History Time Line

Introduction

‘Heritage’ is the full range of our inherited traditions, monuments, objects, and culture. Most important, it is the range of contemporary activities, meanings, and behaviors that we draw from them. Heritage includes, but is much more than preserving, excavating, displaying, or restoring a collection of old things.

And here we have ours; or at least as far as we have managed to progress in the time we have taken since Sunday 17th July 2022 when this project sparked into life. If you are part of our village or know a thing or two about our past, please contribute to our records here through a ‘post’ or contact us.

Public Domain

Great Brickhill has a number of publications in the public domain that describe the history of our village.

British History Online

The British History on line web site is an amazing resource. Among its pages is the digitised copy of ‘A History of the County of Buckingham’ in its many volumes published in 1927. The link here will take you straight to Volume 4 page 294.

Great Brickhill section of British History On Line web site.

A History of Milton Keynes and District Vol 1 & 2 by Sir Frank Markham, published in 1973 by White Crescent Press in Luton contains several references to the history of the village. To quote from the fly leaf of his first volume;

“This history of an area of England that has never been regarded as historically important … Yet it was through this region that [William] the Conqueror made his great swoop on London when he failed in Kent; … It was here that the Plantagenets came to hunt and to love, and so upset King-making Warwick…. But most of all it is the history, not with humour, of quiet stubborn men and women who, in the last resort have been the real rulers of England, and who were geographically and historically the most English of all.”

Sir Frank’s books give many references to our village and the Duncombe family. It includes a chapter on the Civil War where the village has a particular role to play, introduced by a map of the North Buck area setting out which parishes or manors has sympathy to the Royalists, including Geat Brickhill, and the to the Parliamentarians. Those that were neutral included Stoke Hammond. The book contains many illustrations, maps and photographs of the ‘Milton Keynes and District’ area.

Sir Frank’s book is out of print but second hand copies are available on the internet.

Great Brickhill in the 1800s by Michael Wrath published in 1988 by Bucks County Library gives a good analysis of the local history and we have quoted his work elsewhere. Several villages have copies.

Local Historians and Commentators

We are privileged to have residents able to comment on the history of the village. Dr Christine Agambar, for instance has lived locally since the 1980s and has given us several insights about the village.

Wikipedia has dedicated pages about Great Brickhill, Bow Brickhill, Little Brickhill and Stoke Hammond. These four villages are currently (2022) in the same St Mary’s Church benefice, within the diocese of Oxford. Wikipedia has dedicated pages about our neighbours in nearby Bletchley, Milton Keynes, Woburn and Leighton Buzzard.