Drayton Beauchamp (pronounced 'Beecham') is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

within

Aylesbury Vale The Aylesbury Vale (or Vale of Aylesbury) is a geographical region in Buckinghamshire, England, which is bounded by the Borough of Milton Keynes and South Northamptonshire to the north, Central Bedfordshire and the Borough of Dacorum (Hertford ...

district in Buckinghamshire, England. It is in the east of the county bordering Hertfordshire, about six miles from Aylesbury and two miles from

Tring Tring is a market town and civil parish in the Borough of Dacorum, Hertfordshire, England. It is situated in a gap passing through the Chiltern Hills, classed as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, from Central London. Tring is linked to ...

History

The village

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 of ...

is derived from the

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

for "farm where sledges are used". It is a common place name in England, and refers to places that were perched on the hillside, thus requiring the use of a sledge rather than a cart to pull heavy loads. The suffix 'Beauchamp' refers to the ancient

manorial Manorialism, also known as the manor system or manorial system, was the method of land ownership (or "tenure") in parts of Europe, notably France and later England, during the Middle Ages. Its defining features included a large, sometimes forti ...

family of the parish. The village is intersected by the

Icknield Way The Icknield Way is an ancient trackway in southern and eastern England that runs from Norfolk to Wiltshire. It follows the chalk escarpment that includes the Berkshire Downs and Chiltern Hills. Background It is generally said to be, wi ...

a prehistoric, long-distance trackway of significant importance in providing a trading route between East Anglia and the

Thames Valley The Thames Valley is an informally-defined sub-region of South East England, centred on the River Thames west of London, with Oxford as a major centre. Its boundaries vary with context. The area is a major tourist destination and economic hub, ...

certainly during the

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostl ...

and maybe earlier. In more recent times it has been bisected by the Roman Road,

Akeman Street Akeman Street is a Roman road in southern England between the modern counties of Hertfordshire and Gloucestershire. It is approximately long and runs roughly east–west. Akeman Street linked Watling Street just north of Verulamium (near mode ...

now the A41 and by both the Aylesbury Arm and

Wendover Wendover is a market town and civil parish at the foot of the Chiltern Hills in Buckinghamshire, England. It is situated at the point where the main road across the Chilterns between London and Aylesbury intersects with the once important road a ...

Arm of the

Grand Union Canal The Grand Union Canal in England is part of the British canal system. It is the principal navigable waterway between London and the Midlands. Starting in London, one arm runs to Leicester and another ends in Birmingham, with the latter ...

. Following the Norman conquest of England

William I William I; ang, WillelmI (Bates ''William the Conqueror'' p. 33– 9 September 1087), usually known as William the Conqueror and sometimes William the Bastard, was the first Norman king of England, reigning from 1066 until his death in 10 ...

awarded land which later became known as Drayton Beauchamp to Robert, Earl of Morton who as Magno le Breton had accompanied William at the time of the Norman Invasion in 1066. The Morton family founded a church at Drayton on the site where the present-day church of St Mary the Virgin now stands. During the early part of the 13th century the manor was owned by William de Beauchamp (de Bello Campo). The lands were passed from the Beauchamp family to the Cobhams. Sir John Cobham gave the property to King Edward III. The King granted it to his shield-bearer

Thomas Cheney Sir Thomas Cheney (or Cheyne) KG (c. 1485 – 16 December 1558) of the Blackfriars, City of London and Shurland, Isle of Sheppey, Kent, was an English administrator and diplomat, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports in south-east England from 1 ...

(also spelt Cheyne) in 1364. It remained in the Cheyne family until the death of William Cheyne, Lord Viscount Newhaven in 1728. During the period after 1066 in which the Lord of the Manor of Drayton was Magno le Breton the southern end of the manor would have been valued for its summer pasture. This area which became known later as Cholesbury contained a large

Hillfort A hillfort is a type of earthwork used as a fortified refuge or defended settlement, located to exploit a rise in elevation for defensive advantage. They are typically European and of the Bronze Age or Iron Age. Some were used in the post-Roma ...

. This gradually became a permanent settlement and was subsequently separated off as a separate manor. In 1541 it was sold by Robert Cheyne to Chief Justice John Baldwin and became an autonomous manor. Drayton Beauchamp was sold by the Cheyne family to John Gumley in 1728 for £22,200 and in 1788 the Lordship of the Manor was inherited by Lady Robert Manners. The manor house beside the church had been demolished around 1760 and a new one built elsewhere in the parish by the Gumleys. In 1835 the Lordship of the Manor passed to Mrs. Caroline Jenney and remained in that family until the death of Miss Airmyne Harpur-Crewe in 1999. The parish church was extensively rebuilt in the 15th century from materials salvaged from an earlier church. Most notable is the Norman font which dates back to the 12th century. The first rector of the new Church was

Richard Hooker Richard Hooker (25 March 1554 – 2 November 1600) was an English priest in the Church of England and an influential theologian.The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church by F. L. Cross (Editor), E. A. Livingstone (Editor) Oxford University ...

who took up his incumbency in 1584. Richard is today remembered for his writings in particular a four-volume work known as '' Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie''. The church was again restored in 1867'Parishes: Drayton Beauchamp', A History of the County of Buckingham: Volume 3 (1925), pp. 341–345. URL
Date accessed: 2 December 2010
/ref> when the rector was the naturalist, Henry Harpur Crewe. In 1934 Drayton Beauchamp ceded a small parcel of land, adjacent to the previously detached parish of Cholesbury to the new parish of Cholesbury-cum-St Leonards.

References

External links

St Mary the VirginBritish History Online – Victoria County History of Buckinghamshire: Volume 3 – Drayton Beauchamp
{{authority control Villages in Buckinghamshire Civil parishes in Buckinghamshire

History

References

Further reading

External links