Hunter Street crosses the River Great Ouse over the Lord’s Bridge. For thousands of years the bridge that crossed the river here was wooden and repeatedly subjected to flooding. The current stone bridge was built in 1846, at the same time as the redirection of the river. The original line of the River Great Ouse ran through where the railway embankment was built.
The weir known as The Flosh is upstream of Town Mill (now Tanlaw Mill) and it was built to maintain water levels in the mill leat. Why it received its name ‘The Flosh’ we don’t know, for that word is usually associated with stagnant ponds. The round stone markers you can see under the water are actually old mill stones.
This Mill location (and the original Buckingham Church) are so ancient they appear in the Doomsday book, along with speculation about how much bigger the town could grow.
Digital image of the Doomsday book © Crown Copyright, with permission from the National Archives.