Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire Family History Guide

Chalfont St Giles is an Ancient Parish in the county of Buckinghamshire.

Alternative names:

Parish church: St. Giles

Parish registers begin:

Parish registers: 1584
Bishop’s Transcripts: 1576

Nonconformists include: Independent/Congregational, Primitive Methodist, and Society of Friends/Quaker.

Table of Contents

Adjacent Parishes

Parish History

The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales 1870

CHALFONT-ST. GILES, a village and a parish in Amersham district, Bucks. The village stands on the Misbourn rivulet, 3 miles SE by S of Amersham, and 6 E by N of Loudwater r. station; and has a post-office under Slough. The poet Milton resided here during the plague of London in 1665, and finished here his “Paradise Lost;” and the house which he occupied, a half-timbered cottage, still exists, and has his name on its front.

The parish comprises 3,641 acres. Real property, £6,117. Pop., 1,217. Houses, 255. The property is subdivided. The manor belongs to T. N. Allen, Esq. Vatche House, or the Vache, is a modernized ancient edifice; was long held by the Hare family; belonged previously to the Alstons; and is said to have been built originally on a dairy farm of King John.

The living is a rectory in the diocese of Oxford. Value, £615. Patron, the Bishop of Oxford. The church is ancient; has a Norman tower; was restored in 1863; and contains brasses and monuments of the Gardiners, the Fleetwoods, the Claytons, and Bishop Hare. There are chapels for Independents, Primitive Methodists, Free Methodists, and Quakers; and the remains of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, and Thomas Ellwood, the friend of Milton, are in the Quakers’ burying ground. A school has £58 from endowment; and other charities £100.

Source: The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales [Wilson, John M]. A. Fullarton & Co. N. d. c. [1870-72].

A Topographical Dictionary of England 1848

CHALFONT (St. Giles), a parish, in the union of Amersham, hundred of Burnham, county of Buckingham, 3¾ miles (S. E.) from Amersham; containing 1228 inhabitants. The ancient manor of Vach, in this parish, is said to have been King John’s dairy-farm, which he made a resting-place on some occasions.

The parish comprises about 3600 acres; the surface is undulated, and the soil, consisting of chalk, gravel, and clay, is considered poor. The living is a rectory, valued in the king’s books at £19. 9. 4½., and in the gift of the Bishop of Lincoln: the tithes have been commuted for £790, and the glebe comprises 54½ acres, with a glebehouse. The church is of very great antiquity.

Here are places of worship for the Society of Friends and Independents, in the cemetery attached to the former of which lie the remains of William Penn, founder of the colony of Pennsylvania. A school, now conducted on the national system, has been endowed by Sir Hugh Palliser with £30 per annum, and by Mrs. Molloy with £20 per annum; and there are eight almshouses.

During the plague that raged in London in 1665, Milton resided at this place, where he completed his celebrated poem of Paradise Lost; the house in which he lived is now occupied by a poor family. Here are the remains of a monastery, whose chapel is attached to the mansion of Vach, which appears to have been so named from the manor, shortly after the Conquest; and in the park is a monument erected by the late Sir Hugh Palliser to the memory of Capt. Cook, the circumnavigator, upon which is a long inscription composed by Admiral Forbes.

Source: A Topographical Dictionary of England by Samuel Lewis 1848