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Historic Buildings of Buckinghamshire
England
Image right - Halton House in the Chiltern Hills nr. Halton, Buckinghamshire; Public Domain, Wiki
The object of this project is to provide information about historic buildings in the county of Buckinghamshire, England, with links to sub-projects for specific buildings as appropriate. GENi profiles of people associated with those establishments can be linked to this project and/or to individual projects where they have been set up.
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Historic Buildings of Britain and Ireland - Main Page
If you have information about any of the Buildings mentioned below please share it here. If you have ancestors linked to any of the places please add them to the project.
Names with Bold links are to Geni profiles or projects. Other links take you to external biographical web pages. Please copy and paste the bullet used - ● - instead of * when adding items to the list. You will need to use two breaks between entries.
Historic houses in alphabetical order
Including Castles, Abbeys, Priories, Friaries, Manor Houses, Mansions, Stately Homes, Country houses, Estate houses, Courts, Halls, Parks and other listed buildings of historic interest
A
● The Abbey, Aston Abbotts
● Ascott (now a house)
● Ashridge Priory See Ashridge House below
B
● Boarstall House
● Boarstall Tower Borstall, is a 14th-century moated gatehouse located in Boarstall, Buckinghamshire, England, and now, with its surrounding gardens, a National Trust property. The gatehouse was built by John de Haudlo in 1312 to defend his residence, Boarstall House, a fortified manor house that was demolished in 1778. Although the Tower was updated in 1615 for use as a banqueting pavilion or hunting lodge, it retained its mediaeval belfry, cross loops and crenellations. The exterior and many rooms are essentially unchanged since then.
● Bolbec Castle - was a castle in the village of Whitchurch - the motte and bailey castle was illegally built for Hugh II de Bolbec, Lord of Whitchurch during the Anarchy of 1147 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolbec_Castle
● Bradwell Abbey/Priory (ruins - established 1154)
● Brill Palace, Brill, Buckinghamshire
Edward the Confessor;
Harold Godwinson;
William the Conqueror;
William II;
Henry I; [
Stephen;
Henry II;
John;
Henry III;
Edward I;
Edward II;
Edward III (c. 1042–1337);given to
● Brill Windmill (Pointer and Nixie families)
● Buckingham Castle was situated in the town of Buckingham on the north side of the River Ouse. The castle was first mentioned in documentary sources in 1154–64 and was possibly demolished 1208–1215. It was possibly held by the Giffard family. It was levelled in 1777 for the churchyard which now occupies the site, although the outer stone walls remain in place and provide support for the churchyard green. A similar stone wall exists at the rear of castle street, where individual garden plots are supported.
● Bulstrode Park and Mansion - built in 1686 for George Jeffreys, 1st Baron Jeffreys of Wem Judge Jeffreys
C
● Castlethorpe Castle - stood in the village of Castlethorpe, to the north of Milton Keynes. It was originally a motte and bailey castle with a timber structure built by Winemar, the Flemish Lord of Hanslope in the 11th or 12th Century. It was at that time known as Hanslope Castle. The castle was destroyed in 1215 by Faulkes de Breauté during the First Barons' War and was never rebuilt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castlethorpe_Castle
● Chenies Manor House - 15th and 16th century brick manor house with fortified tower and stepped gables. Originally the home of the Russell family, then Earls of Bedford, and visited by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.
● Chequers - or Chequers Court, is the country house retreat of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, for which purpose it was donated by Lord Lee of Fareham. The building in its present form dates from Tudor times, although the Hawtreys had lived in an earlier house (with the same name) for at least three centuries before this. The last Hawtrey owner of the house, who died in 1597, did not have a son to inherit. Nor did ten of the next twelve owners of the house (and none of the twelve had grandsons in the male line). It therefore passed through marriages, and in some cases by bequests to distant relatives, through a bewildering succession of families:- the Woolleys, the Crokes, the Thurbarnes, the Russells, the Greenhills, the Franklands, and finally the Astleys - before being finally sold to Lord Lee in 1912.
● Chicheley Hall - English country house built in the first quarter of the 18th century in the Baroque style.
● Claydon House - built between 1757 and 177, ancestral home of the Verney family since 1620.
● Cliveden - Italianate mansion and estate at Taplow. The site has been home to an earl, three countesses, two dukes, a Prince of Wales and the Viscounts Astor. Designed by Sir Charles Barry in 1851 to replace a house previously destroyed by fire, the present house is a blend of the English Palladian style and the Roman Cinquecento. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliveden
● Cymbeline's Castle - also known as Cymbeline's Mound and Belinus's Castle, is the remains of a motte-and-bailey castle in woods north of Great Kimble - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymbeline%27s_Castle
D
● Dinton Castle (also known as Dinton Folly) is located just north of the village of Dinton, built as an eyecatcher from Dinton Hall by Sir John Vanhatten in 1769. He used the castle to store his collection of fossils in the limestone walls. According to Rev. Callander (formerly of Dinton), the 'castle' was at one time used as a temporary meeting place for a local non-conformist congregation. To improve its habitability a tarpaulin had been used as a makeshift roof. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinton_Castle
● Ditton Park Buckinghamshire, Now Berkshire
● Dorneywood is an eighteenth-century Georgian house with Victorian and later additions, rebuilt after a fire in 1910, near Burnham. It was given to the National Trust by Lord Courtauld-Thomson in 1947 as a country home for a senior member of the Government, usually a Secretary of State or Minister of the Crown. http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/dorneywood-garden/The Prime Minister alone decides which Minister or Secretary of State is to occupy the house. In previous administrations it has been the residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and, prior to May 31, 2006, was occupied by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott. Prescott was forced to relinquish occupancy of Dorneywood, following a series of scandals over an affair with civil servant Tracey Temple and a snatched paparazzi photograph of him playing croquet on the lawn of the property whilst the Prime Minister Tony Blair was out of the country on a visit to Washington. However, given the controversies over John Prescott's use of the house, senior politicians were reluctant to use it. The house was eventually taken over by Alistair Darling, Chancellor of the Exchequer when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister in 2007. "A spokesman for Mr Brown ... explained that the house ... was owned by a trust, and would revert first to the Lord Mayor of London and then to the American Ambassador, if the Chancellor did not want it". Various former Prime Ministers (before achieving the premiership) have occupied the house, among them Anthony Eden; he and his wife had disliked the house. However, on becoming Prime Minister, Alec Douglas-Home was reluctant to forsake the more comfortable and modern Dorneywood for the antique splendours of Chequers. Another, James Callaghan as Foreign Secretary, also had the use of Dorneywood (later Chevening was to become the official country home for the holder of that office). The last person to have lived at the house before becoming Prime Minister was John Major. In 2010, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, took occupancy of the house.
● Dundrige Manor, Aston Clinton - There is a record of a manor and farm estate at Dundridge (orig. Dunryge) dating to 12th century, though possibly on the site of an earlier Saxon settlement. It was part of the lands granted to Missenden Abbey and the tenant was Henry de Crokesley. Subsequently, the manor became under the control of the Montagu family and after it came into the possession of Margaret Pole, 8th Countess of Salisbury who held the lands until Henry VIII's time seized them from the Abbey and meanwhile also had Margaret Pole beheaded. In 1545, Henry granted Dundridge to Sir John Baldwin who was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. Dundridge remained in the ownership of the Baldwin family until 1768, when the fortunes of the Baldwins waned and the house and manor lands were sold in lots. Dundridge Manor house is recorded to have fallen into disrepair at the time it was disposed of to the Darvill (Darell) family. During the 19th century it passed through marriage to the Jeffrey family. The Rev. John Jeffrey, rector of Barnes, inherited it. After his death, in 1900, the manor house and part of the estate was sold to Robert Green. The Rodwell family lived there, breeding pheasant, until the Second World War when forced by the War Agricultural Executive Committee to relinquish the farm estate. It was purchased by the Matthews family who have occupied it since then. Victoria County History
E
● Eythrope Manor House (previously Ethorp) - located to the south east of the main village of Waddesdon. It was bought in the 1870s by a branch of the Rothschild family, and belongs to them to this day.
F
● Fawley Court Fowley, Divine Mercy College Fortified Manor House masonry footings
G
H
● Halton House is a country house in the Chiltern Hills above the village of Halton, built for Alfred de Rothschild between 1880 and 1883. It is currently used as the main officers' mess for RAF Halton.
● Hampden House - country house in the village of Great Hampden, between Great Missenden and Princes Risborough, named after the Hampden family. The Hampdens (later Earls of Buckinghamshire) are recorded as owning the site from before the Norman conquest. They lived continually in the house until 1938.
● Hartwell House - country house in the village of Hartwell - part of the Hartwell Estate owned by the Ernest Cook Trust, and since 2008 has been leased to The National Trust. It is a grade I listed building, and is currently used as a hotel.
● Hughenden Manor - red brick Victorian mansion, located in High Wycombe. In the 19th century, it was the country house of the Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield. Today, it is owned by the National Trust and fully open to the public.
I
J
K
● The King's Head Inn - one of the oldest public houses with a coaching yard in the south of England. It is located in the Market Square, Aylesbury. The Great Hall is the oldest standing structure on site, dating back to the 1470s, and was built as a guest house by the Verney family (of nearby Claydon House).
L
● Lavendon Castle stood to the north of the village of Lavendon. See http://www.gatehouse-gazetteer.info/English%20sites/1921.html
● Linford Manor, also known as Great Linford Manor, - a seventeenth-century mansion or manor house converted into a recording studio complex in Great Linford. It is now owned by Pete Winkelman who is chairman of Milton Keynes Dons football club. Originally built in 1678 by Sir William Pritchard on land bought from the Napier family on the site of an older medieval manor. In 1704 the manor passed to the Uthwatts, his relatives, and extended the house over time. It was originally the manor of Little Linford as well as of Great Linford.
M
● Mentmore Towers - a 19th-century English country house in the village of Mentmore. The house was designed by Joseph Paxton and his son-in-law, George Henry Stokes, in the 19th-century revival of late 16th and early 17th-century Elizabethan and Jacobean styles called Jacobethan for the banker and collector of fine art Baron Mayer de Rothschild as a country home, display case for his collection of fine art. Historically it was first known simply as 'Mentmore'.
N
● Nether Winchendon House - More than sixty years before the Norman Conquest of England, King Ethelred II, the Redeless (or Unready), re-affirmed the boundaries of the ten hides at Winchendon, first from Escwulf ’s Well. In the Domesday Book of 1086, William the Conqueror’s survey confirms that this Manor, Eddedda held of Queen Eddeva. In 1162, when Thomas à Becket became Archbishop of Canterbury, the property of Winchendon was granted by William Giffard, Earl of Buckingham to Augustian monks recently arrived from Arras.
As early as the 13th century the Manorial Court met in the Great Hall of Nether Winchendon House presided over by the Lord of the Manor. In 1528 when King Henry VIII was still married to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, the house was lived in by his courtier Sir John Daunce, who added a parlour with a magnificent hand-carved oak frieze and fabulous linen-fold panelling, which was later painted white to celebrate the Restoration of King Charles II. This is now the Dining Room.
In 1547 King Edward VI granted the property to Sir John Russell K.G. of Chenies, later created Earl of Bedford. Sir John sold the property in 1559 to William Goodwin whose daughter Petronilla married Thomas Tyringham of Tyringham, Buckinghamshire. Since this time Nether Winchendon House has passed by family descent from the Tyringhams, to their cousins the Bernard family and then to their cousins the Spencer family. The house is now lived in by Robert and Georgianna Spencer Bernard and their family.
O
P
● Penbury Grove - built by [Built by Horace Field Parshall in 1902; a replica of Pennsbury Manor, the residence of William Penn of Pennsylvania
● Pitstone Windmill is a Grade II● listed windmill in England which is thought to date from the early 17th century. It stands in the north-east corner of a large field near the parish boundary of Ivinghoe and Pitstone. It belongs today to the National Trust. In 1874 the mill was bought by Adelbert Wellington Brownlow Cust, 3rd Earl Brownlow who owned the nearby Ashridge Estate. He subsequently let it to a local farmer, who ran a successful milling business from the mill.
● Princes Risborough Manor House The house now known as the Manor House stands opposite the east end of the church.[ It was formerly known as Brook or Brooke House and the name was only changed in the late 19th century. It is first mentioned (as Broke House) in the reign of Elizabeth I in a grant dated 1589, but this was an earlier building, though some parts of it are incorporated in the present house. The house was substantially enlarged and rebuilt in the mid-17th century.
Q
R
● The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in the village of Great Missenden was the home of the children's and short story writer Roald Dahl for 36 years until his death in 1990. The museum was officially opened on 10 June 2005 by Cherie Blair and open to the public on 11 June 2005. It is housed in an old coaching inn and yard, which has been converted into a museum at a cost of £4.5 million. Funding was provided by the Dahl family, Dahl's publishers, charitable foundations and corporate and private donors. The museum houses all of Dahl's main papers: his manuscripts, business and personal correspondence and his "Ideas Books". It also offers regular workshops and hosts events that help to enhance creativity and writing skills. It is run by an independent registered charity.
S
● Shardeloes - a large 18th-century country house located one mile west of Amersham. A previous manor house on the site was demolished and the present building constructed between 1758 and 1766 for William Drake, Sr, the Member of Parliament for Amersham.
● Snelshall Priory was a Benedictine priory in Milton Keynes built aroud 1200 started after Sybil d'Aungerville granted land at Tattenhoe to Lavendon Abbey.
● Stowe House Formerly the country seat of the Dukes of Buckingham and Chandos, Stowe House is now occupied by Stowe School. The landscaped gardens and its many monuments were acquired by the National Trust in 1990, and are open to the public. The National Trust is overseeing a restoration programme of the grounds, temples and follies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stowe_House
● Stowe Landscape Gardens and Monuments
T
U-V
W
● Waddesdon Manor - a country house in the village of Waddesdon, built in the Neo-Renaissance style of a French château between 1874 and 1889 for Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild (1839–1898).
● West Wycombe Park - a country house near the village of West Wycombe, built between 1740 and 1800. It was conceived as a pleasure palace for the 18th-century libertine and dilettante Sir Francis Dashwood, 2nd Baronet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Wycombe_Park
● Winslow Hall - a country house, now in the centre of the small town of Winslow, built in 1700. The architect of the mansion has been a matter of prolonged architectural debate: the present candidates are Sir Christopher Wren or a draughtsman, whether in the Board of Works, which Wren oversaw, or a talented provincial architect. The house was occupied by William Lowndes and his family until his death in 1724, and continued to be occupied by his descendants until 1830, when it became Dr Lovell's School.
● Wormsley Estate The Getty family Estate. Wormsley's history as an Estate dates back to the 12th Century, although it has only changed hands twice since it was bought by the Scrope family in 1574.
● Wycombe Abbey - now and independent girl's boarding school. On the site of the present Wycombe Abbey was a large manor house known as 'Loakes House' which until 1700 was the seat of the Archdale family, when Thomas Archdale sold it to Henry Petty, 1st Earl of Shelburne. He in turn bequeathed the estate to his grand nephew Gen. William Petty (Fitzmaurice), 1st Marquess of Lansdowne (who inherited a different Earldom of Shelburne † in 1761, and became Prime Minister in 1782). The Shelburnes, however, had a far larger and grander residence at Bowood House in the Savernake Forest. They spent little time at Loakes House. Consequently, Lord Shelburne sold his estates in the area. Loakes House was purchased from them at auction by Robert Smith, 1st Baron Carrington in 1798. He then employed the architect James Wyatt to transform Loakes House into the present Wycombe Abbey as we see it today.
X-Y-Z
References and Sources
Buckinghamshire Specific
General
- National Trust
- English Heritage
- WIKI List of country houses in the UK
- Britain's Finest
- Britain Express
- Lankdmark Trust
- Historic Houses Association - represents 1,500 houses in the UK
- Hudson's Historic Houses and Gardens - UK - guidebook of over 2,000 houses open to the public
- The DiCamillo Companion to British & Irish Country Houses - database of over 7,000 houses
- Lost Heritage - A Memorial to the Lost Country Houses of England - list of over 1,700 houses
- National Trust for Historic Preservation - online database of historic houses in the United State
- - http://www.hha.org.uk/ Historic Houses Association
- WIKI Treasure Houses of England
- List of country houses in the United Kingdom
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