Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for CHALFONT-ST. GILES

CHALFONT-ST. GILES, a village and a parish in Amersham district, Bucks. The village stands on the Misbourn rivulet, 3 miles SE by S of Amersham, and 6 E by N of Loudwater r. station; and has a post office‡ under Slough. The poet Milton resided here during the plague of London in 1665, and finished here his "Paradise Lost;" and the house which he occupied, a half-timbered cottage, still exists, and has his name on its front. The parish comprises 3,641 acres. Real property, £6,117. Pop., 1,217. Houses, 255. The property is subdivided. The manor belongs to T. N. Allen, Esq. Vatche House, or the Vache, is a modernized ancient edifice; was long held by the Hare family; belonged previously to the Alstons; and is said to have been built originally on a dairy farm of King John. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Oxford. Value, £615.* Patron, the Bishop of Oxford. The church is ancient; has a Norman tower; was restored in 1863; and contains brasses and monuments of the Gardiners, the Fleetwoods, the Claytons, and Bishop Hare. There are chapels for Independents, Primitive Methodists, Free Methodists, and Quakers; and the remains of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, and Thomas Ellwood, the friend of Milton, are in the Quakers' burying ground. A school has £58 from endowment; and other charities £100.


(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a village and a parish"   (ADL Feature Type: "populated places")
Administrative units: Chalfont St Giles AP/CP       Amersham RegD/PLU       Buckinghamshire AncC
Place: Chalfont St Giles

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