Place:Chartridge, Buckinghamshire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Chartridge is a village in Buckinghamshire, England situated 2 miles northwest of Chesham.

Chartridge is also the name of a civil parish in Chiltern District which also includes the village of Bellingdon and the hamlets of Pednor, Hundridge and Asheridge. It was created in 1899 having previously been part of the parish of Chesham. The village is 34 miles northwest of London and the closest town is Chesham to the south with which it is closely associated. The increase in residential housing since World War II has resulted in ribbon development stretching out along the Chartridge Road from the town to the centre of the village. Eleven miles to the northwest of Chartridge is Aylesbury, the county town of Buckinghamshire.

In 1934 a major part of Chartridge was absorbed back into Chesham. This included sections of all the valleys and ridges closest to the town itself.

History

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

The village name is Anglo Saxon in origin, 'Cærdan-hrycg' means Caerda's ridge, referring to the fact that the settlement sits on the top of a hill. There is no specific mention of Chartridge in the Domesday Book. In manorial rolls of 1191 it is recorded as 'Charderuge' presumed linked to the purchase of lands by Robert de Charderugge. By the late 12th century parts of Chartridge were owned by the Sifrewast family.^[1] By the 13th century it has become incorporated into the names of local landowners and is referred to in conveyances.

There was no church in Chartridge village as it was historically part of the ecclesiastical parish of Chesham. However, as early as 1311 a private house, Great Hundridge Manor, was recorded as providing a chapel dedicated to King Edward the Martyr. There has been a Baptist Chapel in the village since the 18th century. In 1811 a house was registered for meetings of the Lower Baptist Church in Chesham, now known as the Trinity Baptist Church.^[1] Today the Baptist Chapel in the village is a branch of Broadway Baptist Church in Chesham. Services commenced in the early 19th century and in 1844 land close to the Bell pub was given for a chapel which was subsequently replaced by a new chapel in 1885 that was financed by public subscription.

Chartridge Lodge was greatly extended by the Franklin family who lived there from 1899. Today it is home to Chartridge Park, an 18-hole golf course, and a large Conference Centre.^[2] The Franklin family were also responsible for the building of several cottages within the village and conversion of a blacksmith's shop into a Reading Room in 1903 to mark the coronation of King Edward VII. Subsequently, it was given by the family to the village and on becoming the village hall was used as a concert room, clubhouse and lending library and has been overseen from that time until the present by the Trustees of Chartridge Reading Room. Due to the absence of a parish church, from its earliest days the Reading Room was also used for religious services and a Sunday School associated with St. Mary's Church, Chesham. Regular services ran from 1964 until 1974 during which it was known as St Christopher's.^[2]

During the 19th century the vast majority of employment was provided by agriculture. Directly employing labourers as well as supporting trades such as blacksmiths. Income earned would have been spent in the licensed public houses, the Bell and Portobello Arms, the latter now a private house. In the early part of the 20th century there were four pheasant breeding farms due to the popularity of game shooting and convenience of improved travel by railway from London to Chesham. At least one farm continued in business until the Second World War.^[2]

From 1783 there are records of a Pest house in operation. The predominant infection of the time being small pox.

Parish Hamlets

Asheridge

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Asheridge is a small hamlet within the parish of Chartridge. Prior to 1898 it was part of Chesham parish. It is situated in the Chiltern Hills, about 2-1/2 miles northwest of Chesham, 5 miles from Great Missenden and 6 miles from Wendover.

Asheridge farm house is of 16th-century origin. In 1848 Asheridge is recorded as having a population of 129. A school and congregational church were established there during the latter part of the 19th century and records show they were still in existence in 1891. The Blue Ball Public House which was at the centre of the settlement at that time is still in business today.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Asheridge.

Bellingdon

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Bellingdon is a village in the civil parish of Chartridge. It is arranged along a ridge, a typical arrangement of a settlement in the Chiltern Hills to the north of Chesham.

Until the end of the 19th century Bellingdon consisted of a number of scattered farms including Bank, Peppetts, Bellingdon End, Bloomfield, Huge, Hazeldean and Vale Farms which were built in late 16th or early 17th-century. The abundance of clay deposits led to a number of brickworks being established in the 19th century at Bloomfield Farm and in the 20th century at Gyles Court and nearby adjacent to Cheddington Wood.

In the nineteenth century there was a Baptist meeting in the village at Peppett's Green, which was run by the Congregational Church and the Lower Baptist Chapel (now Trinity Baptist) in Chesham. The Anglican church of St. John's was established in the 1870s and is part of the ecclesiastical parish of Great Chesham. In the 1880s it met in the Mission Room at Sun Cottage. The current tin tabernacle was built in 1901. For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Bellingdon.

Hundridge

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Hundridge is a hamlet in the civil parish of Chartridge. It is located in the Chiltern Hills to the west of Chesham. Hundridge chapel is a mediaeval building which was used as a place of worship until the Reformation. It is now attached to Hundridge Manor.

Pednor

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Pednor is a hamlet in the civil parish of Chartridge. It is located in the Chiltern Hills two miles west of Chesham and seven miles southeast of Wendover.

In 1541, following the dissolution of the monasteries the lands at Pednor were surrendered by Missenden Abbey and became part of the estates owned by John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford. There is a medieval moat sited at Little Pednor Farm which is recorded by English Heritage as associted with the lands transferred from the Abbey and was later succeeded as the predominant residence within the estate by Pednor House.

Pednor Mead is that part of Pednor which is closest to Chesham along the valley known as Pednor Bottom. A number of springs that source the River Chess lie along this bottom. There are farms called Great and Little Pednor which lie beyond the town at this point. Pednormead End is a neighbourhood within Chesham adjacent to the Old Town at the start of the Pednor Road.

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

• The Buckinghamshire section of The Victoria History of the Counties of England, in four volumes, is online and provides an extensive history of the county, parish by parish, up to the end of the 19th century. Parishes are arranged in their original "hundreds", a fairly archaic scheme of dividing counties into reasonably sized sections.

• 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.
• Because Chartridge and its hamlets were considered part of Chesham parish until 1899, most births, marriages and deaths occurring in the 19th century and earlier will be registered under Chesham. This will be as much true for ecclesiastical records as for civil registration.