Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire Family History Guide

Chalfont St Peter is an Ancient Parish in the county of Buckinghamshire. Gerrard’s Cross is a chapelry of Chalfont St Peter.

Alternative names:

Parish church: St. Peter

Parish registers begin:

Parish registers: 1538
Bishop’s Transcripts: 1600

Nonconformists include: Independent/Congregational and Particular Baptist.

Adjacent Parishes

Beaconsfield
Chalfont St Giles
Chenies
Chorley Wood Christ Church, Hertfordshire
Gerrard’s Cross
Amersham with Coleshill
Hedgerley
West Hyde, Hertfordshire
Farnham Royal
Seer Green

Parish History

The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales 1870

CHALFONT-ST. PETER, a village and a parish in Amersham district, Bucks. The village stands on the Misbourn rivulet, 5 miles SSE of Amersham, and 6¼ E by N of Woburn-Green r. station; is a seat of petty sessions; and has a post-office under Slough. The parish comprises 4,717 acres. Real property, £7,335. Pop., 1,344. Houses, 303. The property is divided among a few. Chalfont House was built by General Churchill, the brother-in-law of Horace Walpole; owed much of its original character to Walpole’s taste; but has been much altered and improved; and is now the seat of J. Hibbert, Esq. A house called the Grange was for some time the residence of Judge Jeffreys. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford. Value, £731. Patron, St. John’s College, Oxford. The church is a brick edifice of 1726, highly improved by Street in 1854; and contains three good brasses. The p. curacy of Gerrard’s Cross is a separate benefice. There are a Baptist chapel, a national school, and charities £25.

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. Peter’s), a parish, in the union of Amersham, hundred of Burnham, county of Buckingham, 1½ mile (N. N. E.) from Gerrard’s-Cross; containing 1483 inhabitants. The rectory, the manor, and 1147 acres of land, belonged to Missenden Abbey; and were sold, at the Dissolution, to Sir Robert Drury and others, from whom they passed into the Bulstrode family. The parish is intersected by a tributary stream of the Colne, called Missbourne, upon which there is a silk-mill, affording employment to about fifty women. It comprises about 4564 acres, of which 4100 are arable, 292 wood, and 178 uninclosed common: the surface is irregular; the soil on the higher grounds is gravel, with a clayey tenacious subsoil, and the lower grounds are covered with a thin coat of alluvial bog earth. The pettysessions for the division are holden here. The living is a vicarage, endowed with part of the rectorial tithes, and valued in the king’s books at £15. 17. 1.; net income, £600; patrons, the President and Fellows of St. John’s College, Oxford. The remainder of the great tithes belongs to three proprietors of land. The church, rebuilt in 1726, is a plain brick edifice, with an embattled tower seventy feet high, containing a peal of six well-toned bells; the quoins and window and door cases, of stone, were brought from the ruins of the Roman station of Verulam, now St. Alban’s.

Source: A Topographical Dictionary of England by Samuel Lewis 1848