The parish church is built in on what is thought to be a motte. A castle at this site was first mentioned in documentary sources in 1154-64 and was possibly demolished 1208-1215, although a Constable of Buckingham is documented in 1280. Levelled in 1777 for the churchyard which now occupies it. In 1877 excavations at the back of the Wesleyan chapel exposed foundations probably associated with the castle. (Pastscape)
The settlement or ” ham ” of the Bokings lay northward of the Thames in the upper valley of the Ouse, and after the establishment of the Danelaw was the most southern of the Danish settlements in Mid-Britain, forming, with Bedford and Huntingdon, a line of towns which held the Ouse valley. The Saxon Chronicle relates that Edward the Elder, in 918, attacked the Danes in this post, and captured it after a siege of four weeks, when the remaining posts were surrendered to him. It is not likely that the fort in question was of masonry, and there appears to be no record or tradition concerning the later fortress erected on the same site. Speed’s map, published in 1610, shows the town of Buckingham surrounded on every side except the N. by the river Ouse, and it had a castle, which had then been “long ruinous”, in the midst. This castle must have been removed not long after, since, in 1670, there were no traces of it existing, and its site formed then a bowling-green, which was much frequented by the gentlemen of the county. Since that time the new parish church was erected on the ground. In 1821, as some workmen were digging out a cellar on the slope of the church hill, they came on a part of the foundations of the old castle; the wall itself was of considerable thickness, being composed of unhewn stones of the cornbrash limestone, which is still in use in the neighbourhood. These were probably the remains of the Norman castle built soon after the Conquest by Walter Giffard, first Norman Earl of Buckingham. (Castles Of England, Sir James D. Mackenzie, 1896)
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