Darts or dart-throwing is a competitive sport in which two or more players bare-handedly throw small sharp-pointed missiles known as darts at a round target known as a dartboard.

Points can be scored by hitting specific marked areas of the board, though unlike in sports such as archery, these areas are distributed all across the board and do not follow a principle of points increasing toward the board's bullseye. Though a number of similar games using various boards and rules exist, the term "darts" usually now refers to a standardised game involving a specific board design and set of rules.

Darts is both a professional shooting sport and a traditional pub game.  Darts is commonly played in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, and recreationally enjoyed around the world.

History

Dartboard

The original target in the game is likely to have been a section of a tree trunk, its circular shape and concentric rings giving rise to the standard dartboard pattern in use today.  An older name for a dartboard is "butt"; the word comes from the French word , meaning "target" or "goal".

The standard numbered point system is attributed to Lancashire carpenter Brian Gamlin, who devised it in 1896 to penalise inaccuracy, though this is disputed. Many configurations have been used, varying by time and location. In particular, the Yorkshire and Manchester Log End boards differ from the standard board in that they have no triple, only double and bullseye.  The Manchester board is smaller than the standard, with a playing area of only  across, with double and bull areas measuring just .  The London Fives board is another variation, with only 12 equal segments, with the doubles and trebles being a quarter of an inch (6.35 mm) wide.

Mathematically, removing the rotational symmetry by placing the "20" at the top, there are 19 factorial, or 121,645,100,408,832,000 possible dartboards. Many different layouts would penalise a player more than the current setup; however, the current setup actually does the job rather efficiently. There have been several mathematical papers published that consider the "optimal" dartboard.

Before World War I, pubs in the United Kingdom had dartboards made from solid blocks of wood, usually elm. But darts pocked the surface of elm such that it was common for a hole to develop around the treble twenty. The other problem was that elm wood needed periodic soaking to keep the wood soft.

In 1935, chemist Ted Leggatt and pub owner Frank Dabbs began using the century plant, a type of agave, to make dartboards. Small bundles of sisal fibres of the same length were bundled together. The bundles were then compressed into a disk and bound with a metal ring. This new dartboard was an instant success. It was more durable and required little maintenance.  Furthermore, darts did little or no damage to the board; they simply parted the packed fibres when they entered the board.

Darts

The earliest darts were stubs of arrows or crossbow bolts. The first purpose-made darts were manufactured from solid wood, wrapped with a strip of lead for weight and fitted with flights made from split turkey feathers. These darts were mainly produced in France and became known as French darts. Metal barrels were patented in 1906, but wood continued to be used into the 1950s.

The first metal barrels were made from brass which was relatively cheap and easy to work. The wooden shafts, threaded to fit the tapped barrel, were either fletched as before or designed to take a paper flight. This type of dart continued to be used into the 1970s. With the widespread use of plastic, the shaft and flight came to be manufactured separately, although one-piece moulded plastic shaft and flight darts were also available.

Equipment

Dartboard
According to the Darts Regulation Authority, a regulation board is  in diameter and is divided into 20 radial sections. Each section is separated with metal wire or a thin band of sheet metal.

Quality dartboards are still made of sisal fibres from Eastern Africa, Brazil, and China; less expensive boards are sometimes made of cork or coiled paper.

Darts
Modern darts are made up of four components: the points, the barrels, the shafts and the flights.

The points come in two common lengths,  and are sometimes knurled or coated to improve players' grip. Others are designed to retract slightly on impact to lessen the chance of the dart bouncing out.

The barrels come in a variety of weights and are usually constructed from brass, silver-nickel, or a tungsten alloy. Brass is cheap but light and therefore brass barrels tend to be very bulky. Tungsten, on the other hand, is twice as dense as brass; thus a tungsten barrel of equivalent weight could be thirty percent smaller in diameter than a brass one. Pure tungsten is very brittle, however, so an alloy is commonly used, with between 80 and 95 percent tungsten and the remainder usually nickel, iron, or copper. Silver-nickel darts offer a compromise between density and cost. Barrels come in three basic shapes: cylindrical, ton, or torpedo.

 Cylindrical barrels are the same diameter along their entire length and so tend to be long and thin. Their slenderness makes them better for grouping, but because they are long, the centre of gravity is further back.
 Ton-shaped barrels are thin at either end and bulge in the middle. This makes them fatter than a cylindrical barrel of equivalent weight but the centre of gravity is further forward and so theoretically easier to throw.
 Torpedo-shaped barrels are widest at the pointed end and taper towards the rear. This shape keeps the bulk of the weight as far forward as possible but, like the ton, gives it a larger diameter than the cylinder.

The shafts are manufactured in various lengths, and some are designed to be cut to length. Shafts are generally made from plastics, nylon polymers, or metals such as aluminium and titanium; and can be rigid or flexible. Longer shafts provide greater stability and allow a reduction in flight size which in turn can lead to closer grouping; but, they also shift the weight towards the rear causing the dart to tilt backwards during flight, requiring a harder, faster throw.

The flight stabilizes the dart by producing drag, thus preventing the rear of the dart from overtaking the point. Modern flights are generally made from plastic, nylon, or foil and are available in a range of shapes and sizes. The three most common shapes in order of size are the standard, the kite, and the smaller pear shape. The less surface area, the less stability but larger flights hamper close grouping. Some manufacturers have sought to solve this by making a flight long and thin but this, in turn, creates other problems such as changing the dart's centre of gravity. Generally speaking, a heavier dart will require a larger flight.

The choice of barrel, shaft, and flight will depend a great deal on the individual player's throwing style. For competitive purposes, a dart cannot weigh more than  including the shaft and flight and cannot exceed a total length of .

Playing dimensions

The World Darts Federation uses the following standards for play:

Height: the dartboard is hung so that the centre of the bull's eye is  from the floor. This is considered eye-level for a  tall person.
Distance: the oche (line behind which the thrower must stand) should be  from the face of the board. If the face projects outward from the wall, owing to the thickness of the board and/or a cabinet in which it is mounted, the oche must be moved back appropriately to maintain the required distance.

The regulations came about owing to the United Kingdom and the rest of the world playing at different lengths, with  being the compromise length.

Scoring

The standard dartboard is divided into 20 numbered sections, scoring from 1 to 20 points, by wires running from the small central circle to the outer circular wire. Circular wires within the outer wire subdivide each section into single, double and treble areas. The dartboard featured on The Indoor League television show of the 1970s did not feature a treble section, and according to host Fred Trueman during the first episode, this is the traditional Yorkshire board.

Various games are played using the standard dartboard. However, in the official game, any dart landing inside the outer wire scores as follows:
 Hitting one of the large portions of each of the numbered sections, traditionally alternately coloured black and white, scores the point value of that section.
 Hitting the thin inner portions of these sections, roughly halfway between the outer wire and the central circle coloured red or green, scores triple the point value of that section.
 Hitting the thin outer portions of these sections, again coloured red or green, scores double the point value of that section. The double-20 is often referred to as double-top, reflecting the 20's position on the dartboard.
The central circle is divided into a green outer ring worth 25 points (known as "outer", "outer bull", or "single bull") and a red or black inner circle (usually known as "bull", "inner bull" or "double bull"), worth 50 points. The term "bullseye" can mean either the whole central part of the board or just the inner red/black section. The term "bull's ring" usually means just the green outer ring. The inner bull counts as a double when doubling in or out.
Hitting outside the outer wire scores nothing.
 A dart only scores if its point is embedded in or is touching the playing surface. This rule applies to any dart that lands in such a way as to be partially or totally supported by others that have already hit the board.
 When a standard board is used, any dart whose point does not remain in contact with the playing surface until being collected by the player does not score. This includes darts that bounce off the board for any reason, that fall off on their own, or that are dislodged by the impact of later throws. However, when an electronic board is used, fallen/dislodged darts do score as long as their impacts have registered on the board first.

The highest score possible with three darts is 180, commonly known as a "ton 80" (100 points is called a ton), obtained when all three darts land in the triple 20. In the televised game, the referee frequently announces a score of 180 in exuberant style.

Finishing and check outs
Once a player reaches a low enough score, they are considered to be "on a finish", meaning they can win the game with their remaining darts. In professional matches, the match referee will usually tell the player which score they require once on a finish. As the winning dart in a game must be a double or bullseye, the highest possible finish with three darts is 170 (T20, T20, inner bull). Finishes are also known as "check outs". Regular players become familiar with the combinations needed to check out a particular number. For instance, a player on 138 could hit T20, T18, D12. Most numbers can be checked out with more than one combination (for 138, a player could also hit T19, T19, D12).

Good arithmetic is helpful, as in the event of missing a target number players need to quickly recalculate their new score and which number they now need to hit. For instance, if a player on 93 (T19, D18) hits single-19 with their first dart, they can still finish, but will now need to check out 74 (T14, D16). Checkout charts detailing which numbers are required for each particular finish are widely used.

The Quadro board
In the 1990s, a board with a "quad" ring between the triple ring and the bullseye appeared, which gave quadruple points, meaning a 240 maximum (three quad-20s), a 210 maximum checkout (Q20-Q20-Bull) and a seven-dart finish (five quad-20s, triple-17, bullseye) were possible. One make of this board was the Harrows Quadro 240.

The board was used during the short-lived WDC UK Matchplay. Although no seven dart finish was ever scored on the board, John Lowe did come close to a 9 dart finish in the 1993 PDC UK Matchplay. He scored 200 (T20-T20-Q20), then 160 (20-T20-Q20), and got his final T20 and T15, only to miss D18 on his final throw. Several players did score a 240 maximum during the event and Phil Taylor hit a 188 checkout (Q20-Q20-D14). The tournament was discontinued in 1996 and the board has not been used in a professional event since.

Skill level and aiming

Assuming standard scoring, the optimal area to aim for on the dartboard to maximize the player's score varies significantly based on the player's skill. The skilled player should aim for the centre of the T20, and as the player's skill decreases, their aim moves slightly up and to the left of the T20. At σ= 16.4mm the best place to aim jumps to the T19. As the player's skill decreases further, the best place to aim curls into the centre of the board, stopping a bit lower than and to the left of the bullseye at σ= 100mm.

Games
Many games can be played on a dartboard, but the term "darts" generally refers to a game in which one player at a time throws three darts per turn. The throwing player must stand so that no portion of their feet extends past the leading edge of the oche, but may stand on any other portion and/or lean forward over it if desired.

A game of darts is generally contested between two players, who take turns. The most common objective is to reduce a fixed score, commonly 301 or 501, to zero ("checking out") with the final dart landing in either the bullseye or a double segment to win. Not all three darts need to be thrown on the final turn; the game can be finished on any of the three darts. When two teams play, the starting score is sometimes increased to 701 or even 1001; the rules remain the same.

A throw that reduces a player's score below zero, to exactly one, or to zero but not ending with a double or bullseye is known as "going bust". The player's score is reset to its value at the start of that turn, and any remaining throws in the turn are forfeited.

In some variants, a player who busts has their score reset to its value before the individual dart that caused the bust. This rule (referred to as a "Northern Bust" in London) is considered by some players to be a purer version of the game. Under the standard rules above, a player left with a difficult finish (e.g. 5 and one dart remaining) might deliberately bust in order to revert to an earlier score that would allow an easier finish. Under Northern Bust rules, though, doing so would leave them on 5.

A darts match is played over a fixed number of games, known as legs. A match may be divided into sets, with each set being contested as over a fixed number of legs.

Although playing straight down from 501 is standard in darts, sometimes a double must be hit to begin scoring, known as "doubling in", with all darts thrown before hitting a double not being counted. The PDC's World Grand Prix uses this format.

The minimum number of thrown darts required to complete a leg of 501 is nine. The most common nine-dart finish consists of two 180 maximums followed by a 141 checkout (T20-T19-D12), but there are many other possible ways of achieving the feat. Three 167s (T20-T19-Bull) is considered a pure or perfect nine-dart finish by some players.

Other games and variants
There are several regional variations on the standard rules and scoring systems.

American darts

American darts is a regional U.S. variant of the game (most U.S. dart players play the traditional games described above). This style of dartboard is most often found in eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and parts of New York state.

Beer darts

Beer darts is a drinking game that involves throwing darts at opponents' beer cans. The resulting drinking actions depend on how and where the beer can was hit with the dart.

Belgian darts

The original name of this sport was called Vogelpik. Vogelpik is the early version of the modern game of Belgian darts. Belgian darts has remained a very popular game in the Belgian community since the 18th century. It is not only relaxing but also helps to develop coordination skills, precision and self-control. Each player has a set of four darts. Four thrown darts equals a turn. Five turns by each player constitutes a game. The dart board score starting from the outside ring are: 5 - 10 - 15 - 20 - 25 - bullseye 50. Ref.: https://www.belgiandarts.com/index.html

Cricket

Cricket is a widely played darts game involving a race to control and score on numbers between 20 and 15 and the bullseye, by hitting each of these targets for three marks to open or own it for scoring.  A hit on the target counts as one mark, while hits in the doubles ring of the target count as two marks in one throw, and on the triples ring as three. Once opened in this manner, until the opponent closes that number with three marks on it of their own, each additional hit by the owner/opener scores points equal to the number of the target (which may also be doubled and tripled, e.g. a triple-20 is worth 60 points).  The outer bullseye counts as 25 points and the inner as 50.

Dartball

Dartball is a darts game based on the sport of baseball. It is played on a diamond-shaped board and has similar scoring to baseball.

Dart golf

Dart golf is a darts game based on the sport of golf and is regulated by the World Dolf Federation (WDFF). It is played on both special golf dartboards and traditional dartboards. Scoring is similar to golf.

Fives

This is a regional variant still played in some parts of the East End of London. The board has fewer, larger segments, all numbered either 5, 10, 15 or 20. Players play down from 505 rather than 501, and stand the farthest  away from the board of any mainstream variation.

Halve it

"Halve it" is a darts game popular in the United Kingdom and parts of North America where competitors try to hit previously agreed targets on a standard dart board.
Failure to do so within a single throw (3 darts) results in the player losing half their accumulated score. Any number of players can take part and the game can vary in length depending on the number of targets selected.
The game can be tailored to the skill level of the players by selecting easy or difficult targets.

Killer
"Killer" is a 'knock-out' game for two or more players (at its best at 4–6 players). Initially, each player throws a dart at the board with their non-dominant hand to obtain their 'number'. No two players can have the same number. Once everyone has a number, each player takes it in turn to get their number five times with their three darts (doubles count twice, and triples three times). Once a person has reached 5, they become a 'killer'. This means they can aim for other peoples numbers, taking a point off for each time they hit (doubles ×2, triples ×3). If a person gets to zero they are out. A killer can aim for anyone's numbers, even another killer's. Players cannot get more than 5 points. The winner is 'the last man standing'.

Another version of "Killer" is a "knock-out" game for three or more players (the more the better). To start, everyone has a pre-determined number of lives, (usually 5) and a randomly chosen player throws a single dart at the board to set a target (i.e. single 18) and does not play until that target is hit. The next player up has 3 darts to try and hit the target (single 18), if they fail, they lose a life and the following player tries. Once a player succeeds at hitting the target, they then become the target setter and throw a dart to set a new target. The initial target setter swaps places with the new target setter. The games carry on until every players' lives have been used, the last man standing is the target setter whose target was not hit.  For less experienced players, doubles and trebles as part of the same number can be counted, i.e. a target of treble 20 can still be counted as a success if the double or single 20 is hit and vice versa.

Lawn darts

Lawn darts (also called Jarts or yard darts) is a lawn game based on darts. The gameplay and objective are similar to both horseshoes and darts. The darts are similar to the ancient Roman .

Round the Clock
Round the Clock (also called Around the World, 20 to 1, and Jumpers) is a game involving any number of players where the objective is to hit each section sequentially from 1 to 20 starting after a starting double.

Shanghai
Shanghai is played with at least two players. The standard version is played in seven rounds. In round one players throw their darts aiming for the 1 section, round 2, the 2 sections, and so on until round 7. Standard scoring is used, and doubles and triples are counted. Only hits on the wedge for that round are counted. The winner is the person who has the most points at the end of seven rounds (1–7); or who scores a Shanghai, which wins instantly, a Shanghai being throws that hit a triple, a double and single (in any order) of the number that is in play.

Shanghai can also be played for 20 rounds to use all numbers. A Fairer Start for Shanghai: To prevent players from becoming too practised at shooting for the 1, the number sequence can begin at the number of the dart that lost the throw for the bullseye to determine the starting thrower. For example; Thrower A shoots for the bullseye and hits the 17. Thrower B shoots for the bullseye and hits it. Thrower B then begins the game, starting on the number 17, then 18, 19, 20, 1, 2, 3, etc. through 16 (if no player hits Shanghai). Shanghai is one of the disciplines in the British Pentathlon tournament.

Rugby

The game is played across a pitch consisting of the top and bottom three segments (ideally on a Wide 5's dartboard). Players can move only one square at a time, including those diagonally, the central square (ring & bull) representing midfield, as well as those of the triple area (representing the opponent's defensive wall or the 22 m line) so as to finally attain a square of the opponent's double section (the try-scoring area), its central square representing the opponent's goal, i.e. for points scored between the posts ; during the game players seek to regather possession by hitting the last square occupied by their opponent.

 Kick-off
- the player (via a single throw) looks to send the ball deep into the opponent's half... whom then tries to gather it by hitting the very same square
 Line-out
- is conceded by a player having hit a neighbouring square and adjacent to the pitch ; alternatively by a player inside his own 22 m having hit a square adjacent to the pitch and up to two rows* forward (*regardless of the central square and treble zones)
- is won by hitting the inner portion of the lateral segment of the board (i.e. 11 or 6 left or right, according to which side the ball went out) – the player without the throw-in required to attain the treble section      players aim in turn, one dart at a time
 Scrum
- is conceded after a knock-on (i.e. having hit a square located directly two rows forward – usually after missing a treble square)
- is won by hitting the central zone (ring or bull) – the player without the put-in required to attain the bullseye       players aim in turn, one dart at a time
 Bomb
- is achieved by a player located behind any of the two treble zones (representing the defensive wall) ... by aiming for the central square of the board ; if they fail they lose possession, if they manage they move two squares forward (if they hit the bullseye they also achieve a breakaway and earn three extra shots)
 Penalty
- is obtained after having grounded the opponent so as preventing them from releasing the ball (i.e. either by attaining a square of a treble zone on which the opponent was located or by attaining the bullseye if they were located in midfield)
- is achieved (via a single throw) either by hitting the opposing goal square (if located in the opponent's half), by hand play or – to obtain a line-out – by aiming for a square adjacent to the pitch and up to two rows forward
 Drop-goal
- is achieved (whilst located in the opponent's half) by saying drop (to signal one's intention) and (via a single throw) aiming for the opponent's goal square
 Try
- is scored by finally attaining a square located inside the opponent's double section
 Conversion
- is achieved (via a single throw) by hitting the opponent's goal square
Any dart landing other than on a neighbouring square or one relevant to the above cases is a void dart.

Darts organisations

Professional organisations

Of the two professional steel-tip organisations, the British Darts Organisation (BDO), founded in 1973, was the older. Its tournaments were often shown on the BBC in the UK. The BDO was a member of the World Darts Federation (WDF) (founded 1976), along with organisations in some 60 other countries worldwide. The BDO originally organised a number of the more prestigious British tournaments with a few notable exceptions such as the News of the World Championship and the national events run under the auspices of the National Darts Association of Great Britain. However, many sponsors were lost and British TV coverage became much reduced by the early 1990s.

In 1992, a group of darts players broke off from the BDO and, in pursuit of higher prize money, formed the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC). The PDC organises their tournaments as well as their world championship.

In soft-tip, the World Soft Darts Association serves as a governing body of the sport, with events that feature players that play also steel-tip in PDC events and other players that compete exclusively in soft-tip events.

Amateur league organisations
The American Darts Organization (ADO) promulgates rules and standards for amateur league darts and sanctions tournaments in the United States. The ADO began operation January 1, 1976, with 30 charter member clubs and a membership of 7,500 players. In 2014, the ADO had a membership that averaged 250 clubs yearly representing roughly 50,000 members.

Professional play
Since the end of the News of the World Darts Championship and other past major tournaments, the BDO and PDC both organised a televised World Professional Championship, however, since the financial collapse of the BDO, their edition of the world championship has not been held since 2020. The PDC championship is held annually over the Christmas/New Year period, as was the BDO event, with the PDC version finishing slightly earlier than the BDO tournament did. The BDO World Championship had been running since 1978; the PDC World Championship started in 1994.

The PDC's major tournaments are the World Championship, Premier League, UK Open, World Matchplay, World Grand Prix, European Championship, Players Championship Finals, World Cup of Darts, Masters and the Grand Slam of Darts. All of these are broadcast live on Sky Sports and ITV television in the UK. They also hold PDC Pro Tour events and smaller category events around the UK.

The WDF World Cup for national teams and a singles tournament has been played biennially since 1977. The WDF also organise the Europe Cup. The PDC has their world cup competition, the PDC World Cup of Darts.

For soft-tip darts, WSDA and DARTSLIVE run "THE WORLD", an international tour which serves as the Soft Darts World Championship, with the final tournament referred to as the Grand Final, with the circuit first taking place in 2011. Stages take place mostly in East Asia, with some rounds held in the United States and Europe. Matches during WSDA events are played with both 701 and Cricket during a set, usually with the same number of games of each, giving both players throws during both formats, and the final round determined by player choice.

Two Dutch independently organised major tournaments, the International Darts League and the World Darts Trophy introduced a mix of BDO and PDC players in 2006 and 2007. Both organisations allocated rankings to the tournaments, but these two events are now discontinued.

Professional darts players

World Champions

Multiple-Time World Champions
16 Phil Taylor The Power (2 BDO, 14 PDC)
10 Trina Gulliver The Golden Girl
 5 Eric Bristow The Crafty Cockney
 5 Raymond van Barneveld  Barney (4 BDO, 1 PDC)
 4 Lisa Ashton The Lancashire Rose
 3 Martin Adams Wolfie
 3 Anastasia Dobromyslova From Russia With Love
 3 Glen Durrant Duzza
 3 John Lowe Old Stoneface
 3 John Part Darth Maple (1 BDO, 2 PDC)
 3 Michael van Gerwen Mighty Mike
 2 Gary Anderson The Flying Scotsman
 2 Ted Hankey The Count
 2 Adrian Lewis Jackpot
 2 Dennis Priestley The Menace (1 BDO, 1 PDC)
 2 Mikuru Suzuki Miracle
 2 Scott Waites Scotty 2 Hotty
 2 Jocky Wilson Jocky
 2 Peter Wright Snakebite

One-Time World Champions
 Bob Anderson The Limestone Cowboy
 Steve Beaton The Bronzed Adonis
 Stacy Bromberg The Wish Granter
 Stephen Bunting The Bullet
 Richie Burnett The Prince of Wales
 Rob Cross Voltage
 Tony David The Deadly Boomerang
 Keith Deller The Fella
 Neil Duff Duffman
 Andy Fordham The Viking
 Beau Greaves Beau 'n' Arrow
 Francis Hoenselaar The Crown
 Christian Kist The Lipstick
 Jelle Klaasen The Cobra
 Scott Mitchell Scotty Dog
 Gerwyn Price The Iceman
 Leighton Rees Marathon Man
 Michael Smith Bully Boy
 Les Wallace McDanger
 John Walton John Boy
 Wayne Warren Yank
 Mark Webster The Spider

World rankings

The WDF, BDO and PDC each maintain their own rankings lists. These lists are commonly used to determine seedings for various tournaments. The WDF rankings are based on the preceding 12 months performances, the BDO resets all ranking points to zero after the seedings for their world championship have been determined, and the PDC Order of Merit is based on prize money earned over two years.

See also
Darts world rankings—current ranking lists for BDO and PDC
Darts tournaments—previous winners, history and information
Darts players profiles
Nine dart finish—the "perfect" game in darts
High dart average—average score achieved with all three darts thrown
Glossary of darts
Pub games
Bullseye—a British game show based on darts

References

Further reading
. Scholarly history showing how darts figured in publicans' efforts to improve their establishments, and how the sport moved from a working-class pursuit to gain middle- and upper-class players.

External links

 Professional Darts Corporation
 World Darts Federation

English inventions
Throwing sports
Precision sports
Individual sports
Indoor sports
Pub games
Throwing games
Gambling games

Darts


Shams ad-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr ibn Ayyūb az-Zurʿī d-Dimashqī l-Ḥanbalī  (29 January 1292–15 September 1350 CE / 691 AH–751 AH), commonly known as Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya ("The son of the principal of [the school of] Jawziyyah") or Ibn al-Qayyim ("Son of the principal"; ابن القيّم) for short, or reverentially as Imam Ibn al-Qayyim in Sunni tradition, was an important medieval Islamic jurisconsult, theologian, and spiritual writer. Belonging to the Hanbali school of orthodox Sunni jurisprudence, of which he is regarded as "one of the most important thinkers," Ibn al-Qayyim was also the foremost disciple and student of Ibn Taymiyyah, with whom he was imprisoned in 1326 for dissenting against established tradition during Ibn Taymiyyah's famous incarceration in the Citadel of Damascus.

Of humble origin, Ibn al-Qayyim's father was the principal (qayyim) of the School of Jawziyya, which also served as a court of law for the Hanbali judge of Damascus during the time period. Ibn al-Qayyim went on to become a prolific scholar, producing a rich corpus of "doctrinal and literary" works. As a result, numerous important Muslim scholars of the Mamluk period were among Ibn al-Qayyim's students or, at least, greatly influenced by him, including, amongst others, the Shafi historian Ibn Kathir (d. 774/1373), the Hanbali hadith scholar Ibn Rajab (d. 795/1397) and Al Dhahabi (d. 1348). In the present day, Ibn al-Qayyim's name has become a controversial one in certain quarters of the Islamic world due to his popularity amongst many adherents of the Sunni movements of Salafism and Wahhabism, who see in his criticisms of such widespread orthodox Sunni practices of the medieval period as the veneration of saints and the veneration of their graves and relics a classical precursor to their own perspective.

Name
Muhammad Ibn Abī Bakr Ibn Ayyub Ibn Sa'd Ibn Harīz Ibn Makkī Zayn ad-Dīn az-Zur'ī (), al-Dimashqi (الدمشقي), with kunya of Abu Abdullah (أبو عبد الله), called Shams ad-Dīn ( شمس الدین). He is usually known as Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah, after his father Abu Bakr Ibn Sa'd az-Zur'ī who was the superintendent (qayyim) of the Jawziyyah Madrasah, the Hanbali law college in Damascus.

Biography

Teachers
While the main teacher Ibn al-Qayyim studied from was the scholar Ibn Taymiyyah, he also studied under a number of other scholars including his father, Abu Bakr ibn Ayoub, Ibn 'Abd ad-Da'im, Shams ad-Dīn adh-Dhahabī, and Safi Al-Din Al-Hindi. Ibn al-Qayyim began studying under Ibn Taymiyyah at the age of 21 (1313-1328), after the latter moved back to Damascus from Cairo, and he stayed studying with him and being a close companion of his until Ibn Taymiyyah died in 1328 CE. As a result of this 16-year union, he shared many of his teacher's views on various issues, though his approach in dealing with other scholars has been seen as being less polemic.

Imprisonment
Ibn al-Qayyim was imprisoned with his teacher Ibn Taymiyyah from 1326 until 1328, when Ibn Taymiyyah died and Ibn al-Qayyim was released. According to the historian al-Maqrizi, two reasons led to his arrest: the first was a sermon Ibn al-Qayyim had delivered in Jerusalem in which he decried the visitation of holy graves, including the Prophet Muhammad's grave in Medina, the second was his agreement with Ibn Taymiyyah's view on the matter of divorce, which
contradicted the view of the majority of scholars in Damascus.

The campaign to have Ibn al-Qayyim imprisoned was led by Shafi'i and Maliki scholars, and was also joined by the Hanbali and Hanafi judges.

Whilst in prison Ibn al-Qayyim busied himself with the Qur'an. According to Ibn Rajab, Ibn al-Qayyim made the most of his time of imprisonment: the immediate result of his delving into the Qur'an while in prison was a series of mystical experiences (described as dhawq, direct experience of the divine mysteries, and mawjud, ecstasy occasioned by direct encounter with the Divine Reality).

Spiritual life
Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya wrote a lengthy spiritual commentary on a treatise written by the Hanbali Sufi Khwaja Abdullah Ansari entitled Madarij al-Salikin.

He expressed his love and appreciation for Ansari in this commentary with his statement "Certainly I love the Sheikh, but I love the truth more!'''. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya refers to Ansari with the honorific title "Sheikh al-Islam" in his work Al-Wabil al-Sayyib min al-Kalim al-Tayyab.

Death
Ibn al-Qayyim died at the age of 60 years, 5 months, and 5 days, on the 13th night of Rajab, 751 AH (September 15, 1350 CE), and was buried besides his father at the Bab al-Saghīr Cemetery.

Views

Jurisprudence

Like his teacher Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn Qayyim, supported broad powers for the state and prosecution. He argued, for example, "that it was often right to punish someone of lowly status" who alleged improper behavior by someone "more respectable."

Ibn Qayyim "formulated evidential theories" that made judges "less reliant than ever before on the oral testimony." One example was the establishment of a child's paternity by experts scrutinizing the faces of "a child and its alleged father for similarities".  Another was in determining impotence. If a woman sought a divorce on the grounds of her husband's impotence and her husband contested the claim, a judge might obtain a sample of the husband's ejaculate. According to Ibn Qayyim "only genuine semen left a white residue when boiled".

In interrogating the accused, Ibn Qayyim believed that testimony could be beaten out of suspects if they were "disreputable".Reza, Sadiq, "Torture and Islamic Law", Chicago Journal of International Law, 8 (2007), pp.24-25
This was in contrast to the majority of Islamic jurists who had always acknowledged "that alleged sinners were entitled to remain silent if accused."  Attorney and author Sadakat Kadri states that, "as a matter of straightforward history, torture had originally been forbidden by Islamic jurisprudence." Ibn Qayyim however, believed that "the Prophet Muhammad, the Rightly Guided Caliphs, and other Companions" would have supported his position.

Astrology and alchemy
Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah opposed alchemy and divination of all varieties, but was particularly opposed to  astrology, whose practitioners dared to "think they could know secrets locked within the mystery of God's supreme and all-embracing wisdom."  In fact, those who believed that human personalities and events were influenced by heavenly bodies, were "the most ignorant of people, the most in error and the furthest from humanity ... the most ignorant of people concerning his soul and its creator".

In his Miftah Dar al-Sa'adah, in addition to denouncing the astrologers as worse than infidels, he uses empirical arguments to refute the practice of alchemy and astrology along with the theories associated with them, such as divination and the transmutation of metals, for example arguing:

Mysticism
Although Ibn al-Qayyim is sometimes characterized today as an unabashed enemy of Islamic mysticism, it is historically known that he actually had a "great interest in Sufism," which arose out of his vast exposure to the practice given Sufism's widespread practice among Muslims at his time. Some of his major works, such as Madārij, Ṭarīq al-hijratayn (Path of the Two Migrations) and Miftāḥ dār al-saʿāda (Key to the Joyous Dwelling), "are devoted almost entirely to Sufi themes," yet allusions to such "themes are found in nearly all his writings," including in such influential works of spiritual devotion such as al-Wābil al-Ṣayyib, a highly important treatise detailing the importance of the practice of dhikr, and his revered magnum opus, Madārij al-sālikīn (The Wayfarers' Stages), which is an extended commentary on a work written by the eleventh-century Hanbalite saint and mystic Abdullah Ansari, whom Ibn al-Qayyim referred to reverentially as "Shaykh al-Islām." In all such writings, it is evident Ibn al-Qayyim wrote to address "those interested in Sufism in particular and ... 'the matters of the heart' ... in general," and proof of this lies in the fact that he states, in the introduction to his short book Patience and Gratitude, "This is a book to benefit kings and princes, the wealthy and the indigent, Sufis and religious scholars; (a book) to inspire the sedentary to set out, accompany the wayfarer on the Way (al-sā'ir fī l-ṭariq) and inform the one journeying towards the Goal." Some scholars have compared Ibn al-Qayyim's role to that of Ghazali two-hundred years prior, in that he tried "rediscover and restate the orthodox roots of Islam's interior dimension."

It is also true, however, that Ibn al-Qayyim did indeed share some of his teacher Ibn Taymiyyah's more negative sentiments towards what he perceived to be excesses in mystical practice.  For example, he felt that the pervasive and powerful influence the works of Ibn Arabi had begun to wield over the entire Sunni world was leading to errors in doctrine. As a result, he rejected Ibn Arabi's concept of wahdat al-wajud or the "oneness of being, " and opposed, moreover, some of the more extreme "forms of Sufism that had gained currency particularly in the new seat of Muslim power, Mamluk Egypt and Syria." That said, he never condemned Sufism outright, and his many works bear witness, as it has been noted above, to the immense reverence in which he held the vast majority of Sufi tradition. In this connection, it is also significant that Ibn al-Qayyim followed Ibn Taymiyyah in "consistently praising" the early spiritual master al-Junayd, one of the most famous saints in the Sufi tradition, as well as "other early spiritual masters of Baghdad who later became known as 'sober' Sufis." As a matter of fact, Ibn al-Qayyim did not condemn the ecstatic Sufis either, regarding their mystical outbursts as signs of spiritual "weakness" rather than heresy. Ibn al-Qayyim's highly nuanced position on this matter led to his composing apologies for the ecstatic outbursts of several early Sufis, just as many Sufis had done so before him.

Christianity
Ibn Qayyim prohibited congratulating Christians on their religious celebrations, comparing such congratulations to endorsing the belief of Jesus as son of the God.

Reception
Ibn Qayyim was respected by a number of scholars during and after his life. Ibn Kathir stated that Ibn al-Qayyim,

Ibn Rajab, one of Ibn Qayyim's students, stated that,

 Criticism
Ibn Qayyim was criticized by a number of scholars, including:
 Taqi al-Din al-Subki (d. 756/1355) accused him of heresy, extreme anthropomorphism and unjust takfir of the Asharis in his poem al-Kafiya al-Shafiya fi al-Intisar lil-Firqa al-Najiya ( 'The Sufficient and Healing [Poem] on the Victory of the Saved Sect'). Hence Subki wrote a book against him, entitled: "Al-Sayf al-Saqil fi al-Radd ala Ibn Zafil".
 Ibn Hajar al-Haytami (d. 974/1566–7) in his  declared Ibn al-Qayyim and his teacher Ibn Taymiyya to be heretics and unbelievers (Mulhideen). He described their position on the Divine attributes as anthropomorphist.

Legacy

Works
Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah's contributions to the Islamic library are extensive, and they particularly deal with the Qur'anic commentaries, and understanding and analysis of the prophetic traditions (Fiqh-us Sunnah) (فقه ). He "wrote about a hundred books", including:
 Zad al-Ma'ad (Provision of the hereafter)
 Al-Waabil Sayyib minal kalim tayyib – a commentary on hadith about Prophet Yahya ibn Zakariyya.
 I'laam ul Muwaqqi'een 'an Rabb il 'Aalameen (Information for Those who Write on Behalf of the Lord of the Worlds)
 Tahthib Sunan Abi Da'ud Madaarij Saalikeen which is an extensive commentary on the book by Shaikh Abu Ismail al-Ansari al-Harawi al-Sufi, Manazil-u Sa'ireen (Stations of the Seekers);
 Tafsir Mu'awwadhatain (Tafsir of Surah Falaq and Nas);
  Tafsir al-Ibn al-Qayyim (BADAA'I AT-TAFSIR). Badāʾiʿ al-Fawāʾid (بدائع الفوائد): Amazing Points of Benefit
 Ad-Dā'i wa Dawā also known as Al Jawābul kāfi liman sa'ala 'an Dawā'i Shaafi Haadi Arwah ila biladil Afrah Uddat as-Sabirin wa Dhakhiratu ash-Shakirin (عدة الصابرين وذخيرة الشاكرين)
 Ighathatu lahfaan min masaa'id ash-shaytan (إغاثة اللهفان من مصائد الشيطان) : Aid for the Yearning One in Resisting the Shayṭān
 Rawdhatul Muhibbīn Ahkām ahl al-dhimmaTuhfatul Mawdud bi Ahkam al-Mawlud: A Gift to the Loved One Regarding the Rulings of the Newborn
Miftah Dar As-Sa'adah
Jala al-afham fi fadhl salati ala khayral anam
Al-Manar al-Munif
 Al-Tibb al-Nabawi – a book on Prophetic medicine, available in English as "The Prophetic Medicine", printed by Dar al-Fikr in Beirut (Lebanon), or as "Healing with the Medicine of the Prophet (sal allahu `alayhi wa salim)", printed by Darussalam Publications.Al-FurusiyyaShifa al-Alil fi masa'il al qada'i wal qadri wal hikmati wa at-ta'leel (Remedy for Those who Question on Matters Concerning Divine Decree, Predestination, Wisdom and Causality)Mukhtasar al-Sawa'iqHadi al-Arwah ila Bilad al-Arfah (Spurring Souls on to the Realms of Joy''
 A treatise on Arab archery is by Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya, Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr (1292AD-1350AD) and comes from the 14th century.

References

Further reading

External links

 Biodata at MuslimScholars.info
 Who is Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya? - Hidaya Research

 Articles and Book Collection
 Quotes by Ibn al-Qayyim
 Books

1292 births
1350 deaths
14th-century Arab people
Hanbalis
Sunni imams
Critics of Shia Islam
Syrian critics of Christianity
Syrian Sunni Muslim scholars of Islam
Atharis
Theologians from the Mamluk Sultanate
Proto-Salafists
14th-century Muslim scholars of Islam
14th-century jurists

Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya


Tanoli or Tano khel (Pashto:تناولی) pronounced also spelled Tanoli or Tano khel, are one of the largest Pashtun tribes. Their traditional homeland is Ghazni and paktia in Afghanistan but they have also settled in other regions throughout the Afghanistan-Pakistan Pashtun belt..Tanoli speak pashto and hindko.The modern nomadic Kochi people are predominantly made up of Tano khel tribes.[3] The 60-65% tanoli live in Afghanistan.[4].Some tanoli live in swat and other areas of Pakhunkhwa.

References

Ethnic groups in Pakistan
Ethnic groups in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Tanoli


Buddy Joe Hooker (born May 30, 1942) is an American actor, second unit director, stunt man, and stunt coordinator. He is known for his expertise in designing and performing vehicle stunts for movies and television.

Career
Hooker began as a young child actor on the television series The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin. Under the stage name, Buddy Hart, his acting career continued in shows such as Gunsmoke, Father Knows Best and Twilight Zone. He also starred in the family feature that his stunt performer father, Hugh Hooker, produced called The Littlest Hobo. That role led to a part on Leave It To Beaver as one of Wally Cleaver's best friends, Chester, from 1957 to 1960. He was also one of the bachelors on The Dating Game in 1969, as "Joey Hooker", where he was chosen by the bachelorette Farrah Fawcett.

Hooker pursued the stunt profession in Rock Hudson's Tobruk and Shirley MacLaine's Sweet Charity. Throughout the years, his reputation as an all around stuntman led to his regular employment as Disney's premiere stunt coordinator for 8 years.

Hooker's reputation as the go-to coordinator for car chases grew with movies such as To Live and Die in L.A., Jade, and Death Proof. He was coordinator for Harold And Maude, The Outsiders, Godfather III, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Meet Joe Black, and 40 Year Old Virgin.

In the 1977 film about the stunt business, Hooper, Hooker broke industry records with a rocket powered car jump and many other stunts doubling Jan Michael Vincent's character Ski.

His career continued with the first motorcycle jump over a helicopter as it landed, and rolling a truck 17 times down a sand embankment in the 1971 action feature Clay Pigeon.

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences inducted Hooker into its membership during the first year it began a limited initiation of motion picture stunt coordinators. He is an original member of the stunt talent organization Stunts Unlimited and has served five terms as its president.

Hooker was presented with the "Lifetime Achievement Award" at the 2014 World Stunt Awards.

Personal life
Hooker and his wife Gayle, who is also a stunt performer, have twin sons who worked as stunt performers in the film Spy Kids.

Cultural references
The 1978 feature film Hooper, starring Burt Reynolds, is based on a fictionalized account of his life. In the film, Hooker actually performed stunts for both Reynolds and Jan-Michael Vincent. He was also on The Dating Game in 1969 with Farrah Fawcett, which broke out into a staged fight. Hooker was the bachelor selected by Fawcett.

References

External links

American stunt performers
Living people
1942 births
Actors from Vallejo, California

Buddy Joe Hooker


Primary energy (PE) is the energy found in nature that has not been subjected to any human engineered conversion process. It encompasses energy contained in raw fuels and other forms of energy, including waste, received as input to a system. Primary energy can be non-renewable or renewable.

Total primary energy supply (TPES) is the sum of production and imports, plus or minus stock changes, minus exports and international bunker storage.
The International Recommendations for Energy Statistics (IRES) prefers total energy supply (TES) to refer to this indicator. These expressions are often used to describe the total energy supply of a national territory.

Secondary energy is a carrier of energy, such as electricity. These are produced by conversion from a primary energy source.

Primary energy is used as a measure in energy statistics in the compilation of energy balances, as well as in the field of energetics. In energetics, a primary energy source (PES) refers to the energy forms required by the energy sector to generate the supply of energy carriers used by human society. Primary energy only counts raw energy and not usable energy and fails to account well for energy losses, particularly the large losses in thermal sources. It therefore generally grossly undercounts non thermal renewable energy sources .

Examples of sources

Primary energy sources should not be confused with the energy system components (or conversion processes) through which they are converted into energy carriers.

Usable energy

Primary energy sources are transformed in energy conversion processes to more convenient forms of energy that can directly be used by society, such as electrical energy, refined fuels, or synthetic fuels such as hydrogen fuel. In the field of energetics, these forms are called energy carriers and correspond to the concept of "secondary energy" in energy statistics.

Conversion to energy carriers (or secondary energy)
Energy carriers are energy forms which have been transformed from primary energy sources. Electricity is one of the most common energy carriers, being transformed from various primary energy sources such as coal, oil, natural gas, and wind. Electricity is particularly useful since it has low entropy (is highly ordered) and so can be converted into other forms of energy very efficiently. District heating is another example of secondary energy.

According to the laws of thermodynamics, primary energy sources cannot be produced. They must be available to society to enable the production of energy carriers.

Conversion efficiency varies. For thermal energy, electricity and mechanical energy production is limited by Carnot's theorem, and generates a lot of waste heat. Other non-thermal conversions can be more efficient. For example, while wind turbines do not capture all of the wind's energy, they have a high conversion efficiency and generate very little waste heat since wind energy is low entropy. In principle solar photovoltaic conversions could be very efficient, but current conversion can only be done well for narrow ranges of wavelength, whereas solar thermal is also subject to Carnot efficiency limits. Hydroelectric power is also very ordered, and converted very efficiently. The amount of usable energy is the exergy of a system.

Site and source energy
Site energy is the term used in North America for the amount of end-use energy of all forms consumed at a specified location. This can be a mix of primary energy (such as natural gas burned at the site) and secondary energy (such as electricity). Site energy is measured at the campus, building, or sub-building level and is the basis for energy charges on utility bills.

Source energy, in contrast, is the term used in North America for the amount of primary energy consumed in order to provide a facility's site energy. It is always greater than the site energy, as it includes all site energy and adds to it the energy lost during transmission, delivery, and conversion. While source or primary energy provides a more complete picture of energy consumption, it cannot be measured directly and must be calculated using conversion factors from site energy measurements. For electricity, a typical value is three units of source energy for one unit of site energy. However, this can vary considerably depending on factors such as the primary energy source or fuel type, the type of power plant, and the transmission infrastructure. One full set of conversion factors is available as technical reference from Energy STAR.

Either site or source energy can be an appropriate metric when comparing or analyzing energy use of different facilities. The U.S Energy Information Administration, for example, uses primary (source) energy for its energy overviews but site energy for its Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey and Residential Building Energy Consumption Survey. The US Environmental Protection Agency's Energy STAR program recommends using source energy, and the US Department of Energy uses site energy in its definition of a zero net energy building.

Conversion factor conventions
Where primary energy is used to describe fossil fuels, the embodied energy of the fuel is available as thermal energy and around 70% is typically lost in conversion to electrical or mechanical energy. There are very much less significant conversion losses when hydroelectricity, wind and solar power produce electricity, but today's UN conventions on energy statistics counts the electricity made from hydroelectricity, wind and solar as the primary energy itself for these sources. One consequence of employing primary energy as an energy metric is that the contribution of hydro, wind and solar energy is under reported compared to fossil energy sources, and there is hence an international debate on how to count energy from non thermal renewables, with many estimates having them undercounted by a factor of about three.

See also

 Energy industry
 Energy development
 Energy mix
 Energy system
 List of countries by total primary energy consumption and production

Notes

References

Further reading

 Kydes, Andy (Lead Author); Cutler J. Cleveland (Topic Editor). 2007. "Primary energy." In: Encyclopedia of Earth. Eds. Cutler J. Cleveland (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment). [First published in the Encyclopedia of Earth June 1, 2006; Last revised August 14, 2007; Retrieved November 15, 2007.

External links
 The Encyclopedia of Earth: Primary energy
 Our Energy Futures glossary: Primary Energy Sources

Energy
Energetics
Thermodynamics

Primary energy


Newark Bay is a tidal bay at the confluence of the Passaic and Hackensack Rivers in northeastern New Jersey. It is home to the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal, the largest container shipping facility in Port of New York and New Jersey, the second busiest in the United States. An estuary, it is periodically dredged to accommodate seafaring ships.

Geography

Newark Bay is rectangular, approximately  long, varying in width from . It is enclosed on the west by the cities of Newark and Elizabeth, and on the east by Jersey City and Bayonne. At the south is Staten Island, New York and at the north Kearny Point and Droyer's Point mark the mouth of the Hackensack. Shooters Island is a bird sanctuary where the borders of Staten Island, Bayonne and Elizabeth meet at one point. The southern tip of Bergen Neck, known as Bergen Point, juts into the bay and lent its name to the former Bergen Point Lighthouse. Built offshore in 1849 it was demolished and replaced with a skeletal tower in the mid 20th century.

The Atlantic Ocean at Sandy Hook and Rockaway Point is approximately  away and reached by tidal straits dredged to maintain shipping lanes. Newark Bay is connected to Upper New York Bay by the Kill Van Kull and to Raritan Bay by the Arthur Kill.  The names of the channels reflect the period of Dutch colonialization. The area around the bay was called Achter Kol, which translates as behind or beyond the ridge and refers to Bergen Hill. The emergence of the Hudson Palisades begins on Bergen Neck, the peninsula between the bay and the Hudson River. Kill in Dutch means stream or channel. During the British colonial era the bay was known as Cull bay.
Kill van Kull literally translates as channel from the ridge. Arthur Kill is an anglicization of achter kill meaning back channel, which would speak to its location behind Staten Island.

Many of the maritime and distribution facilities along the bay are part of Foreign Trade Zone 49.

Bridges

The bay is spanned by the Vincent R. Casciano Memorial Bridge which carries the Newark Bay Extension (Interstate 78)  of the New Jersey Turnpike. The Upper Bay Bridge is a vertical-lift bridge north of the Casciano that is now used by CSX Transportation for freight shipment, including the notable Juice Train. Central Railroad of New Jersey's Newark Bay Bridge crossed the bay from 1864 to connect its Communipaw Terminal. Last used in 1978, it was determined to be a hazard to maritime navigation and demolished in the 1980s.

Shoreline

Elizabethport to the Ironbound

Elizabeth is the site of the first English speaking European settlement (1675) in New Jersey, its port at the southern end of the bay a major maritime hub during the colonial era. Jersey Gardens, an outlet mall, has been located north of Elizabethport since 1999.  There are plans to construct a mixed used community adjacent to it along the bay.

The western edge of Newark Bay was originally shallow tidal wetlands covering approximately . In the 1910s, the city of Newark began excavating an angled shipping channel in the northeastern quadrant of the wetland which formed the basis of Port Newark. Work on the channel and terminal facilities on its north side accelerated during World War I, when the federal government took control of Port Newark. During the war there were close to 25,000 troops stationed at the Newark Bay Shipyard.

The city decided to expand the port at the end of the war. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was formed in 1921 and the Newark Bay Channels were authorized by the Rivers and Harbors Acts in 1922. Shipping operations languished after the war, and in 1927, the City of Newark started construction of Newark Liberty International Airport on the northwest quadrant of the wetlands which lay between Port Newark and the edge of the developed city. Port Authority took over the operations of Port Newark and the Newark Airport in 1948 and began modernizing and expanding both facilities southward. In 1958, the Port Authority dredged another shipping channel which straightened the course of Bound Brook, the tidal inlet forming the boundary between Newark and Elizabeth.  Dredged materials was used to create new upland south of the new Elizabeth Channel, where the Port Authority constructed the Elizabeth Marine Terminal. The first shipping facility to open upon the Elizabeth Channel was the new  Sea-Land Container Terminal, which was the prototype for virtually every other container terminal constructed thereafter.

The Ironbound is an industrial area along the bay which becomes residential farther inland near Downtown Newark.

Kearny Point
The Central Railroad of New Jersey first built the Newark and New York Railroad across the rivers and tip of New Barbadoes Neck in 1869. One bridge was taken out of service in 1946 after a ship collided into it. Passenger service on the other bridge, the PD Draw, was discontinued in 1967.  The Kearny Point peninsula is site of the River Terminal, a massive distribution facility. It comprises the former Western Electric Kearny Works and Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, the shipyards of which operated from 1917 to 1949, and played a prominent role in both World War I and World War II.

Bergen Point to Droyer's Point

While there was some maritime development on the eastern banks of the bay closer Bergen Point most of the eastern shore abuts residential and recreational areas. The Hackensack RiverWalk is a partially completed linear park greenway intended to link the string of parks along its banks and that of the Hackensack River from the Bayonne Bridge to the Hackensack Meadowlands in Secaucus and North Bergen. In Bayonne, much of the bay has not seen bulkhead development, and hence has a natural shoreline. The city's largest parks are its shores. At Droyer's Point recreational and residential development have included a promenade.

Howland Hook
The Howland Hook Marine Terminal is a container port facility located at the northwestern corner of Staten Island at the entrance to the Arthur Kill. Nearby is Port Ivory, named for the Ivory Soap plant once located there.  To the east is the residential neighborhood of Mariners Harbor which overlooks the bay. In the first half of the 20th century, Bethlehem Steel maintained a plant which built military transports during World War I and World War II. Currently, tugboat companies and number of smaller dry docks operate along the shore.

Pollution and marine life

The bay is notoriously polluted, and it is now a Superfund site. "One blue crab in Newark Bay has enough dioxin to give somebody cancer," said David Pringle, spokesman for Clean Water Action.

Both the tributaries, particularly the Passaic River, have sections which are lined with heavy industry. Some industrial facilities discharged wastes into the tributaries during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, prior to passage of the 1972 Clean Water Act. High levels of PCBs and dioxin have been detected in the bay. It also has high levels of mercury, copper and other toxic chemicals.

While illegal discharges of chemical waste have been stopped, crabbing is illegal and fishing is limited due to chemicals that remain in the sediment.

Pronounced endocrine disruption and reproductive effects have been reported in Newark Bay Mummichog, often used as a sentinel and bioindicator species. Reproductive effects reported are primarily due to a chemical inhibition of vitellogenesis and oogenesis, which are highly conserved processes for oviparous (egg-laying) animals. Killifish within Newark Bay have also been reported to chemically adapt (desensitize) to aryl hydrocarbon receptor mediated pollutants (i.e. dioxins). Killifish within Newark Bay have emerged as a popular tool for studying population effects of historical and emerging chemicals of concern due to their chronic exposure to complex mixtures of common contaminants, and subsequent effects due to living within a polluted environment.

2008 Liberian freighter collision
In January 2008, a 117 ft. Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company dredge in Newark Bay was struck by a 669-ft Liberian-flagged orange juice freighter named the Orange Sun. Newark Bay had to be closed for five hours by the U.S. Coast Guard until damages to the GLD&D dredge were mitigated. The dredge had begun to take on water and a diving crew was sent in order to make repairs. In December 2009, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a report that blamed the Orange Sun for the accident. The Orange Suns master had not informed the captain or crew about the ship's tendency to deviate from its course.

See also
 Geography of New York–New Jersey Harbor Estuary
 List of bridges, tunnels, and cuts in Hudson County, New Jersey
 Marine life of New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary
 Newark Bay rail accident
 Timeline of Jersey City area railroads

References

External links
"Fishing for Answers in an Urban Estuary"—Teaching Guide About Newark Bay for Elementary Schools (NJDEP)
New York–New Jersey Harbor Estuary Program—US EPA
US EPA: Newark Bay Study 2004
US Army Corps of Engineers: Newark Bay

Port of New York and New Jersey
Bayonne, New Jersey
Bays of New Jersey
Geography of Elizabeth, New Jersey
Geography of Newark, New Jersey
Bodies of water of Hudson County, New Jersey
Bodies of water of Staten Island
Bays of New York (state)
Bodies of water of Essex County, New Jersey
Estuaries of New Jersey

Newark Bay


Aylesbury ( ) is the county town of Buckinghamshire, South East England. It is home to the Roald Dahl Children's Gallery and the Waterside Theatre. It is located in central Buckinghamshire, midway between High Wycombe and Milton Keynes.

Aylesbury was awarded Garden Town status in 2017. The housing target for the town is set to grow with 16,000 homes set to be built by 2033.

Etymology

The town name is of Old English origin. It is first recorded in the form Æglesburg in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a text which took its present form in the later ninth century. The word Ægles is a personal name in the genitive case, meaning "Ægel's" and  means "fortification". Thus the name once meant "Fort of Ægel" — though who Ægel was is not recorded. Nineteenth-century speculation that that the name contained the Welsh word eglwys meaning "a church" (from Latin ) has been discredited.

History

Excavations in the town centre in 1985 found an Iron Age hill fort dating from the early 4th century BCE.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle portrays Aylesbury as being captured from the Britons by one Cuthwulf following the Battle of Bedcanford; the historicity of this event is doubtful, but the portrayal at least indicates that in the early Middle Ages the settlement was thought to be of some strategic importance. During the early medieval period, Aylesbury became a major market town, the burial place of Saint Osgyth, whose shrine attracted pilgrims. Aylesbury was a royal manor with eight attached hundreds in 1086, and some historians have supposed that it was already a royal manor before the Norman conquest. Some lands here were granted by William the Conqueror to citizens upon the tenure that the owners should provide straw for the monarch's bed, sweet herbs for his chamber and two green geese and three eels for his table, whenever he should visit Aylesbury.

The town includes an Early English parish church, St. Mary the Virgin's (which has many later additions).

In 1450, a religious institution called the Guild of St Mary was founded in Aylesbury by John Kemp, Archbishop of York. Known popularly as the Guild of Our Lady it became a meeting place for local dignitaries and a hotbed of political intrigue. The guild was influential in the outcome of the Wars of the Roses. Its premises at the Chantry in Church Street, Aylesbury, are still there, though today the site is used mainly for retail.

Aylesbury was declared the new county town of Buckinghamshire in 1529 by King Henry VIII: Aylesbury Manor was among the many properties belonging to Thomas Boleyn, the father of Anne Boleyn, and it is rumoured that the change was made by the King to curry favour with the family. The plague decimated the population in 1603/4.

The town played a large part in the English Civil War when it became a stronghold for the Parliamentarian forces, like many market towns a nursing-ground of Puritan sentiment and in 1642 the Battle of Aylesbury was fought and won by the Parliamentarians. Its proximity to Great Hampden, home of John Hampden has made of Hampden a local hero: his silhouette was used on the emblem of Aylesbury Vale District Council and his statue stands prominently in the town centre. Aylesbury-born composer, Rutland Boughton (1878–1960), possibly inspired by the statue of John Hampden, created a symphony based on Oliver Cromwell.

On 18 March 1664, Robert Bruce, 2nd Earl of Elgin in the Peerage of Scotland was created 1st Earl of Ailesbury.

The grade II* listed Jacobean mansion of Hartwell adjoining the southwest of the town was the residence of Louis XVIII during his exile (1810–1814). Bourbon Street in Aylesbury is named after the king. Louis's wife, Marie Josephine of Savoy died at Hartwell in 1810 and is the only French queen to have died on English soil. After her death, her body was carried first to Westminster Abbey, and one year later to Sardinia, where the Savoy King of Sardinia had withdrawn during Napoleonic occupation of Turin and Piedmont; she is buried in the Cathedral of Cagliari.

Aylebury's heraldic crest displays the Aylesbury duck, which has been bred here since the birth of the Industrial Revolution, although only one breeder of true Aylesbury ducks, Richard Waller, remains today.

The town also received international publicity in 1963 when the culprits responsible for the Great Train Robbery (1963) were tried at Aylesbury Rural District Council Offices in Walton Street and sentenced at Aylesbury Crown Court. The robbery took place at Bridego Bridge, a railway bridge at Ledburn, about  from the town.

A notable institution is Aylesbury Grammar School which was founded in 1598. The original building is now part of the County Museum buildings in Church Street and has grade II* architecture; other grammar schools now include Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School and Aylesbury High School. Other notable buildings are the King's Head Inn, (which, with the Fleece Inn at Bretforton, is one of the few public houses in the country owned by the National Trust and still run as a public house) and the Queens Park Centre.

James Henry Govier, the British painter and etcher, lived at Aylesbury and produced a number of works relating to the town including the church, canal, Walton, Aylesbury Gaol, the King's Head Inn and views of the town during the 1940s and 1950s, examples of which can be seen in the Buckinghamshire County Museum in Aylesbury.

The town is the birthplace of the Paralympic Games. During the 1948 Olympics in London, German-British neurologist Sir Ludwig Guttmann, set up a small sporting event for World War II veterans known as the World Wheelchair and Amputee Games (WWAG) at Stoke Mandeville Hospital Rehabilitation Facility in Aylesbury. This eventually led to the growth of the phenomenon of the modern Paralympic Games that has been held immediately after every Summer Olympic Games since 1988, and the WWAG was held most years at Stoke Mandeville until 1997, when it has been held in other countries and cities ever since. During the 2012 Paralympics, the official mascot was called 'Mandeville' after Stoke Mandeville Hospital.

The Rothschild Family acquired many large country estates and stately homes around and near the town, including Waddesdon Manor in nearby Waddesdon Village, Halton House near Wendover and Tring Park in Tring across the border in Hertfordshire, although today most of these properties belong to the National Trust. They have brought in increased tourism to the town and the surrounding areas.

The Aylesbury duck

In the 18th century selective breeding of white common ducks led to a white domestic duck, generally known as the English White. Since at least the 1690s ducks had been farmed in Aylesbury, and made Aylesbury known throughout England and beyond. They were bred and brought up by poor people, and sent to London by the weekly carriers. They went on to be known as the Aylesbury duck.

The duck business in Aylesbury went into decline in the 19th century. By the time Beatrix Potter's 1908 The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck—about an Aylesbury duck although set in Cumbria—caused renewed interest in the breed, the Aylesbury duck was in steep decline. The duckers of Buckinghamshire had generally failed to introduce technological improvements such as the incubator, and inbreeding had dangerously weakened the breed. Meanwhile, the cost of duck food had risen fourfold over the 19th century, and from 1873 onwards competition from Pekin and Pekin cross ducks was undercutting Aylesbury ducks at the marketplace. The First World War devastated the remaining duckers of Buckinghamshire. By the end of the war small-scale duck rearing in the Aylesbury Vale had vanished, with duck raising dominated by a few large duck farms. Shortages of duck food in the Second World War caused further disruption to the industry, and almost all duck farming in the Aylesbury Vale ended. A 1950 "Aylesbury Duckling Day" campaign to boost the reputation of the Aylesbury duck had little effect; by the end of the 1950s the last significant farms had closed, other than a single flock in Chesham owned by Mr L. T. Waller, and by 1966 there were no duck breeders remaining in Aylesbury. As of 2021 the Waller family's farm in Chesham remains in business, the last surviving flock of pure Aylesbury meat ducks in the country. Although, there are still many hobbyists who keep the breed.

The Aylesbury duck remains a symbol of the town of Aylesbury. Aylesbury United F.C. are nicknamed "The Ducks" and include an Aylesbury duck on their club badge, and the town's coat of arms includes an Aylesbury duck and plaited straw, representing the two historic industries of the town. The Aylesbury Brewery Company, now defunct, featured the Aylesbury duck as its logo, an example of which can still be seen at the Britannia pub. Duck Farm Court is a shopping area of modern Aylesbury located near the historic hamlet of California, close to one of the main breeding grounds for ducks in the town, and there have been two pubs in the town with the name "The Duck" in recent years; one in Bedgrove that has since been demolished and one in Jackson Road that has recently been renamed.

Demography
The town's population has grown from 28,000 in the 1960s to almost 72,000 in 2011 due in the main to new housing developments, including many London overspill housing estates, built to ease pressure on the capital. Indeed, Aylesbury, to a greater extent than many English market towns, saw substantial areas of its own heart demolished in the 1950s/1960s as 16th–18th century houses (many in good repair) were demolished to make way for new, particularly retail, development.

Aylesbury's population in the ten-year period since 2001 has grown by two thousand primarily related to the development of new housing estates which will eventually cater for eight thousand people on the north side, between the A41 (Akeman Street) and the A413 and the expansion of Fairford Leys estate.

According to the 2011 Census, the religious groupings in Aylesbury were: Christianity (55.7%), no religion (26.9%), Islam (8.3%), Hinduism (1.4%), other (0.4%). 6.7% of respondents did not state their religion.

Geography

Neighbourhoods
Housing estates in or neighbourhoods of the modern Aylesbury include:
Bedgrove
Berryfields
Broughton
Buckingham Park
Coppice
Crown Leys
Elm Farm
Elmhurst
Fairford Leys
Haydon Hill
Hawkslade Farm
Kingsbrook
Mandeville Estate
Mandeville Park
Meadowcroft
Prebendal Farm
Quarrendon
Queens Park
Shakespeare Estate
Southcourt
Stoke Farm
Stoke Grange
Walton Court
Watermead
The Willows

Farms and hamlets
Aylesbury has also been extended to completely surround the hamlets and former farms at:
Bedgrove
California
Fairford Leys
New Zealand
Prebendal Farm
Quarrendon
Turnfurlong
Walton

Future developments
Distinct whole areas that have a notably high property price in the town are Bedgrove, the conservation area around St. Mary's Church and Queens Park, particularly facing onto the canal. Anticipated developments are expected to raise the urban population of Aylesbury from its current approximation of 75,000 to over 100,000 between 2018 and 2023. London is centred  southeast, over the Chilterns.

Elevations, soil and geology
Aylesbury is immediately southeast of the upper River Thame that flows past Thame to Dorchester on Thames and is partly sited on the two northernmost outcrops of Portland (lime)stone in England bisected by a small stream, Bear Brook which gives a relatively prominent position in relation to the terrain of all near, lower, fields and suburbs, which have largely slowly permeable Oxford Clay and Kimmeridge Clay soils. Elevations range from 72.5m above mean sea level to 95m AOD in contiguous parts of the town, however nearest villages range from 85m-90m to the north or from 85m to 115m on a narrow ridge to the southwest at Stone and towards the Chilterns to the southeast (Weston Turville, Stoke Mandeville and North Lee).

The town centre's higher terrain is accurately described by Samuel Lewis in 1848 as a "gentle eminence".

The county's oldest rocks of Jurassic age cover the whole of the northern half of Buckinghamshire, succeeded continuously by younger rocks to the south of the Chilterns.

Culture and community

The town centre is home to many pubs and bars. The Queens Park Centre, which is the UK's largest independent arts centre is also based in the town centre.

The local newspaper is the Bucks Herald, which started publishing in January 1832.

Local radio stations was named Mix 96, which first broadcast in April 1994, and eventually ceased operations in September 2020, being replaced by Greatest Hits Radio.
One of the more prominent buildings in Aylesbury is the "Blue Leanie" office block, home to Lloyds Bank. When first built it was thought to be a potential hazard to passing motorists, due to the sun reflecting off its large mirrored surface. As a result, a line of mature trees was planted alongside the main road to prevent dazzling.

BBC local radio station that broadcast to the town is BBC Three Counties Radio on 94.7 FM.

Local news and television programmes is provided by BBC South and ITV Meridian. Television signals are received from the Oxford TV transmitter.

Aylesbury Waterside Theatre, a new £42 million theatre, with 1,200-seat auditorium, opened in October 2010. In addition to this, the surrounding area has been redeveloped a £100 million project known as the 'Waterside project'. When this is completed, there will be  of new retail floor space and 1,100 new jobs created, although when this will be completed now is unclear. A Waitrose supermarket opened opposite the theatre in August 2013, along with a Travelodge Hotel. Branches of Wagamama and Nando's restaurants opened on 'The Exchange' in February 2014, next to the Odeon cinema on Exchange Street. This included luxury and high-end studio apartments, new restaurants including Zizzi, The Grill Steakhouse and Rococo Lounge, as well as a new public square including metal statues that represent Aylesbury as the home of the Paralympics, as well as poetry covering the ground. Prior to this a Wagamama restaurant and a Nando's restaurant have also opened on the site of the new square at the Exchange, known officially as 'Festival Square'.  Also, a new campus of the [Bucks New University] opened on the Waterside site next to the Waterside Theatre.

The Bourg Walk Bridge (also called the Southcourt Bridge or the Roberts Bridge after a local councillor) opened in March 2009 connecting Southcourt to Aylesbury town centre. The focus of the footbridge is a central concrete pillar with four suspension cables supporting the structure. This bridge forms a central part of the Aylesbury Hub project. Bourg Walk was nominated and won the Engineering Excellence Award 2009 awarded by the Institution of Civil Engineers – South East England branch.

Governance

There are two tiers of local government covering the town, at parish and unitary authority level: Aylesbury Town Council, based at Aylesbury Town Hall at 5 Church Street, and Buckinghamshire Council, which is also based in Aylesbury, having its headquarters at The Gateway on Gatehouse Road.

Aylesbury Town Council is the parish council for the town. As at May 2021 it comprises 25 councillors, 20 of whom are Liberal Democrats and 5 Conservative. The council represents only the constituents of Aylesbury town itself. Surrounding villages and some recent developments on the outskirts of Aylesbury like Fairford Leys & Watermead have their own parish council. In 2010 the district council decided that the new developments of Berryfields and Weedon Hill, both to the north of Aylesbury, should also join to form a new parish as of May 2011.

The town council also elects the town mayor from the serving town councillors every year. The process culminates in a formal "Mayor Making" ceremony where the new mayor takes over from the preceding mayor. The role of mayor is mainly a ceremonial role representing the town at various events and acting as an ambassador for the town.

Administrative history

Aylesbury was made a borough by a charter from Mary I in 1554, which gave the town the right to elect two members of parliament and to establish a council to govern itself. The right to establish a council was opposed by the prominent local landowner Thomas Pakington, and it seems likely that this element of the charter was not put into effect at that time. In 1650, following the English Civil War, the town did establish a degree of self-government under the auspices of the 1554 charter. However, in 1664, in the aftermath of the Restoration, the town's short-lived council was abolished and the rights it had held reverted to the Pakington family which had exercised them prior to the civil war. Thereafter the town was governed by its vestry in the same way as most rural areas, although it remained a parliamentary constituency.

In 1849 a local board of health was established to govern the town. This board was replaced by Aylesbury Urban District Council in 1894, which was subsequently given municipal borough status on 1 January 1917, becoming Aylesbury Borough Council. The borough council was awarded a coat of arms in 1964.

In 1974 Aylesbury Borough Council merged with several neighbouring districts to become Aylesbury Vale. No successor parish was initially created for Aylesbury, and it became an unparished area, directly administered by Aylesbury Vale District Council. The civil parish of Aylesbury was re-established in 2001, with its parish council taking the name Aylesbury Town Council. From 2001 to 2020 there were therefore three tiers of local government covering the town, at parish, district, and county level.

Aylesbury Vale District Council was abolished in 2020, merging with Buckinghamshire County Council and other district councils to become a unitary authority called Buckinghamshire Council. Since 1 April 2020, when Buckinghamshire Council came into being, it has been responsible for almost all statutory local government functions across the county.

Education
Aylesbury is home to one college of general further education (Aylesbury College on Oxford Road), three grammar schools, two community upper schools, an academy, a university technical college and a host of primary schools.
The secondary schools are:
Aylesbury Grammar School (boys only)
Aylesbury High School (girls only)
The Aylesbury Vale Academy
Buckinghamshire University Technical College
The Grange School
Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School
Mandeville School

There are also the following special schools:
The PACE Centre
Pebble Brook School
Stocklake Park Community School, formerly Park School

The Aylesbury Vale Secondary Support Centre is a Pupil referral unit (PRU), which caters for permanently excluded pupils.

Aylesbury Music Centre is a large educational establishment, which has its own premises adjoining Aylesbury High School and rivals the Royal College of Music, having produced members of national orchestras.

Health
Stoke Mandeville Hospital is a large National Health Service hospital to the south of the town centre. Its National Spinal Injuries Centre is one of the largest specialist spinal units in the world, and the pioneering rehabilitation work carried out there by Sir Ludwig Guttmann led to the development of the Paralympic Games. Stoke Mandeville Stadium was developed alongside the hospital and is the National Centre for Disability Sport in the United Kingdom.

Royal Buckinghamshire Hospital is a private hospital specialising in spinal cord injury.

Aylesbury has provisions for mental health therapy and treatments at the Tindal Centre on Bierton Road. The Tindal Centre closed in early 2014 and Mental Health therapy and treatments along with Adult and Older Adult Mental Health Team's moved across the road to the new purpose-built hospital the Whiteleaf Centre. The former site of Tindal Centre has been transformed into a new housing development Bierton Place which has maintained the architecture of the original building and enhanced its beauty

Trade and industry

Traditionally the town was a commercial centre with a market dating back to the Saxon period. This is because it was established on the main Akeman Street which became an established trade route linking London to the southwest. In 1180 a gaol was established in the town .

15th century
By 1477 flour was being ground in the town for surrounding parishes. By the modern period this had grown into a huge established industry: the last mill in Aylesbury was closed in the 1990s (Hills & Partridge on the canal behind Tesco). By 1560 the manufacture of needles had become a large industry in Long Crendon a village close by which was an important production centre.

17th century – lace making
In 1672 poor children in Buckinghamshire were taught to make lace as a way to make a living. Bucks lace as it became known quickly became very sought after and production boomed as the lace was mainly made by poor women and children. The lace-making industry had died out by Victorian times, however, as new machine-made lace became cheaper.

In 1764 Euclid Neale opened his clockmaking workshop in Aylesbury. In the 18th century, he was one of the best clock makers in the country.

19th century – canals
In 1814, the Aylesbury arm of the Grand Union Canal from Marsworth was opened bringing major industry to the town for the first time. At the same time the Wendover arm was built leading to nearby Wendover.

20th century – motor manufacture

From 1919 until 1925 the Cubit Engineering Works on Bicester Road was a volume manufacturer of motor vehicles. Approximately 3,000 cars were built, but a somewhat slow and heavy design could not survive the onslaught from cheap American competition. Their robust design and high ground clearance made them popular in less developed parts of the British Empire which lacked paved roads like Australia and South Africa. The works have been demolished for a domestic housing development. The marque is commemorated by Cubitt Street (and Edge Street) which traverses the old works.

By the late 20th century, the printers and bookbinders, Hazell, Watson and Viney and the Nestlé dairy were the two main employers in the town, employing more than half the total population. These factories have long since been demolished and replaced by a Tesco supermarket which opened in 1994, and a housing development, respectively.

21st century
Today, the town is still a major commercial centre and the market still meets on the cobbles of the old Market Square four days a week. Nestle and Hazell, Watson and Viney and US automotive parts producer TRW have gone – the last left the town in 2006. However three major industrial and commercial centres make sure the town has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country.

A £150 million Arla Foods 'megadairy' opened just off the A41 in nearby Aston Clinton in November 2013, roughly  from the town centre and is a major employer in the area. Traffic improvement measures were paid for by Arla in order to reduce the impact of congestion and pollution.

Sport and leisure
Aylesbury has two local semi-professional football teams, Aylesbury Vale Dynamos F.C. which plays at Haywood Way and Aylesbury United F.C. which currently shares a ground with Chesham United. There is a strong cricket club in the town, that was formed in 1837 with success in the 1950s and 1980s and is again emerging as one of the strong clubs in mid- to north Buckinghamshire. Since 2013, Aylesbury has been host to a free 5 km run called the Aylesbury Parkrun.
Aylesbury is represented in Rugby Union by Aylesbury Rugby Football Club, situated at Ostler's Field in the nearby village of Weston Turville; 'The Ducks' play in the 7th tier of English Rugby.

Aylesbury's recent sporting success comes in Gymnastics with the Aylesbury Gymnastics Academy, training out of the lynx gym centre, producing two Olympians and both coming away with bronze medals in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games for Great Britain.

Transport

Rail
The town is served by Aylesbury railway station and Aylesbury Vale Parkway railway station; the latter is terminus of passenger services of the London to Aylesbury Line from London Marylebone. Stoke Mandeville also lies in the town's urban area.

Railways came to Aylesbury early, in 1839 when the Aylesbury Railway opened from Cheddington on Robert Stephenson's London and Birmingham Railway. The Wycombe Railway (later Great Western Railway) arrived via Princes Risborough on 1 October 1863, and on 23 September 1868 the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway (later Metropolitan Railway) was opened from  to almost connect a loop with the Wycombe Railway. The Metropolitan Railway (MetR) from Baker Street arrived via Amersham in 1892. The Great Central Railway (GCR) connected from Nottingham Victoria to London Marylebone via the MetR in 1899. Between 1899 and 1953, Aylesbury had railway links to four London termini: Marylebone, Baker Street, Paddington and Euston. The Aylesbury Railway closed in 1953, the MetR, which later became the Metropolitan line of the London Underground withdrew north of Aylesbury in 1936 and withdrew from the town in 1961. The GCR was dismantled north of Aylesbury in 1966. As a result, there were no regular passenger services north of Aylesbury until the opening of Aylesbury Vale Parkway railway station in December 2008. Now only the GCR south of Aylesbury Vale Parkway to Marylebone is used for regular London services.

A rail scheme to extend passenger services northwestwards to a new station, Aylesbury Vale Parkway, was completed in December 2008. This is sited on the formerly goods-only line towards Quainton at the point where the line crosses the A41 near Berryfields Farm on the north-west outskirts of the town, some  north of the main Aylesbury station. This area is to be known as Berryfields, a major development area and will include park and ride facilities for Aylesbury.

A further expansion of rail services to a new Winslow railway station, , Bedford and Oxford via the Claydon LNE Junction (see East West Rail) is due to be opened by 2030.
Until then connections are available to Oxford and Birmingham by changing at Princes Risborough.

Roads
Aylesbury is served by the A41 from London to Birkenhead, which becomes the M40 however at Bicester  west (by north) of Aylesbury. The A413 and A418 roads also run through the town. The M40 motorway at junction 9 is  away and the M25 motorway is just over 's drive.

Buses
Aylesbury is served by Aylesbury bus station. In 2006, work commenced on the public transport hub, a scheme comprising a one-way loop of bus lanes around the town's inner ring road, which includes improvements to the connectivity between bus and rail services. The first two phases of this scheme were completed in 2007, providing new bus lanes on Exchange Street, New Street, Friarage Road and White Hill, and also opened up High Street to buses. The final two phases, including the Bourg Walk Bridge and Station Boulevard were officially opened in April 2009.

The town is served by Buckinghamshire's first 'Rainbow Routes' network of bus services. The colour-coded routes were set up by Buckinghamshire County Council, and bus operators.

Cycling demonstration town
In 2005, the town won £1million funding to be one of six Cycling Demonstration towns in England, which was match-funded by Buckinghamshire County Council. This allows Buckinghamshire County Council to promote the use of cycling amongst the general public, as well as provide facilities for cyclists, such as bike lockers, bike stands, and Tiger and Toucan road crossings.

Cycle Aylesbury, the team created to undertake the Cycling Demonstration town work, recently opened the first of their Gemstone Cycleways, which are a network of routes running from Aylesbury town centre to various locations around the town, including Stone, Bierton, Wendover and Watermead. A second brochure/magazine was published to accompany the routes, along with a redesigned website, CycleAylesbury.co.uk.

Notable people

Aylesbury is or has been home to a whole range of notable people. In the latter part of the 20th century, the main maternity unit in the district was located in Aylesbury at the Royal Buckinghamshire Hospital; hence a large number of people were born in Aylesbury who may not have had any other association with the town. For a full list see People from Aylesbury. In alphabetic order of surname, those who live, or have lived in Aylesbury include:

 Michael Apted (1941–2021), film director and producer
 Benjamin Bates (1716–1790), physician, art connoisseur and socialite.
 Lynda Bellingham (1948–2014), actress, broadcaster and author.
 Nick Blood (born 1982), actor
 Rutland Boughton (1878–1960), English composer and communist, born in the town
 Ernest Bullock (1890–1979), organist, composer and teacher; died in Aylesbury
 Brendan Cole (born 1976), New Zealand ballroom dancer
 Mathilde Carré (1908–2007), a French Resistance agent and double agent detainee at Aylesbury Prison
 Barns Courtney (born 1990), singer and songwriter, born in Aylesbury
 Sir Alexander Croke (1758–1842), British judge and Colonial Administrator in Nova Scotia
 Catherine Anne Davies (born ca.1990), stage name The Anchoress, multi-instrumentalist and  songwriter; grew up in Aylesbury from age 4.
Greg Day (born 1957), playwright, born in Aylesbury
 Liam Gillick (born 1964) artist, born in Aylesbury
 Martin Grech (born 1982), singer, songwriter and musician
 John Hampden (ca.1595–1643), politician and Parliamentarian during the English Civil War, lived in Hartwell House.
 John Junkin (1930–2006), TV performer and scriptwriter, died in Aylesbury
 Andrea Leadsom (born 1963), Conservative MP for South Northamptonshire; Minister of State for Energy at the Department of Energy and Climate Change; candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party in 2016
 Samantha Lewthwaite (born 1983), terrorist, grew up in Aylesbury
 Constance Markievicz (1868–1927), Irish politician, revolutionary nationalist, suffragette and socialist; inmate Aylesbury prison in 1916.
 John Otway (born 1952), singer-songwriter
 Nicholas Parsons (1923-2020), TV presenter and actor, lived in Aylesbury and died at Stoke Mandeville Hospital.
 Charles Pearson (1847–1917), a pioneer Anglican missionary in Uganda
 Sir James Clark Ross (1800–1862), Arctic naval explorer, died in Aylesbury
 Vernon Scannell (1922–2007), a poet and author and former boxer
 William of Sherwood (ca.1200 – ca.1272), medieval English scholastic philosopher, logician and teacher & rector of Aylesbury.
 Mike Smith (1943–2008), musician, of the Dave Clark Five lived in Aylesbury
 Pete Trewavas (born 1959), musician, member of Marillion
 John Wilkes (1725–1797), a radical journalist and politician; MP for Aylesbury 1757 & 1761, lived at Prebendal House in the town

Sport

 Emmerson Boyce (born 1979), footballer, born in Aylesbury
 Jennifer Gadirova & Jessica Gadirova, (twins, born 2004), Team GB gymnasts, won Bronze at the Tokyo Olympics.
 Ludwig Guttmann (1899–1980), neurologist , founded the Stoke Mandeville Games, became the Paralympic Games, lived and died in the town
 Matt Phillips (born 1991), footballer, born in Aylesbury
 Mark Webber (born 1976), former Formula 1 driver who raced for Red Bull Racing, Jaguar Racing and Williams F1, with nine career wins. Born in Queanbeyan, Australia; resides in Aston Clinton
 Ellen White MBE (born 1989), England women's national football team, former Chelsea Ladies, Arsenal Ladies, Notts County Ladies, Birmingham City, and Manchester City football player was born and brought up in Aylesbury.

Popular culture

A live music nightclub in Aylesbury was prominent in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and renamed the Friars' Club in 1969. The venue hosted many of the top artists of the time, including Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, Cream, Otis Redding, the Clash, Hawkwind, Queen, Genesis, U2, David Bowie, Talking Heads, Marillion and the Ramones. Friars' Club celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2009 by holding three special concerts that reflected the various phases of the club's musical history. The first concert in June featured the Edgar Broughton Band, the Groundhogs and the Pretty Things.

The rock band Marillion have a close association with Aylesbury. They originally formed there, with the band's first single, 1982's "Market Square Heroes", taking its title inspiration from Aylesbury's Market Square. The band continue to be based in the area, with their Racket Records studio still close to Aylesbury, and in 2007 the band performed together with their original lead singer, Fish, for the first time in 19 years at Aylesbury.

Aylesbury Methodist Church holds an annual organ recital, which attracts prominent national organists. The Roald Dahl Children's Gallery in Church Street, Aylesbury, is a children's museum in honour of novelist Roald Dahl that opened on 23 November 1996. Aylesbury hosts the Roald Dahl Festival, a procession of giant puppets based on his characters, on 2 July.

Comedian and actor Ronnie Barker (1929–2005) began his acting career in the town in the late 1940s and in September 2010, almost five years after his death, a bronze statue of him was unveiled by actor David Jason and Barker's one time co-star Ronnie Corbett (the other half of the Two Ronnies) on a new public place in Exchange Street.

Shown in productions
Scenes from the film A Clockwork Orange were filmed in Friars Square in Aylesbury but did not make it to the final cut. This is the 'Librarian Scene' where outtakes from the shoot and rehearsal can be seen in Alison Castle's The Stanley Kubrick Archives published by Taschen. The opening scene, in which the droogs beat up an elderly Irishman, is mistakenly cited as being filmed in the underpass linking Friars Square Shopping Centre with the railway station. However, Christiane Kubrick's book Stanley Kubrick – A Life in Pictures states that the underpass in the film has a different shape to the one in Aylesbury and these sequences were actually filmed in Wandsworth.

The County Court building and Aylesbury Market Square regularly feature in the BBC Television series Judge John Deed.

Twin town
Aylesbury is twinned with the French town of Bourg-en-Bresse,  east of Paris.

Closest cities, towns and villages

Gallery

Freedom of the Town
The following people and military units have received the Freedom of the Town of Aylesbury.

Individuals
  Freda Roberts: 25 April 2016.
  Ellen White: 25 April 2016.

See also

Architecture of Aylesbury
Aylesbury (UK Parliament constituency)

Notes and references
Notes

References

External links

Aylesbury Town Council
Aylesbury Vale District Council

 Aylesbury.info Regional Website

County towns in England
Hill forts in Buckinghamshire
Local government in Buckinghamshire
Towns in Buckinghamshire
Market towns in Buckinghamshire
Civil parishes in Buckinghamshire

Aylesbury