The first known documentary reference to Wendover, then known as
Wændofron, is in the will of
Ælfheah, the
ealdorman of
Hampshire, and dates from between 965 and 971. Prior to the
Norman Conquest, the manor, which at the time measured 24
hides in area, was held by
Edward the Confessor. The settlement appears to have been centred some to the south of the present-day focus of the town, near the current location of the parish church of St Mary. By 1086, the manor of
Wendovre was in the
hundred of
Aylesbury, with
William the Conqueror as its tenant in chief. The manor remained in royal ownership until 1154, and then passed back and forth between royal and private ownership several times. Wendover was granted a
market charter in 1214, and had become a
borough by 1228, although it does not appear to have achieved any degree of self-government. It is likely that around this time the focus moved north to its current location, allowing the market to cater to traffic on the road running along the Chilterns between
Chinnor and
Tring, as well as that crossing the Chilterns between London and Aylesbury. The current layout of the older parts of the town show clear signs of
medieval town planning, especially the presence of long, narrow and rectilinear
burgage plots. The 1841 census reveal the population that year was 1,877.
Robert Louis Stevenson, the writer of famous works such as
Treasure Island and the
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, stayed a night at The Red Lion, in October 1874, which he wrote about in an essay called "An Autumn Effect". In 1913
Alfred de Rothschild invited the
Royal Flying Corps to conduct manoeuvres on his land in the adjacent manor of
Halton, and the land continued to be used by the
British Army throughout the
First World War. In 1916 the Royal Flying Corps moved its air mechanics school from
Farnborough, Hampshire to Halton, and in 1917, the school was permanently accommodated there, in what was to become the current
RAF Halton. Whilst the base is not in the parish of Wendover, its close proximity impacted on the town, and the surrounding landscape, due to the associated population increases and deforestation to provide wood for construction work. In the latter part of the twentieth century, a number of large scale residential developments appeared, particularly to the north of the town. In 1998, the Wendover
bypass was built, moving the
A413 road west of the town centre, paralleling the railway line. Property values rose significantly in the years after the completion of the bypass, which removed a lot of traffic from the town's narrow streets. In 2010, the proposed route the
High Speed 2 rail line (HS2) from London to the Midlands was published, showing it taking a route in tunnel to the west of the bypass and town centre. As part of a wider campaign against the route, a Wendover lobby group was formed, with a 300 strong protest filmed by the BBC in December 2010. However, despite the opposition, the HS2 bill was passed in 2016. In 2017, construction contracts were signed. In 2019, the Wendover community launched WRAP (Wendover Resettlement Assistance Project), a project in partnership with
CitizensUK. ==Geography ==