Place:Long Crendon, Buckinghamshire, England

NameLong Crendon
Alt namesCredendonesource: Domesday Book (1985) p 43
TypeVillage, Civil parish
Coordinates51.783°N 1.017°W
Located inBuckinghamshire, England
See alsoLong Crendon Rural, Buckinghamshire, Englandrural district of which the parish was a part 1894-1934
Aylesbury Rural, Buckinghamshire, Englandrural district of which the parish was a part 1934-1974
Aylesbury Vale, Buckinghamshire, Englandadminitrative district which the parish joined in 1974
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog


the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Long Crendon is a village and civil parish within the Aylesbury Vale district in Buckinghamshire, England, about 3 miles (5 km) west of Haddenham and 2 miles (3 km) north-west of Thame in neighbouring Oxfordshire. The village has been called Long Crendon only since the English Civil War. The "Long" prefix refers simply to the length of the village at that time, and was added to differentiate it from nearby Grendon Underwood. Previously it was simply known as Crendon. This name is Old English and means Creoda's Hill (in 1086 it was listed in the Domesday Book as Crededone).

Prior to the rural district administration, Long Crendon was part of the Ashendon Hundred and the Thame Poor Law Union.

Contents

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

"Crendon" was the caput of the feudal honour held by Walter Giffard (died 1102), created Earl of Buckingham by William the Conqueror. The Manor in Long Crendon was once a great building that housed the later Earls of Buckingham and over the years the various manorial estates in the village have passed through the hands of the Crown, Oxford University, the Earls of March and the Marquis of Buckingham. The latter is now the Lord of the Manor of Long Crendon.

In 1162 an order of Augustinian monks was founded in the village at nearby Notley Abbey. The park in which the abbey stood was donated to the abbey itself by the incumbent of the manor, the Earl of Buckingham. At the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries the annual income was calculated as over £437; an immense amount of money for the time. The abbey still stands, but as a secular manor house.[1] In the 20th century it was the marital home of actors Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh.



In 1218 Long Crendon was granted a royal charter to hold a weekly market;[1] the monies from which were to be collected by William Earl Marshall who owned the manor at that time. The town (as it was then) was certainly important in this period as it shared the distinction with Aylesbury as being the only places in the whole of England where needles were made.[2] The royal charter was later rescinded and the market moved and joined with the existing one in nearby Thame.

The Church of England parish church of St Mary dates from the 12th century. The building has undergone several major renovations and refurbishments since 2007. The village has also a Baptist church and a Roman Catholic church.

Long Crendon Courthouse is a 15th-century timber-frame building. Manorial courts were held here from the reign of King Henry V until the Victorian era. The National Trust bought the courthouse in 1900. The lower floor is residential; the upper floor can be visited.

There was a Long Crendon Rural District from 1894 to 1934.

Long Crendon's history of needle-making went on until the 19th century. It was a home-based industry with an agent coming around weekly to collect and pay for the latest production.

Research Tips

Maps

  • An outline map of the current civil parishes of Buckinghamshire (post 1974 and omitting Milton Keynes unitary authority) is provided by the Boundaries Commission.
  • Another map which gives no source, appears to have been drawn to show the county in the late 19th century and labels the parishes directly. However, the map does not show towns and villages (unless they are parishes using the same name) and some parishes have been found to be missing from this map.
  • A map provided by the Open University (a British university based in Milton Keynes) gives the locations of the old civil parishes and the new communities that make up Milton Keynes. It can be expanded to read the labels.

Registration Offices

Birth, marriage and death certificates can now be ordered online from Buckinghamshire County Council. The full postal address is Buckinghamshire Register Office, County Hall, Walton Street, Aylesbury, HP20 1YU.

The Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies (County Hall, Walton Street, Aylesbury, HP20 1UU) holds

  • Church of England and Nonconformist churches including registers of baptism, marriage and burial.
  • Around 35,000 wills proved by the Archdeaconry of Buckingham.
  • County and District Councils (lists of councillors, minutes of meetings, etc).
  • Quarter and Petty Session courts.
  • Landed estates of families including the Aubrey-Fletchers, Hampdens, Carringtons and Fremantles.
  • Historic maps including OS, tithe and inclosure maps
  • A wide range of local history books, some for loan.
  • Pamphlets and articles of local history interest.
  • Local newspapers
  • Computers for access to family history resources like Ancestry and FreeBMD.
  • Published material is listed in the Library Catalogue.
  • Catalogues to some of our manuscript material is available through Access to Archives, part of The National Archives (TNA). Their database contains catalogues describing archives held locally in England and Wales and dating from the eighth century to the present day.

In Buckinghamshire, as with other counties in England and Wales, the location of offices where Births, Marriages and Deaths were registered has altered with other changes in local government. A list of the location of Registration Offices since civil registration began in 1837 has been prepared by GENUKI (Genealogy: United Kingdom and Ireland). The table also gives details of when each Registration Office was in existence. In the case of Buckinghamshire, the same registration offices were used for the censuses since 1851. Buckinghamshire now only has a central registration office at County Hall in Aylesbury, but there are facilities for registering births, marriages and deaths in specific libraries around the county.

Nineteenth Century Local Administration

English Jurisdictions is a webpage provided by FamilySearch which analyses every ecclesiastical parish in England at the year 1851. It provides, with the aid of outline maps, the date at which parish records and bishops transcripts begin, non-conformist denominations with a chapel within the parish, the names of the jurisdictions in charge: county, civil registration district, probate court, diocese, rural deanery, poor law union, hundred, church province; and links to FamilySearch historical records, FamilySearch Catalog and the FamilySearch Wiki. Two limitations: only England, and at the year 1851.

During the 19th century two bodies, the Poor Law Union and the Sanitary District, had responsibility for governmental functions at a level immediately above that covered by the civil parish. In 1894 these were replace by Rural and Urban Districts. These were elected bodies, responsible for setting local property assessments and taxes as well as for carrying out their specified duties. Thses districts continued in operation until 1974. Urban districts for larger municipalities were called "Municipal Boroughs" and had additional powers and obligations.

Poor Law Unions, established nationally in 1834, combined parishes together for the purpose of providing relief for the needy who had no family support. This led to the building of '"union poorhouses" or "workhouses" funded by all the parishes in the union. The geographical boundaries established for the individual Poor Law Unions were employed again when Registration Districts were formed three years later. In 1875 Sanitary Districts were formed to provide services such as clean water supply, sewage systems, street cleaning, and the clearance of slum housing. These also tended to follow the same geographical boundaries, although there were local alterations caused by changes in population distribution.

Online Historical References

  • GENUKI for Buckinghamshire provides a lot of material on the county history from a variety of aspects. The maps of the hundreds are reproduced from 19th century publications and show the topology as well as the locations of the various parishes. There is also a schematic map covering the whole county. GENUKI does not contain much information about the 20th century and beyond.
  • Local History Online provides a list of local historical organizations. Each of these societies and organizations has its own website.
  • The FamilySearch Wiki on Buckinghamshire explains the jurisdictions relating to civil affairs, parishes and probate (wills and testaments) for each parish in the county and also outlines when these jurisdictions were in existence. The data does not cover the post-1974 period.
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Long Crendon. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.