Chicksands, Bedfordshire

Historical Description

Chicksands, formerly an extra-parochial tract now a parish in Beds, on the river Ivel, near the M.R., 1½ mile NW from Shefford station. Post town, Biggleswade; money order and telegraph office, Shefford.  Area, 1439 acres; population, 64. Chicksands Priory, the seat of the Osborn family, includes considerable part of the buildings of a priory founded about 1150 by Payne and Roise Beauchamp. It contains a valuable collection of portraits, and a state bed once belonging to James I.

Administration

The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.

Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.

Civil Registration

For general information about Civil Registration (births, marriages and deaths) see the Civil Registration page.

Chicksands Priory was in Biggleswade Registration District from 1837 to 1974

Directories & Gazetteers

We have transcribed the entry for Chicksands from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Chicksands)
• Kelly's Directory of Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Northamptonshire, 1914

Land and Property

The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Bedfordshire is available to browse.

Maps

Online maps of Chicksands are available from a number of sites:

• Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
• Google Streetview.
• National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
• OpenStreetMap.
• old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
• Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
• A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)

Newspapers and Periodicals

The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Bedfordshire papers online:

• Bedfordshire Times and Independent
• Biggleswade Chronicle
• Luton Times and Advertiser
• Luton News and Bedfordshire Chronicle

Poor Law

Chicksands was in Biggleswade Poor Law Union. For further detailed history of the Biggleswade Union see Peter Higginbotham's excellent resource: Biggleswade Poor Law Union and Workhouse.

Visitations Heraldic

A full transcript of the Visitations of Bedfordshire 1566, 1582, and 1634 is available online.