Ludgershall, Buckinghamshire
Historical Description
Ludgershall, a village and a parish in Bucks. The village stands near the boundary with Oxfordshire, 1¼ mile S of Akeman Street, and 6 miles SE by E of Bicester station on the L. & N.W.R., and got its name by corruption from King Ludd's Hall. It has a post office under Aylesbury; money order and telegraph office, Brill. The parish contains also the hamlets of Kingswood and Tetchwick. Acreage, 2731; population of the civil parish, 382; of the ecclesiastical, 422. The manor belongs to the Martyn family. Henry II. is said to have selected King Ludd's Hall as a retreat for Fair Rosamund, and a lane in the woods is still called. Rosamund's Way. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Oxford; net value, £333 with residence. The church is an ancient building of stone and rubble in the Early English and Decorated styles, in good condition; consists of nave, aisles, and chancel, with embattled tower, and contains a Norman font and a brass of 1523. There is a Wesleyan chapel. An alien hospital was here, a cell to that of Saintingfield, given to King's College, Cambridge.
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 | Ludgershall St. Mary | |
| Hundred | Ashendon | |
| Poor Law union | Aylesbury |
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 (parish church)
The church of St. Mary is an ancient building of stone and rubble, principally in the Norman and Decorated styles, and consisting of chancel, nave of three bays, aisles, south porch and an embattled western tower containing 5 bells: the piers of the arcades are Decorated, but some of the capitals are Norman and exhibit grotesque carving: the inner arch of the south porch is deeply recessed and has a shield at each corner: the font, of Norman date, is carved with a variety of ornament, and has at some time been coloured: in the chancel is an altar tomb with brass effigies to Anne Englishe, wife of Michil Englishe, who was sheriff of London in 1533 and died 29th May, 1565, at the age of 95 years, and her daughter and granddaughter: the church was restored in 1889 at a cost of £1,220, and affords 200 sittings.
Civil Registration
Ludgershall was in Aylesbury Registration District from 1837 to 1974
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Ludgershall from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Ludgershall (St. Mary))
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Buckinghamshire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Ludgershall 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:
Villages, Hamlets, &c
TetchwickVisitations Heraldic
A full transcript of the Visitation of Buckinghamshire, 1634 is online