Little Linford is a village in the

City of Milton Keynes The City of Milton Keynes is a unitary authority area with both borough and city status, in Buckinghamshire. It is the northernmost district of the South East England Region. The borough abuts Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and the remainder ...

, Buckinghamshire, England. It is about a mile west of Newport Pagnell, near the

M1 motorway The M1 motorway connects London to Leeds, where it joins the A1(M) near Aberford, to connect to Newcastle. It was the first inter-urban motorway to be completed in the UK; the first motorway in the country was the Preston By-pass, which ...

. The village is separated from its neighbour and namesake

Great Linford Great Linford is a historic village, district and wider civil parish in the northern part of Milton Keynes, England, between Wolverton and Newport Pagnell. Great Linford village Great Linford was one of the North Buckinghamshire villages i ...

(and the rest of the

Milton Keynes urban area The Milton Keynes urban area or Milton Keynes Built-up Area is a designation established by the United Kingdom's Office for National Statistics. Milton Keynes has no statutory boundary: the 1967 designated area only determined the area assi ...

) by the floodplain of the River Great Ouse. Little Linford was initially a

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 the manor and

ecclesiastical parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or m ...

of Linford. The parish church is dedicated to St Leonard. The traditional parish name 'Linford' is an

Old English language 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 settlers in the mid-5th cen ...

word that means 'ford where maple trees grow'. In 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 manus ...

of 1086 the village was recorded as ''Linforde''. The prefix 'Little' was added to distinguish it from Great Linford.

Civil parish

Little Linford 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 authorit ...

of "Haversham-cum-Little Linford", which also includes the nearby village of

Haversham Haversham is a village in the City of Milton Keynes unitary authority area, in Buckinghamshire, England. It is situated to the north of (and separated by the River Great Ouse from) the Milton Keynes urban area, near Wolverton and about north of ...

. The parish had a population of 873 according to the 2011 census. This merged parish was formed in 1934.

Little Linford Wood

Little Linford Wood Little Linford Wood is a nature reserve in Little Linford in the City of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England. It is managed by the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust. Much of the woodland is young as it was felled in 1 ...

is owned by Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust. Today it is one of the best habitats for

dormice A dormouse is a rodent of the family Gliridae (this family is also variously called Myoxidae or Muscardinidae by different taxonomists). Dormice are nocturnal animals found in Africa, Asia, and Europe. They are named for their long, dormant hibe ...

, which were transferred to Little Linford Wood from

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

when the Channel Tunnel rail link was being constructed.

References

External links

{{authority control Villages in Buckinghamshire Areas of Milton Keynes