Woburn, Bedfordshire : Historical writing

Descriptive gazetteer entries

These other entries in our collection of descriptive gazetteers are also about Woburn. You may be able to find further references to Woburn in the descriptive gazetteers by doing a full-text search here.

Place Type of entry Source
Woburn market town and parish Bartholomew
WOBURN a small town, a parish, a sub-district, and a district Imperial

Travel writing

This website includes the complete texts of books describing journeys around Britain, written between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries. Selecting one of the links below will take you to the first reference to Woburn within the selected text. This will not always be a description of a visit: travellers often mention places other than where they are, for example as a basis for comparison.

Traveller Section No. of Refs.
Robert Gammage Gammage's first letter to the Chronicle 4
Daniel Defoe Letter 7, Part 2: East Midlands 3
Thomas Pennant Tyringham to Woburn 3
John Byng A Tour of Bedfordshire in 1794: May 1
William Camden Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire 1
Paul Hentzner A tour to Cambridge, Oxford and Windsor 1
Thomas Pennant Combe Abbey to Stow Nine Churches 1
Thomas Pennant Ampthill to Luton 1

This website includes two large libraries, of historical travel writing and of entries from nineteenth century gazetteers describing places. We have text from these sources available for these places near your location:

Place Mentioned in Travel Writing Mentioned in Historical Gazetteer
Potsgrove 1 2
Husborne Crawley 0 2
Milton Bryan 0 2
Aspley Guise 1 2
Eversholt 0 2
Woburn Sands 1 2
Little Brickhill 4 2
Heath and Reach 0 2
Ridgmont 3 2
Battlesden 1 2
Wavendon 0 2
Bow Brickhill 0 2
Great Brickhill 1 3
Tingrith 0 2
Hockliffe 10 2
Holcot 0 2
Steppingley 0 2
Walton 0 2
Manshead 0 2
Lidlington 0 2

Names from historical writing

The following appear as names for Woburn. Follow the links for what the author actually said:

Name Author Source
WOBURN John Bartholomew Gazetteer of the British Isles (Edinburgh: Bartholomew, 1887).
John Marius Wilson Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (Edinburgh: A Fullarton & Co., 1870-72).
WOOBURN John Byng The Torrington Diaries: Containing the tours through England And Wales of the Hon. John Byng (Later Fifth Viscount Torrington) between the years 1781 and 1794 (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1938).
Daniel Defoe A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain, divided into circuits or journies (London: JM Dent and Co, 1927).

NB: These variant names come from our collections of historical travel writing and descriptive gazetteers:

  • The above links take you to the first reference to this particular version of the name within a book of travel writing, or to the relevant gazetteer entry.
  • Some names may derive from research by antiquarian writers such as William Camden and Thomas Pennant into the Roman, Saxon and medieval names of places. Their claims are not always supported by modern place-name researchers.
  • References by travel writers to the place using its "normal" name are not included. Descriptive gazetteer entries are included only if the name does not appear anywhere else.