Stony Stratford
Coordinates: 52 ° 3 ′ N , 0 ° 51 ′ W
Stony Stratford (often short: Stony ) is a town in the northeast of the Borough of Milton Keynes , which until 1997 formed the northern part of Buckinghamshire . It is on the Northamptonshire border on the banks of the Great Ouse . Before Stony Stratford was granted New City status in the 1960s, it was part of the Wolverton borough . Stony Stratford, together with the neighboring city of Wolverton, has around 64,000 inhabitants.
history
The name of the place, literally: street ford, refers to the ford of the Roman Watling Street over the Great Ouse. The addition "Stony" refers to the stony river bed and distinguishes the place from nearby Fenny Stratford , that is Stratford located in the swamps.
Stony Stratford was granted market rights in 1194 by King Richard the Lionheart . In 1290 the Eleanor Cross was erected in the village , a cross in honor of Eleanor of Castile , which, however , fell victim to the English Civil War . The Rose and Crowns Inn is believed to have been the place where the heirs to the throne of the House of York, the brothers Edward V and Richard of Shrewsbury , were last seen alive in 1483. Here her uncle, Richard III. to take them to London . There he rose to be king himself and had the two “princes in the tower” thrown into prison. Her further fate is not completely clear; it is generally believed that they were murdered there on Richard's orders.
In 1736 and 1742, Stony Stratford was the victim of major fires; only the tower of the Church of St. Mary Magdalen survived the disaster unscathed.
In pre-industrial times, Stony Stratford was an important stop on the stagecoach route along old Watling Street. At the beginning of the 19th century, no less than 250 carriages stopped here a day. In 1838 the neighboring Wolverton received a station on the London – Birmingham route on the West Coast Main Line. Stony Stratford only regained importance for road traffic with the connection to the A5.
The city today
Today, Stony Stratford is a bustling market town on the outskirts of Milton Keynes and is popular for its picturesque townscape. Visitors travel from far and wide to visit the numerous pubs, restaurants and shops and especially to take part in the annual folk festival Folk on the green in early June . The English expression cock-and-bull-story , which is used for a particularly unbelievable story, is named after two pubs in the city, The Cock and The Bull , which frequent travelers who apparently like to hear stories about Munchausen Gave the best.
