Gawcott is a village about south-west of

Buckingham Buckingham ( ) is a market town in north Buckinghamshire, England, close to the borders of Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire, which had a population of 12,890 at the 2011 Census. The town lies approximately west of Central Milton Keynes, sou ...

in the

Buckinghamshire Buckinghamshire (), abbreviated Bucks, is a ceremonial county in South East England that borders Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-eas ...

district in the ceremonial county of

, England. The village is in the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of Parish (administrative division), administrative parish used for Local government in England, local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below district ...

of Gawcott with Lenborough.

History

The

toponym Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of '' toponyms'' ( proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name o ...

is derived from the Old English for "cottage for which rent is payable". The ''

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

'' of 1086 records the village as ''Chauescote''. Although an alternative description for the name of Gawcott, comes from the old Norse word for the Cuckoo 'Gaukr', pronounced Gawk and 'cott' for house/ home/ cottage. This explanation has some merit as in the west of the village the cuckoo was the prevalent bird up until the early 1940s when much of its habitat was destroyed to make space for servicemen in the second world war. One of the local historic public houses of the village was also named the Cuckoo's nest.

Sir George Gilbert Scott Sir George Gilbert Scott (13 July 1811 – 27 March 1878), known as Sir Gilbert Scott, was a prolific English Gothic Revival architect, chiefly associated with the design, building and renovation of churches and cathedrals, although he starte ...

, the architect of the

Midland Grand Hotel Midland may refer to: Places Australia * Midland, Western Australia Canada * Midland, Albert County, New Brunswick * Midland, Kings County, New Brunswick * Midland, Newfoundland and Labrador * Midland, Ontario India * Midland Ward, Kohima, Nag ...

St Pancras railway station St Pancras railway station (), also known as London St Pancras or St Pancras International and officially since 2007 as London St Pancras International, is a central London railway terminus on Euston Road in the London Borough of Camden. It i ...

in London (and numerous other buildings), was born in Gawcott where his father, the Reverend Thomas Scott (1780–1835), was

perpetual curate Perpetual curate was a class of resident parish priest or incumbent curate within the United Church of England and Ireland (name of the combined Anglican churches of England and Ireland from 1800 to 1871). The term is found in common use mainly d ...

Signal Hill

To the east of the village is Signal Hill, which was a former FCO/

MI6 The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intellige ...

signals intelligence Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is intelligence-gathering by interception of '' signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly used in communication ...

station.

References

External links

{{authority control History of telecommunications in the United Kingdom Military history of Buckinghamshire Villages in Buckinghamshire

History

Signal Hill

See also

References

External links