The site is divided into two halves which are joined by two foot-bridges, one of which provides wheelchair access. Each side has a demonstration line with various workshop buildings as well as museum buildings.

Ashendon is a small village and civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England. It is about nine miles west of Aylesbury and seven miles north of Thame. The toponym is derived from the Old English for "Hill overgrown with ash trees". The Domesday Book of 1086 records the village as the property of the Grenville family; it was called Assedune. The original name refers to the fact that in Saxon times this area was forested, serving as hunting land for the king. In recent times the manor of Ashendon passed into the hands of the Marquis of Buckingham. Included in with the parish of Ashendon are the hamlets of Upper Pollicott and Lower Pollicott. The names of these hamlets derive from the Anglo-Saxon Pol's Cottage. In the less distant past, Ashendon was an entirely farming village and, at present, there is still much agricultural activity within the village. However, some of the farmhouses have been converted into private residences, the best example of this being Ashendon Farm and its barns. Although Ashendon is a small village, in comparison with many nearby Buckinghamshire villages, it has a pub, a recreational playing field, a church and a thriving social club. One mile south-west of the village, near Lower Pollicott, on the Chiltern Main Line between Princes Risborough and Bicester North, is the site of the former Ashendon Junction, which was an elaborate flying junction engineered for a high-speed turnout on to the now-dismantled link to the now disused Great Central Main Line at Grendon Underwood Junction. In former times this route was used by express trains between London Marylebone, Leicester and Sheffield.