Village History

Granborough lies in North Buckinghamshire and has a total population of 535 residing in 235 households. Of the total population, 100 are young people under the age of 18, 335 are of working age and 100 are of pensionable age.

Granborough is a parish of 1,580 acres in the Buckinghamshire Hundred of Waddesdon. It is situated nine miles north of Aylesbury and adjoins the small market town of Winslow. Today Granborough remains a rural village with farming the predominant business. The village has St John the Baptist Church, the Village Hall built in 1910, The Crown public house, a children’s play area and Coronation Meadow. We share the sports field and North Marston C of E Primary School with North Marston.

The Parish of Granborough—formerly Grandborough—in the hundred of Ashendon covers some 1,580 acres two miles south of Winslow. The name has Anglo-Saxon origins and the village appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as ‘Grenesberga’, meaning ‘green hill’.

The manor was given by King Offa to the Abbey at St Albans in 792. Following the dissolution of the monasteries in 1547 it passed back to the Crown until 1699, then came into the ownership of the Lowndes family of Winslow Hall until 1924.

The ancient church, dedicated to St John the Baptist, was demolished during the Civil War but rebuilt in 1685 after the restoration of the monarchy. The earliest government census in 1801 recorded 230 inhabitants living in 44 houses. This climbed to 374 in 1861 and then fell to fewer than 300 at the turn of the twentieth century.

Three public houses served the community in the 1800s: The Sovereign Inn, The Red Lion and The Crown. Only The Crown remains today; its car park occupies the site of The Sovereign and The Red Lion is now a private residence.

Agriculture once dominated local employment. The population declined during the nineteenth century and rose again when buses and motor cars enabled residents to work in nearby towns. The name Granborough means green hill or fortified place.