Marsworth is a village and a civil parish within the

unitary authority area A unitary authority is a local government, local authority responsible for all local government functions within its area or performing additional functions that elsewhere are usually performed by a higher level of sub-national government or the ...

Buckinghamshire Buckinghamshire (), abbreviated Bucks, is a ceremonial county in South East England that borders Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-ea ...

, England. It is about north of Tring,

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...

and east of

Aylesbury Aylesbury ( ) is the county town of Buckinghamshire, South East England. It is home to the Roald Dahl Children's Gallery, David Tugwell`s house on Watermead and the Waterside Theatre. It is in central Buckinghamshire, midway between High Wy ...

Early history

The village name is

Anglo Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened wit ...

in origin, ''Mæssanwyrth'', and means 'Mæssa's enclosure'. Marsworth is first mentioned in the will of Aelfgyfu (before 975) as granted to

Edgar of England Edgar ( ang, Ēadgār ; 8 July 975), known as the Peaceful or the Peaceable, was King of the English from 959 until his death in 975. The younger son of King Edmund I and Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury, he came to the throne as a teenager following ...

who in turn passed it to

St Etheldreda's Church St Etheldreda's Church is a Roman Catholic church in Ely Place, off Charterhouse Street in Holborn, London. The building is one of only two surviving in London from the reign of Edward I, and dates from between 1250 and 1290. It is dedicated ...

in London (belonging to the

Bishops of Ely The Bishop of Ely is the ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Ely in the Province of Canterbury. The diocese roughly covers the county of Cambridgeshire (with the exception of the Soke of Peterborough), together with a section of north ...

), and later passed into the hands of

Brictric Brictric was a powerful Saxon thegn whose many English landholdings, mostly in the West Country, are recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086. Life According to the account by the ''Continuator of Wace'' and others, in his youth Brictric declined the ...

, a thegn 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 ...

. After the Norman Conquest Marsworth (''Missevorde'') is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as being in the possession of Robert D'Oyly and was connected to Wallingford, an association which continued into the 17th century. The tenants at this time were the Bassett family and the land was split between six sisters, and through their line the estates passed to the Goldingtons, at which time the manor becomes recorded as Marsworth with Goldringtons. By 1319 records show there were still several overlords controlling various parts of Marsworth including a descendant of Isabel Bassett, John de Beauchamp Lord of the Manor at Hawridge. This is the first indication of a tie-up between Marsworth and the detached manor or Hawridge, possibly to provide woodland and hilltop summer pasture for the estate across the narrow isthmus of Hertfordshire. There were connections between another estate in Marsworth and the Savoy Hospital in London, to which the Boughton family granted lands in 1514 in the honour of Henry III. It subsequently became an endowment for

St Thomas' Hospital St Thomas' Hospital is a large NHS teaching hospital in Central London, England. It is one of the institutions that compose the King's Health Partners, an academic health science centre. Administratively part of the Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foun ...

and in 1876 was swapped for lands in Essex by William Brown of Tring. There are records of a church in Marsworth since the 12th century. All Saints' Church was further extended in the 14th and 15th centuries. Despite further restoration in the first part of the 19th century, by 1880 the church was in a deplorable condition and the newly appointed vicar, the Rev. F. W. Ragg, set about with the help of parishioners to restore it over the next 25 years.

Marsworth today

The construction of the Grand Union Canal, which passes through Marsworth brought with it many new business opportunities and the village expanded greatly as a result. Within the parish boundary of Marsworth, to the south of the main village where the canal cross the Lower Icknield Way is the hamlet of Startop's End. In 2010 the during building work engineers dug up over 40 bodies in un-marked graves which were subsequently interred in a ceremony conducted by the vicar. Nearby are three of the four Tring Reservoirs, one of which is named Marsworth reservoir.

References

External links

{{authority control Civil parishes in Buckinghamshire Villages in Buckinghamshire