In the 16th century Leland entered Long Crendon over Crendon Bridge of four stone arches and journeyed thence 'by some hilly and aftar great pasture ground and grounds fruitfull of benes.' The bridge or its successor, now bearing the name of Thame Bridge, still carries the road to Bicester across the Thame. Some distance north-east of the bridge it flows past the site of Nutley Abbey, a house of Austin Canons, the remains of which are now to a great extent absorbed in a substantial modern mansion, the property and residence of Mr. H. Reynolds.."
[The Victoria Histories of the Counties of England]

Long Crendon was described in 1806 in "Magna Britannia" as follows:

The name Crendon derives from the old english Creodan-dun, and means 'Creoda's hill'. The epithet Long aptly decribes the village, and it is believed to have been added to distinguish it from the not too distant Grendon Underwood.

Nearby places to Long Crendon in Buckinghamshire unless otherwise denoted.

LONG CRENDON: NEEDLES & DODWELLS

Creodun or Creoden-dun, hill of Creoda, younger son of the King Cerdic. This was known (by a doublet) as Cop Hill, on the east side of the village, and there is evidence of Roman occupation in a cemetery near this. The Roman road through the village came from the fort at Dorchester on Thames, through Shabbington, entering the village through Frog Lane, slanting across to Cop Hill, and then on to Chearsley and Winchendon, where it met Akeman Street, the major Roman road from St Albans.

Long Crendon was always a large village, with the main Bicester - Thame road running north to south through the centre, linking Lower End (with the imposing house Emmertons, now called The Mound, high above it) and the long High Street crossing it at right angles, before angling up towards the Chearsley Road, at its western end a kind of early bypass, carrying straight on to the Bicester road instead of slanting down through the village.

There are nearly 70 buildings in the village, ‘listed’ by the Historical Buildings Commission, which means there are now severe restrictions on alterations and even repair work. The High Street with its short side lanes has 37 of these houses, reasonably unspoiled, owing to strenuous efforts by preservation conscious inhabitants. Where the High Street meets Bicester Road is a ‘Square’, a central open area of irregular shape, which has the appearance of a market place, though Crendon was never a market town, and was possibly, therefore, the nightly safe place for livestock brought in from the grazing areas.

Opposite High Street is what was Frog Lane, now Frogmore. This is the old Roman road, recognisable as such by the depth of the narrow lane below the present roadside, meandering across country to Shabbington. There are small cruck built cottages along Frog Lane, but the showpiece is undoubtedly the Old Manor House.

The only problem is that it wasn’t. There was never anciently a resident Lord of the Manor, and this handsome building was originally the Grange or outlying farm belonging to Notley Abbey, a very important monastic establishment in its time. In part, it is authentic 15th century, with black close timbering and white stucco front, with a hollow square of farm buildings which were gradually upgraded.

This farm was bought in 1862 by its former tenant, John Dodwell, a wealthy farmer and tradesman, who doubled the size, in the same style, incorporating outbuildings, and he and his son Herbert referred to it henceforth as ‘The Manor’. The work was carried on, very well, by a couple of doctors from London, with the result that the former arched cart entry now forms a ‘gatehouse’ and the buildings round the sides of the huge courtyard form an L shape, divided into flats and let to various careful tenants, mainly commuters. It is very handsome and you feel it should have been a manor house (especially if you are a Dodwell).

More typical of Long Crendon farms is Madge’s, in the High St, a long narrow house, with the cart entry roughly central, the original dwelling part one room deep, two long, with outshoot, and the former barn of the same size, now a letting house, on either side.

The High Street (like Bicester Road at Lower End) contains a fine collection of houses of all shapes, some with the steep sloped roof which shows a thatched origin, some with the lower pitch of an original tiled roof. There are several still with well maintained thatch. Traditionally laid layer on layer, so that the final thickness is anything up to two feet. It wraps round the dormer or attic windows in the roof, so that precious little light can enter and one old house has tiny, foot square panes lapped in thatch, which could never have been light inside.

The natural development whereby a mediaeval small house on the corner had been expanded by Stuart and Georgian frontal additions, very harmoniously, and its partner opposite doubled by a second early Victorian block, semi-matching its Georgian original, but with bricks butting rather than keyed into the structure, would never be allowed nowadays. Characteristic of the un-stuccoed houses is a pattern of alternating Brill rosy brick and local blue-grey bricks, from the kiln near Lion Spring on the Thame road.

The Preservation Society keep a close eye on planning applications, but are sensible about what is possible financially and in keeping with modern requirements. English Heritage, however, tend to oppose any alterations which are not totally ‘in keeping’ - and their ideas of what was ‘normal’ in the past can be rather strange.

The Courthouse near the church where (in the absence of a Manor House), manorial court and other business was transacted over many years, was restored but the old black and white effect had been spoiled by whitish painting over the black timbers, on some theory that this was correct’. If white wash was ever applied this way, it would only have been by a bodger incapable of cutting in neatly along the line of the wood. Probably the idea is based on looking at the ‘silver wood’ effect produced where neglected timbers are sun-bleached (and split).

High Street, Long Crendon The Court House is on the left, the Church of St Mary the Virgin in the centre and fine examples of the houses, mentioned above, on the right. Photo: Kevin Quick

The Courthouse, its lower rooms used till 1834 as a Poorhouse and now a custodian’s flat, is open to visitors at weekends and used to have a fine collection of old furniture up its precipitous flight of stairs. However, one day, some men with a van came and announced they were to collect it; they did, and it has never been seen since.

Similarly, one of the larger black and white houses had been repainted in ochre and brown, with an alarming yellow pine door. In another house has brash new yellowish stone work, intended to match the old grey lower walls, but it has not mellowed in 15 years. Up the street, a large roadside barn has been beautifully restored, in pine feathered planking, at enormous cost, by its public spirited owners.

Unfortunately, it is very expensive to restore an old house these days, according to the exacting standards imposed by English Heritage, which means some owners cannot do what they want and need, to make their listed buildings safe and adapted to modern life. High maintenance costs and the huge price of period houses these days have driven the last of the local ‘old inhabitants’ out of the High Street to the modern bungalows round the edges of the village or even to Thame to live.

Till a few years ago, at least there was a grocer’s shop bearing the well-known local name of Dodwell, which once dominated retail trade in the village. This was run by a manager, then closed, unable to compete in price with the supermarkets.

Lining the street are two groups of needlemakers’ houses, for this unlikely industry dominated Long Crendon from the 16th to the 19th century. The houses are individual, not a purpose built terrace, but the workmen established a kind of production line, linked by little through cupboards in the adjoining walls; the man in the first house cut the wire into lengths, the second man hammered the end flat, the third cut an eye, the fourth pointed it, the fifth fired the needles to harden them, the next family, including the women, polished the needles by rolling them with their feet in bags of sand, the last graded and carded the needles and the man on the end, in the largest house, arranged the marketing.

The Shrimpton family dominated this industry by the 18th century.

In 1798, the needlemakers listed are Edward Ball, James, Thomas and William Friday. John Gregory, Thomas Hanson, William Harris (2), William Turvey and Charles, Darvil, Edward, Ephraim, James (2), Jesse, Richard, Simeon, Thomas and Timothy Shrimpton. One side road, Jesse’s Lane, is named from Jesse Shrimpton who lived there and in 1827, Shrimptons owned 6 of the larger High Street properties.

By the early 1800s, there was competition from the larger needle factories in Worcestershire, which had easy access to coal. Production of the fine ‘sharps’ declined and coarser sacking and canvas needles were made. Many of the needles were sold in London, even abroad, and one lane is called Wapping, from the London destination for much of the Victorian canvas needle output.

But it was uneconomic, so at length, a whole group of families decided that, if they couldn’t beat them. they might as well join them, and went off in waggons to the Redditch area of Worcestershire, where some of the Shrimptons had gone before, the first pair (Peter and William) in 1820, and set up again and prospered.

Kirby, Beard, pinmakers of Gloucester, working against the trend, obstinately moved into Crendon in 1848 and set up a modern factory in Chilton Road, off the Chearsley road, which continued for a few years but then had to give up in 1856. They had a row of terraced cottages for the workmen, opposite the factory. Sylvanus Shrimpton, independent till his death in 1887, made surgical needles in his own little workshop.

The modern close of bungalows called Needlemakers is not really near this row - but the first lady living in the end house was a Mrs Shrimpton, to add a touch of authenticity. Lacemakers, another modern close, is roughly where the needle factory was. This reflects the other major industry, mainly occupying women and children, which also died through factory competition in the 18th century.

Religious matters

The Church (once St Nicholas, now St Mary the Virgin) is close to Cop Hill, at the narrow east end of the High Street. There are traces of 12th century stonework, though the bulk of the Chancel is 13th century; the smaller and lower building can be seen encased in the present towered structure with extra wings. The huge South transept window is completely blocked and has been since the elaborate monument to Sir John Dormer was placed there in 1607. He didn’t die until 1626, but he wanted to be sure he would be properly commemorated, in anachronistic mediaeval armour. There is an endowment to maintain the monument and the side aisle, but as it produces £2.50 a year, well short of the £10,000 now required.

Victorian restoration was done in 1889, not as badly as in some places, by Sir Arthur Blomfleld, during which two engaging paintings of Moses and Aaron were hidden away, but they have recently been replaced on either side of the door. Two galleries and some interesting old tombs were removed too, the high fixed pews of the richer folk were at this stage swept away, and never replaced. This is convenient when the chairs are cleared away and the traditional Mystery Plays are performed annually, in the broad expanse of the nave, to a large audience. On most Sundays the small congregation can be accommodated easily in the narrower Chancel, near the altar.

For many years, there was no resident clergyman in the dilapidated vicarage, and the curate lodged in Thame. Rev. Thomas Hayton was one of the first to live in the parish, from 1821 to 1887, and he threw himself into local community affairs and left his mark - a distinctly autocratic though benevolent one. He clashed with the Workhouse Master in Thame, who was treating Crendon (and other) inmates very harshly. Hayton’s fiery letters to the local papers earned the Master a severe reprimand and conditions improved: and he had other targets.

Dissent is recorded early in the parish, with a ‘conventicle’ claimed as early as 1636. Baptists and Quakers are known from 1663 and in Compton’s census of 1679, 93 people were dissenters, opposed to 283 churchgoers. The Baptists had a regular meeting place in a cottage from at least 1779, even before their first proper chapel was built in 1812. This was replaced by a fine new chapel in High Street in 1853. The most prominent tradesmen in the village were Baptist and feelings ran high -so much so that when the chapel was building, the Hayton and the churchmen organised a party to make away with the materials in the night, claiming God did not want the chapel there. The Chapel is still thriving, with large congregations and a popular community programme, run by the pastor, Jeff Steadman, who recently celebrated 25 years in the village.

There was also a Methodist chapel, built in 1828 and rebuilt in 1840 on a site in Chearsley Road, and the Primitive Methodists too had a chapel in 1866 in the Square. Both of these have long since closed. Recently, a Catholic church has been built with much stained glass.

Other buildings

Opposite the Baptist chapel is what everyone would instantly recognise as a former chapel converted to a doctor’s surgery, and called the ‘New Chapel surgery’ - except it never was, being erected in Victorian times as a village hall. This function has been taken over by the Church House, used by various organisations.

The solid Board School complex was well built to comply with the 1870 Education Act, with a handsome Schoolhouse beside it. After a century of use, the school was closed; the premises are used as a Library and hail.

Beside the Church, half hidden by trees, is the four square house built for the Dean of Windsor’s chief tenants by at least 1680. It became known as the Manor House when the proud John Stone moved in and slightly enlarged the modest 8 main rooms. Half its windows facing the churchyard were blocked to avoid Window Tax, and never again opened. It faces south east, with a breathtaking view over rolling lawns to the fishponds of Notley Abbey, over a mile away as the crow flies, more than two by road, as it stands nearer Haddenham.

There was always considerable influence and interference by the Abbey, until the Dissolution, but even the paved road from the Abbey to the Church has now vanished.

[Based on a tour of the village guided by Cdr Peter Everett R.N. with additional material from Joyce Donald’s History of Long Crendon]

THE MANORS

As a reward for helping William of Normandy with the Conquest, Walter Giffard was given Crendon (among 42 other manors in Bucks. and some in Beds and Berks). The male line ended in 1164 and the manors were eventually shared out, Crendon going to William Marshall (Earl of Pembroke). Princess Eleanor, widow of one of the Marshalls, then married Simon de Montfort, who was lord in her right 1255-75.

The manor was then divided permanently into three between the heiresses of Eve Marshall, wife of Anselm de Braose.

1. The first part (mainly north of the High St) went to Maud de Braose, who married Roger Mortimer, and it remained in that family till in 1358, a later Roger swapped it for Ludlow with William Ferrers of Groby. The Ferrers heiress conveyed it to her husbands, Sir Edward Grey and Sir John Bourchier, (and a son’s widow, the notorious Elizabeth Woodville, became Edward IV’s Queen). The heir, Thomas Grey, was elevated to Marquess of Dorset and died seized in 1500. His son sold his part of Crendon to newly rich Michael Dormer in 1520. It was mortgaged to the Piers family and left to their daughter Thomasine, wife of John Brewster, but in 1584, John Dormer (d 1627) bought it back. This third remained in Dormer hands till 1737, when it was left to a (maternal) cousin, Sir Clement Cottreil, who added the name Dormer to his own. Charles Cottrell Dormer sold it to the Grenvilles, and it belonged to the Duke of Buckingham, passing to his daughter, Lady Kinloss, in 1889.

2. The second part of the manor (mainly the west of the village and some north of the High St) went in 1284 to Humphrey Bohun, in right of his late mother, Eleanor de Braose. A younger Humphrey left two heiresses in 1373. His widow held the manor till her death in 1418, and the two girls married Henry (V) and his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, Henry took Crendon as his share, and in 1441 it was the dower of his widow, Katherine, till she went off with Owen Tudor. In 1449, this part of the manor was given to All Souls’ College, Oxford. Their manor house on their land in Chearsley Rd was demolished and rebuilt as College Farm.

3. The last third (mainly south of the High St) went to Eve de Braose, junior, wife of William Cantelow, and was divided between her daughters. One, Millicent, married Eudo de la Zouche, but the son, William, sold his sixth to his kinsman, Lord Hastings. The other sixth went to Eve, who left an only daughter, Joan, who married Lord Hastings, eventual owner of the whole third; after a series of minorities, the last male Hastings died in 1389. His widow conveyed a right to her second husband, Richard, Lord Arundel, (executed in 1397, possessed of Aa quarter of a knight’s fee in Crendon.) The actual heiress of the Bohuns was Elizabeth, wife of Edward Neville, but the Crown seems to have taken the manor as a forfeit and it was granted to Elizabeth Woodville for a time, then to Katherine Neville, Duchess of Norfolk for life. After her death in 1480, Edward IV granted this third to the Dean and Canons of St George’s Chapel, Windsor.

The three Lords of the Manor acted together, holding one joint manor court a year. The right to hold a Court Leet (punishing offences) fizzled out and only the land transfers remained to be dealt with.

Mini manors in Crendon were Lovedens, held by the de Warmodestones, then Lovedens, sold to the Dormers and by them to All Souls, becoming part of their third manor, as did the Barton mini­-manor. Sperlings, a monastic chantry, was owned from 1550 by Sir John (Lord) Williams of Thame, and went to his daughter, Margery, wife of Henry Norreys. Smaller freeholds still included Madge’s Farm and the Abbey Grange (“The Manor house”).

Notley Abbey

Notley or Nutley Abbey, an important monastic foundation of Walter Giffard’s in 1086, lies in the parish but well to the south and east, on the road to Haddenham. It was a main stopping place on the road from Oxford to Cambridge, till the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1538 and the Guest House of the Abbey remains as a very large farmhouse now, though the majority of the Abbey buildings have long since been thriftily recycled or converted to cow houses. The Abbey bells were taken to Crendon church, where they were used till 1768.

The last Abbot, Richard Ridge, warned by the fate of the Abbot of Reading (hanged from his Gatehouse) not to resist, did rather well out of the Dissolution, obtaining a pension of £100 a year and almost £6 a year for his monks, several of which were appointed parish clergy. Ridge’s kin were the Cannon family, long prominent as farmers round Crendon. The site and manorial rights were granted to John (Lord) Williams of Thame from 1542, and was left to his widow, with reversion to his two daughters, Margery, wifi~ of Henry Norreys and Isabel, wife of Richard Wenman. Isabel and her second husband, Richard Huddleston, handed over her share to her nephew, John, Lord Norreys, who mortgaged it, but it stayed in the family, passing by an heiress to the Wrey and Bertie families, though frequently leased to the related Lentons. The Berties eventually sold Nutley to the then tenant, Henry Reynolds, a local yeoman farmer, in 1791, in whose family it remains to this day (with a brief aberration of a lease in the 1940s to Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, whose wild schemes for redecoration, Changing Rooms style, were fortunataly averted by her fits of depression and nymphomania.

The former Abbey Grange in Frog Lane, tenanted by the Cannons, owned by a scion of the Berties, was sold to George Spencer (Churchill), Lord Marlborough, who gave it. to a younger son, Francis, Lord Churchill, whose ownership of this and several smaller properties in the village was commemorated by the sign of the Churchill Arms, recently altered to an ugly portrait of Winston Churchill, who had no connection at all. Lord Churchill sold the property by 1862 to John Dodwell, who aggrandised it to ‘The Manor House’. Churchill retained the advowson of the parish for a time, then eventually it passed to the Bishop of Oxford.

LONG CRENDON A Short History by Joyce Donald
(122 pp Extract of enclosure map. + 1593 map. 20 illus)

This excellent book is the most useful type of parish history, with a great many facts and figures, which places a great emphasis on the people who lived there. The historical references are all there, but for the last hundred or more years, there is a wealth of detail collected from local residents, of their own memories and those of their parents and grandparents. You have the sad tale of Matthew Warner, first man to collect the new Pension in 1908 - he was so excited he dropped dead while spending it in the pub; the fond memory of Mrs Cook’s farthing lollies and Mr Brazil’s saveloys; the darker story of the cricket match between Crendon and Lewknor that ended in a punch-up.

And the tragic tale for us that when Thomas Hayton died, young Mr Ogden moved in and started changing things. His sisters, not to be outdone, tidied up the mass of stuff in Hayton’s old Vicarage, burning up a lot of rubbishy old papers - the whole of the Churchwardens and Overseers’ Accounts, in fact everything but the parish registers and the enclosure award.

The Letters of Thomas Hayton; edited by Joyce Donald (Bucks Record Society) contains the outpourings of the long time vicar, attacking abuses or persons with splendid impartiality. He was a great character, crusading or intemperate, noble or petty, according to subject.

I hope you have found this edition of the Brangwin Family Newsletter of interest.

I would like to thank David and Geoffrey for their input and Margaret for her invaluable contribution, yet again.

That's it for this month.

If you have anything you would like to contribute to the newsletter it would be most welcome.

Until then next month

Lorraine