Quainton, Buckinghamshire
Historical Description
Quainton, Quainton Mallett, or Quinton, a village and a parish in Bucks. The village stands near Quainton Road station on the Metropolitan railway, and 6½ miles NW of Aylesbury. It is large and widely scattered, was once a market-town, and has a post and money order office under Aylesbury; telegraph office, Waddesdon. The parish contains also the hamlets of Doddershall, Denham, Hogshaw, and Shipton Lee. Acreage, 5346; population, 885. There is a parish council consisting of seven members. Doddershall Hall, an ancient mansion pleasantly situated in a park of 120 acres, has been the seat of the Pigott family for nearly 400 years. Quainton Hill commands a good view. The rocks include gritstone and iron-sand, and are famous for their fossils. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Oxford; net value, £450. The church is a fine building of stone of mixed architecture; consists of nave, aisles, chancel, and N chapel, with W tower; and contains a figured screen, some good brasses, and several beautiful marble monuments. There are Baptist and Primitive Methodist chapels, eight almshouses with £220 a year, and charities belonging to this parish and the adjoining parish of Grendon worth over £400 a year. Brett, a translator of the Bible, was rector.
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 | Quainton 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 1599.
Churches
Church of England
The Holy Cross and St. Mary (parish church)
The church of the Holy Cross and St. Mary is a building of stone, chiefly in the Early English style, consisting of chancel, nave of five bays, aisles, vestry, south porch and an embattled western tower with turret containing a clock and 5 bells with chimes and a sanctus bell: in the south aisle is a mural tablet, with effigies kneeling at a desk, to the learned Orientalist, Richard Brett D.D. one of the 47 translators of the Bible in 1611, and rector here from 1595 until his death, 15th April, 1631, and to his wife, with a long Latin inscription: in the tower is a magnificent monument to Robert Dormer, a justice of the Court of Common Pleas, d. 18 Sept. 1726, and his wife and son; the sculpture is by Roubiliac, whose realistic monument to Lady Nightingale in Westminster Abbey is well known. There are brasses, in excellent preservation, to John Spence M.A. rector 1485; one with demi-effigy to Johane Plessi, 1360, with incription in Norman French, and others to John Lewis, rector 1422; Margery Verney, 1509; Richard Iwardby, 1529, and Elizabeth Chester, 1593: in the south aisle is a finely executed table tomb of white marble to Richard Winwood esq. 1689, with a recumbent effigy in complete armour, except the head, which is attired in a flowing wig; on the wall hangs a funeral helmet surmounted by a crest; behind him is his lady in an attitude of grief; at the base of the tomb is the sculptured figure of a human skeleton with an hour-glass: another monument of heavy design commemorates Sir Richard Pigott, knighted at Theobalds, Herts, 9 July, 1630, ob. 1688: a mural tablet of old design, in black and white marble, commemorates the men connected with the parish who lost their lives in the Great War, 1914-18.: the church was restored in 1877, at a cost of £2,600, under the direction of Mr. William White, architect, of London: there are 350 sittings.
Civil Registration
For general information about Civil Registration (births, marriages and deaths) see the Civil Registration page.
Quainton was in Aylesbury Registration District from 1837 to 1974
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Quainton from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Quainton, or Quainton-Malet (St. Mary))
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Buckinghamshire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Quainton 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
DoddershallShipton Lee
Visitations Heraldic
A full transcript of the Visitation of Buckinghamshire, 1634 is online