Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire
Historical Description
Chalfont St Peter, a village and a parish in Bucks. The village stands on the Misbourne rivulet, 5 miles SSE of Amersham, and 5 SW from Rickmansworth stations on the L. & N.W.R. and Metropolitan railway. It has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Gerrard's Cross (R.S.O.) The parish comprises 4758 acres; population of the civil parish, 1509; of the ecclesiastical, 1155. 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. A house called the Grange is built upon the foundations of what was for some time the residence of Judge Jeffreys. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford; net yearly value, £466 with residence. Patron, St John's College, Oxford. The church is a brick edifice of 1726, highly improved by Street in 1854; and contains several good brasses. The vicarage of Gerrard's Cross is a separate benefice. There is a chapel of ease at Horn Hill, erected in 1866, and a Baptist chapel at Gold Hill, erected in 1774.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
| Ancient County | Buckinghamshire | |
| Ecclesiastical parish | Chalfont St. Peter's | |
| Hundred | Burnham | |
| Poor Law union | Amersham |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
The parish registers date from the year 1538
Churches
Church of England
St. Peter (parish church)
The parish church of St. Peter, erected in 1714, on the site of an earlier church, which collapsed in 1708, is an edifice of red brick with stone dressings, and consists of nave and an embattled western tower containing a clock and 6 bells, dated 1726: windows have been inserted in the chancel and nave, and a south chapel and south porch added in the Decorated style: there are eight, memorial windows to the Hibbert and Wills families, to the wife of the Rev. G. M. Bullock B.D. vicar 1863-88, and others, besides five brasses from the 14th to the 16th centuries, removed from the old church, and including a palimpsest brass with the effigy of a priest in eucharistic vestments, c. 1440: in this case the figure has been slightly altered by the addition of shading and rounding of the toes. After this a new inscription was added to Sir Robert Hanson, vicar here, d. 1545. The communion plate dates from the 17th century, and is made of pewter: a new organ was provided in 1911: there are 300 sittings: the burial ground was given by J. N. Hibbert esq, D.L., J.P.; it contains a memorial, erected at a cost of £400, to parishioners who fell in the Great War, 1914-18.
Civil Registration
For general information about Civil Registration (births, marriages and deaths) see the Civil Registration page.
Chalfont St. Peter was in Amersham Registration District from 1837 to 1974
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Chalfont St Peter from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Chalfont (St. Peter's))
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Buckinghamshire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Chalfont St Peter 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 Buckinghamshire papers online:
Visitations Heraldic
A full transcript of the Visitation of Buckinghamshire, 1634 is online