Addingrove is a former
hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...
in Buckinghamshire, about northwest of the
market town
A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regular market; this distinguished it from a village or city. In Britain, small rural ...
of
Thame
Thame is a market town and civil parish in Oxfordshire, about east of the city of Oxford and southwest of Aylesbury. It derives its name from the River Thame which flows along the north side of the town and forms part of the county border wi ...
in neighbouring
Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the north west of South East England. It is a mainly rural county, with its largest settlement being the city of Oxford. The county is a centre of research and development, primarily ...
. The settlement is on the
B4011 road between
Oakley and
Long Crendon
Long Crendon is a village and civil parish in west Buckinghamshire, England, about west of Haddenham and north-west of Thame in neighbouring Oxfordshire.
The village has been called Long Crendon only since the English Civil War.Birch, 197 ...
.
The largely
depopulated former settlement now consists of only Addingrove Farm and a cottage. It is in the
civil parish
In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...
of
Oakley.
Toponym
The
toponym
Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of '' toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of ...
Addingrove is derived from the
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
for "Æddi's wood".
From the 11th to the 15th centuries it evolved through the forms ''Eddingrave'', ''Adegrave'' and ''Adingrave'' before reaching its present form.
Manor
The
Domesday Book
Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...
of 1086 records that Ulward, a man of
Queen Edith, the
manor of ''Eddingrave'' in the reign of
Edward the Confessor
Edward the Confessor ; la, Eduardus Confessor , ; ( 1003 – 5 January 1066) was one of the last Anglo-Saxon English kings. Usually considered the last king of the House of Wessex, he ruled from 1042 to 1066.
Edward was the son of Æth ...
, but that after the
Norman conquest of England
The Norman Conquest (or the Conquest) was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Normans, Norman, Duchy of Brittany, Breton, County of Flanders, Flemish, and Kingdom of France, French troops, ...
it was granted to
Walter Giffard
Walter Giffard (April 1279) was Lord Chancellor of England and Archbishop of York.
Family
Giffard was a son of Hugh Giffard of Boyton in Wiltshire,Greenway Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066–1300: Volume 6: York: Archbishops' a royal justice, ...
and assessed at three and a half
hides. Addingrove remained part of the
Honour
Honour (British English) or honor (American English; American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, see spelling differences) is the idea of a bond between an individual and a society as a quality of a person that is both of socia ...
until 1256, when Giffard's descendant Joan Marshal became married to
William de Valence, 1st Earl of Pembroke
{{Infobox noble, name=William de Valence, christening_date=, noble family=, house-type=, father=Hugh X of Lusignan, mother=Isabella of Angoulême, birth_name=, birth_date=, birth_place=, christening_place=, styles=, death_date=13 June 1296, death_ ...
. After the death of
Aymer de Valence, 2nd Earl of Pembroke
Aymer de Valence, 2nd Earl of Pembroke (c. 127523 June 1324) was an Anglo-French nobleman. Though primarily active in England, he also had strong connections with the French royal house. One of the wealthiest and most powerful men of his age, ...
in 1324, Addingrove passed to William's granddaughter
Elizabeth de Comyn
Elizabeth de Comyn (1 November 1299 – 20 November 1372) was a medieval noblewoman and heiress, notable for being kidnapped by the Despenser family towards the end of the reign of King Edward II.
Background
Elizabeth was born to John III Co ...
. It then passed by Elizabeth's second marriage to
Richard Talbot, 2nd Baron Talbot
Richard Talbot, 2nd Baron Talbot (c. 1306 – 23 October 1356) was an English nobleman and soldier. As the husband of the heiress Elizabeth de Comyn, he played a role in the Second War of Scottish Independence.
Family
Talbot was the son and ...
. Talbot also held the manor of Pollicott in
Ashendon
Ashendon is a small village and civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England. It is about nine miles west of Aylesbury and seven miles north of Thame.
The toponym is derived from the Old English for "Hill overgrown with ash trees". The Domesday Bo ...
. When Gilbert Talbot, 5th Baron Talbot died in 1419 he left the manors of Pollicott and Addingrove to his widow Beatrice, who was baroness in her own right until her death in 1421. The two manors were again recorded together in 1432 and 1446, but no subsequent records are known.
Walter Giffard's
mesne lord
A mesne lord () was a lord in the feudal system who had vassals who held land from him, but who was himself the vassal of a higher lord. Owing to ''Quia Emptores'', the concept of a mesne lordship technically still exists today: the partitionin ...
was Hugh de Bolebec, whose heirs were the
Earls of Oxford
Earl of Oxford is a dormant title in the Peerage of England, first created for Aubrey de Vere by the Empress Matilda in 1141. His family was to hold the title for more than five and a half centuries, until the death of the 20th Earl in 1703. ...
. The mesne lordshire of Addingrove followed that of
Whitchurch until 1635.
By 1173 the sub-tenants of the Earls of Oxford were a family called Morel. In 1257 John Morel granted parts of Oakley and Addingrove to John FitzNeil, who then bought the remainder of the manorial tenure from Morel's heirs. Thereafter the tenancy of Addingrove was linked with that of
Boarstall
Boarstall is a village and civil parish in the Aylesbury Vale district of Buckinghamshire, about west of Aylesbury. The parish is on the county boundary with Oxfordshire and the village is about southeast of the Oxfordshire market town of Bice ...
until 1563. From 1554 the farm was let to John Croke of
Chilton. Croke left the tenancy to his son, also John Dormer, who in 1607 was renting the farm from
Sir John Dormer
Sir John Dormer (18 October 1556 – 10 March 1626) was an English landowner and politician who sat in the House of Commons in two periods between 1604 and 1622.
Biography
Dormer was the son of William Dormer of Thame, Oxfordshire and gr ...
of
Dorton
Dorton (or Dourton) is a village and civil parish in the Aylesbury Vale district of Buckinghamshire. It is in the western part of the county, about north of the Oxfordshire market town of Thame.
Manor
The village toponym is derived from the ...
. Dormer left Addingrove to his son Sir Robert Dormer, who is said to have passed it to a family called Mitchell. In the 18th century Addingrove passed from Richard Mitchell to
Sir John Aubrey, 6th Baronet
Sir John Aubrey, 6th Baronet (4 June 1739 – 14 March 1826) was a British Tory politician. In 1786, he succeeded to his father's baronetcy.
Baptised in Boarstall in Buckinghamshire on 2 July 1739, he was the son of Sir Thomas Aubrey, 5th Baron ...
. Aubrey held the manor of Boarstall, so thereafter Addingrove was once again linked with that manor.
After Addingrove was deserted, its land was divided amongst the villages of Oakley,
Brill
Brill may refer to:
Places
* Brielle (sometimes "Den Briel"), a town in the western Netherlands
* Brill, Buckinghamshire, a village in England
* Brill, Cornwall, a small village to the west of Constantine, Cornwall, UK
* Brill, Wisconsin, an un ...
and
Chilton.
Chapel
In about 1142 the
Empress Maud
Empress Matilda ( 7 February 110210 September 1167), also known as the Empress Maude, was one of the claimants to the English throne during the civil war known as the Anarchy. The daughter of King Henry I of England, she moved to Germany as ...
granted Oakley church and its dependent
chapelries of Brill,
Boarstall
Boarstall is a village and civil parish in the Aylesbury Vale district of Buckinghamshire, about west of Aylesbury. The parish is on the county boundary with Oxfordshire and the village is about southeast of the Oxfordshire market town of Bice ...
and Addingrove, to the
Augustinian Augustinian may refer to:
*Augustinians, members of religious orders following the Rule of St Augustine
*Augustinianism, the teachings of Augustine of Hippo and his intellectual heirs
*Someone who follows Augustine of Hippo
* Canons Regular of Sain ...
Priory of St Frideswide, Oxford
St Frideswide's Priory was established as a priory of Augustinian canons regular, in 1122. The priory was established by Gwymund, chaplain to Henry I of England. Among its most illustrious priors were the writers Robert of Cricklade and Phil ...
. Addingrove chapel still existed in 1318. Late in the 18th century Addingrove was still a hamlet in the parish of Oakley, but its chapel had been ''"suffered to fall to ruin"''.
Hamlet
The possible site of the
deserted medieval village
In the United Kingdom, a deserted medieval village (DMV) is a former settlement which was abandoned during the Middle Ages, typically leaving no trace apart from earthworks or cropmarks. If there are fewer than three inhabited houses the convent ...
and former chapel of Addingrove may be about north of Addingrove Farm.
The only remaining building on the site is a derelict barn,
[ but ]Ordnance Survey
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maps of 1878 and 1885 show this as the site of the original Addingrove Farm.[ Slight hollows suggest where a house may have stood, a slight baulk suggests the route of a former track, and ]ridge and furrow
Ridge and furrow is an archaeological pattern of ridges (Medieval Latin: ''sliones'') and troughs created by a system of ploughing used in Europe during the Middle Ages, typical of the open-field system. It is also known as rig (or rigg) and fu ...
to the west, south and southeast suggest where the limits of the former settlement may have been.[
About east of Addingrove Farm the B4011 road between Oakley and Long Crendon crosses a stream, next to which on the east side of the road is a rectilinear medieval ditch that the stream used to feed.] The ditch was about wide and may have been a moat
A moat is a deep, broad ditch, either dry or filled with water, that is dug and surrounds a castle, fortification, building or town, historically to provide it with a preliminary line of defence. In some places moats evolved into more extensive ...
, but there is no trace of a manor house
A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were held the lord's manorial courts, communal meals w ...
having stood within the rectangle.[ It may therefore have been a fishpond.][
]
References
Sources
*
*
*
External links
*
{{Aylesbury Vale
Hamlets in Buckinghamshire
Deserted medieval villages in Buckinghamshire