Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire

In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Chalfont St Giles like this:

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. ...

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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.

Chalfont St Giles through time

Chalfont St Giles is now part of BUCKINGHAMSHIRE Unitary Authority. Click here for graphs and data of how BUCKINGHAMSHIRE has changed over two centuries. For statistics about Chalfont St Giles itself, go to Statistics.

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