Hedgerley, Buckinghamshire
Historical Description
Hedgerley, a village and a parish in Bucks. The village stands 2¾ miles SE of Beaconsfield, and 5 N from Slough station on the G.W.R., and has a post office under Gerrards Cross (R.S.O.); money order and telegraph office, Famham Common. The parish comprises 1097 acres; population, 118. The manor, with Hedgerley Park, belongs to the Stevenson family. The mansion of Hedgerley Park is a handsome edifice, with Doric pillars from the portico of old Lady Place. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Oxford; net yearly value, £134 with residence. The church, which is a building of flint and rubble m the Early Decorated style, was rebuilt in 1852, has a tower, and contains an ancient circular font and a palimpsest brass of Abbot Totyngton. It also contains a relic in the form of a small portion of a plum-coloured velvet mantle of Charles II., which was formerly in use as an altar cloth. This has been mounted and framed, and placed in the chancel in the position of & mural tablet.
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 | Hedgerley St. Mary | |
Hundred | Stoke | |
Poor Law union | Eton |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
The parish register dates from the year 1538.
Churches
Church of England
St. Mary the Virgin (parish church)
The parish church of St. Mary the Virgin, standing on the brow of a hill, is a structure of flint and rubble in the Early English and Decorated styles, consisting of chancel, nave, south porch and an embattled western tower containing 5 bells, and was built in 1852 at a cost of £1,800, replacing a twelfth-century church which was pulled down; the pulpit, the gift of Sir John Stewart Stewart-Wallace C.B. was given in 1937; the seats are all of oak: King Charles II. is said to have visited this church, and noticing that the communion table was without a frontal, took off his cloak and laid it on the table; part of the cloak has been framed and glazed, and now hangs on the walls of the church: there is a palimpsest brass with, on the obverse, an effigy of Margaret, wife of Edward Bulstrode, 1540, and a group of 10 sons and 3 daughters, with a mutilated shield and inscription: on the reverse is another inscription to Thomas Totyngton, Abbot of Bury St. Edmund's, who died in 1312, though the engraving is later: the group of children has been cut out of the effigy of a bishop or abbot, c. 1530; on the reverse of the shield is a representation of the Resurrection; there are also braases to Robert Fulmer, 1498, and Joanna his wife, and a mural tablet to the men of this parish who lost their lives in the Great War, 1914-18: under the tower is a table of the Ten Commandments, painted on canvas and dated 1664, with an illustration of a breach of each: the Perpendicular font has an octagonal basin, adorned with a Tudor rose and other carvings: there are 200 sittings.
Civil Registration
For general information about Civil Registration (births, marriages and deaths) see the Civil Registration page.
Hedgerley was in Eton Registration District from 1837 to 1974
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Hedgerley from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Hedgerley (St. Mary))
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Buckinghamshire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Hedgerley 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