Thornton, Buckinghamshire
Historical Description
Thornton, a village and a parish in Buckinghamshire, 4½ miles ENE of Buckingham, which is the nearest railway station. Post town and telegraph office, Stony Stratford; money order office, Deanshanger. Acreage, 1347; population of the civil parish, 80; of the ecclesiastical, with Nash, 386. The manor, with Thornton Hall, a large mansion in the Tudor style standing in a park of 181 acres, belongs to the Cavendish family. The living is a rectory, united with Nash, in the diocese of Oxford; net value, £235 with residence. The church, which stands in the grounds of Thornton Hall, is an ivy-clad building of stone, consisting of nave, aisles, and an embattled western tower. It has some ancient and interesting tombs and brasses.
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 | Thornton St. Michael | |
Hundred | Buckingham | |
Poor Law union | Buckingham |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
The parish register dates from the year 1562.
Churches
Church of England
St. Michael and All Angels (parish church)
The church of St. Michael and All Angels consists of a nave, south aisle, and west tower built in the 14th century, and a north aisle, rebuilt about 1850: it is picturesquely situated in the grounds of Thornton Hall; the tower contains a clock and 3 interesting bells, with inscriptions; the lower stage of the tower forms a porch: the chancel has been pulled down; the interior was refitted at the beginning of the 20th century by Thomas Sheppard esq. then lord of the manor, when two altar tombs, with brasses of the Ingletons, were removed, and the brasses placed on the floor; these still remain and represent - 1, Robert Ingleton esq. in armour, with his three wives, 1472, all under a quadruple canopy. which is very rare: 2, Jane, daughter and sole heir of Robert Ingleton and successively wife of Humfrey Tyrrell and Alexander Seynet Johns; she died in 1557; 3, George Tyrrell, her son: there are also effigies in alabaster of John Barton, founder of a chantry here, ob. 1443, and of his wife Isabella; these were removed at the time above mentioned from under an arch between the body of the church and the chancel, to the west end, where they were placed on either side of the entrance: there are 120 sittings.
Civil Registration
For general information about Civil Registration (births, marriages and deaths) see the Civil Registration page.
Thornton was in Buckingham Registration District from 1837 to 1935
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Thornton from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Thornton (St. Michael))
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Buckinghamshire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Thornton 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